European Southern Observatory

About: European Southern Observatory is a facility organization based out in Garching bei München, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Galaxy & Stars. The organization has 3594 authors who have published 16157 publications receiving 823095 citations. The organization is also known as: The European Southern Observatory，ESO & ESO.

The build-up of the colour–magnitude relation as a function of environment

Abstract: We discuss the environmental dependence of galaxy evolution based on deep panoramic imaging of two distant clusters, RX J0152.7-1357 at z = 0.83 and CL0016+ 1609 at z = 0.55, taken with the Subaru Prime Focus Camera on the Subaru Telescope as part of the Panoramic Imaging and Spectroscopy of Cluster Evolution with Subaru project. By combining with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data as a local counterpart for comparison, we construct a large sample of galaxies that spans wide ranges in environment, time and stellar mass (or luminosity). This allows us to conduct systematic and statistical analyses of the photometric properties of galaxies based on the colour-density diagrams, colour-magnitude relations, and luminosity functions. We find that colours of galaxies, especially those of faint galaxies (M V > M v * + 1), change from blue to red at a break density as we go to denser regions. This trend is observed at all redshifts in our sample. Based on local and global densities of galaxies, we classify three environments - field, groups and clusters - and look into the environmental dependence of galaxies in detail. In particular, we quantify how the colour-magnitude relation is built up as a function of environment. We show that the bright end of the cluster colour-magnitude relation is already built a z = 0.83, while the faint end is possibly still in the process of build-up. In contrast to this, the bright end of the field colour-magnitude relation has been vigorously built all the way down to the present-day and the build-up at the faint end has not started yet. A possible interpretation of these results is that galaxies evolve in a 'down-sizing' fashion. That is, massive galaxies complete their star formation first and the truncation of star formation is propagated to smaller objects as time progresses. This trend is likely to depend on environment since the build-up of the colour-magnitude relation is delayed in lower density environments. Therefore, we may suggest that the evolution of galaxies took place earliest in massive galaxies and in high-density regions, and it is delayed in less massive galaxies and in lower density regions. Further studies are, however, obviously needed to confirm the observed trends and establish the 'down-sizing' picture.

The SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey: ALMA resolves the rest-frame far-infrared emission of sub-millimeter galaxies

Abstract: We present high-resolution (0’’.3) Atacama Large Millimeter Array 870 μm imaging of 52 sub-millimeter galaxies (SMGs) in the Ultra Deep Survey field to investigate the size and morphology of the sub-millimeter (sub-mm) emission on 2–10 kpc scales. We derive a median intrinsic angular size of FWHM = 0’’.30 ± 0’’.04 for the 23 SMGs in the sample detected at a signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) >10. Using the photometric redshifts of the SMGs we show that this corresponds to a median physical half-light diameter of 2.4 ±0.2 kpc. A stacking analysis of the SMGs detected at S/N < 10 shows they have sizes consistent with the 870 μm bright SMGs in the sample. We compare our results to the sizes of SMGs derived from other multi-wavelength studies, and show that the rest-frame ∼250 μm sizes of SMGs are consistent with studies of resolved 12CO (J = 3–2 to 7–6) emission lines, but that sizes derived from 1.4 GHz imaging appear to be approximately two times larger on average, which we attribute to cosmic ray diffusion. The rest-frame optical sizes of SMGs are around four times larger than the sub-millimeter sizes, indicating that the star formation in these galaxies is compact relative to the pre-existing stellar distribution. The size of the starburst region in SMGs is consistent with the majority of the star formation occurring in a central region, a few kiloparsecs in extent, with a median star formation rate surface density of 90 ± 30M_ yr−1 kpc−2, which may suggest that we are witnessing an intense period of bulge growth in these galaxies.

The Tully-Fisher relations of early-type spiral and S0 galaxies

Abstract: We demonstrate that the comparison of Tully-Fisher relations (TFRs) derived from global H I line widths to TFRs derived from the circular velocity profiles of dynamical models (or stellar kinematic observations corrected for asymmetric drift) is vulnerable to systematic and uncertain biases introduced by the different measures of rotation used. We therefore argue that to constrain the relative locations of the TFRs of spiral and S0 galaxies, the same tracer and measure must be used for both samples. Using detailed near-infrared imaging and the circular velocities of axisymmetric Jeans models of 14 nearby edge-on Sa‐Sb spirals and 14 nearby edge-on S0s drawn from a range of environments, we find that S0s lie on a TFR with the same slope as the spirals, but are on average 0:53 0:15 mag fainter at KS-band at a given rotational velocity. This is a significantly smaller offset than that measured in earlier studies of the S0 TFR, which we attribute to our elimination of the bias associated with using different rotation measures and our use of earlier type spirals as a reference. Since our measurement of the offset avoids systematic biases, it should be preferred to previous estimates. A spiral stellar population in which star formation is truncated would take 1 Gyr to fade by 0.53 mag at KS-band. If S0s are the products of a simple truncation of star formation in spirals, then this finding is difficult to reconcile with the observed evolution of the spiral/S0 fraction with redshift. Recent star formation could explain the observed lack of fading in S0s, but the offset of the S0 TFR persists as a function of both stellar and dynamical mass. We show that the offset of the S0 TFR could therefore be explained by a systematic difference between the total mass distributions of S0s and spirals, in the sense that S0s need to be smaller or more concentrated than spirals.

Planck early results - XXIV. Dust in the diffuse interstellar medium and the galactic halo

Abstract: This paper presents the first results from a comparison of Planck dust maps at 353, 545 and 857GHz, along with IRAS data at 3000 (100 μm) and 5000GHz (60 μm), with Green Bank Telescope 21-cm observations of Hi in 14 fields covering more than 800deg(2) at high Galactic latitude. The main goal of this study is to estimate the far-infrared to sub-millimeter (submm) emissivity of dust in the diffuse local interstellar medium (ISM) and in the intermediate-velocity (IVC) and high-velocity clouds (HVC) of the Galactic halo. Galactic dust emission for fields with average Hi column density lower than 2 × 10(20) cm(-20) is well correlated with 21-cm emission because in such diffuse areas the hydrogen is predominantly in the neutral atomic phase. The residual emission in these fields, once the Hi-correlated emission is removed, is consistent with the expected statistical properties of the cosmic infrared background fluctuations. The brighter fields in our sample, with an average Hi column density greater than 2 × 10(20) cm(-2), show significant excess dust emission compared to the Hi column density. Regions of excess lie in organized structures that suggest the presence of hydrogen in molecular form, though they are not always correlated with CO emission. In the higher Hi column density fields the excess emission at 857 GHz is about 40% of that coming from the Hi, but over all the high latitude fields surveyed the molecular mass faction is about 10%. Dust emission from IVCs is detected with high significance by this correlation analysis. Its spectral properties are consistent with, compared to the local ISM values, significantly hotter dust (T ~ 20 K), lower submm dust opacity normalized per H-atom, and a relative abundance of very small grains to large grains about four times higher. These results are compatible with expectations for clouds that are part of the Galactic fountain in which there is dust shattering and fragmentation. Correlated dust emission in HVCs is not detected; the average of the 99.9% confidence upper limits to the emissivity is 0.15 times the local ISM value at 857 and 3000GHz, in accordance with gas phase evidence for lower metallicity and depletion in these clouds. Unexpected anti-correlated variations of the dust temperature and emission cross-section per H atom are identified in the local ISM and IVCs, a trend that continues into molecular environments. This suggests that dust growth through aggregation, seen in molecular clouds, is active much earlier in the cloud condensation and star formation processes.

A long-wavelength view on galaxy evolution from deep surveys by the Infrared Space Observatory

Abstract: We discuss the constraints set on galaxy evolution by a variety of data from deep extragalactic surveys performed in the mid-IR and far-IR with the Infrared Space Observatory and with millimetric telescopes at longer wavelengths. These observations indicate extremely high rates of evolution for IR galaxies, exceeding those measured for galaxies at other wavelengths and comparable or larger than the rates observed for quasars. We also match the modelled integrated emission by IR galaxies at any redshifts with the observed spectral intensity of the extragalactic IR background (CIRB), as a further constraint. The multi-wavelength statistics on IR galaxies can be reconciled with each other by assuming for the bulk of the population spectral energy distributions (SED) as typical for starbursts, which we take as an indication that stellar (rather than AGN, see also Fadda et al. [CITE]) activity powers IR emission by faint galaxies. According to our model and following the analysis of Elbaz et al. ([CITE]), the deep ISO surveys at 15 μ m may have already resolved more than 50% of the bolometric CIRB intensity: the faint ISO 15 μ m source samples, relatively easy to identify in deep optical images (Aussel et al. [CITE]), can then allow to investigate the origin of the CIRB background. From our fits to the observed optical-IR SEDs, these objects appear to mostly involve massive galaxies hosting luminous starbursts ($SFR\sim 100$ $M_\odot$/yr). The evolutionary scheme we infer from these data considers a bimodal star formation (SF), including a phase of long-lived quiescent SF, and enhanced SF taking place during transient events recurrently triggered by interactions and merging. We interpret the strong observed evolution as an increase with z of the rate of interactions between galaxies ( density evolution ) and an increase of their IR luminosity due to the more abundant fuel available in the past ( luminosity evolution ): both factors enhance the probability to detect a galaxy during the "active" phase at higher z . Very schematically, we associate the origin of the bulk of the optical/NIR background to the quiescent evolution, while the CIRB is interpreted as mostly due the dusty starburst phase. The latter possibly leads to the formation of galaxy spheroids, when the dynamical events triggering the starburst re-distribute already present stellar populations. The large energy contents in the CIRB and optical backgrounds are not easily explained, considering the moderate efficiency of energy generation by stars: a top-heavy stellar IMF associated with the starburst phase (and compared with a more standard IMF during the quiescent SF) would alleviate the problem. The evolution of the IR emissivity of galaxies from the present time to $z\sim 1$ is so strong that the combined set of constraints by the observed z -distributions and the CIRB spectrum impose it to turn-over at $z> 1$: scenarios in which a dominant fraction of stellar formation occurs at very high- z are not supported by our analysis.