The stellar populations of spiral galaxies
Reads0
Chats0
TLDR
In this paper, the authors used a large sample of low-inclination spiral galaxies with radially resolved optical and near-infrared photometry to investigate trends in star formation history with radius as a function of galaxy structural parameters.Abstract:
ABSTRA C T We have used a large sample of low-inclination spiral galaxies with radially resolved optical and near-infrared photometry to investigate trends in star formation history with radius as a function of galaxy structural parameters. A maximum-likelihood method was used to match all the available photometry of our sample to the colours predicted by stellar population synthesis models. The use of simplistic star formation histories, uncertainties in the stellar population models and considering the importance of dust all compromise the absolute ages and metallicities derived in this work; however, our conclusions are robust in a relative sense. We find that most spiral galaxies have stellar population gradients, in the sense that their inner regions are older and more metal rich than their outer regions. Our main conclusion is that the surface density of a galaxy drives its star formation history, perhaps through a local density dependence in the star formation law. The mass of a galaxy is a less important parameter; the age of a galaxy is relatively unaffected by its mass; however, the metallicity of galaxies depends on both surface density and mass. This suggests that galaxymass-dependent feedback is an important process in the chemical evolution of galaxies. In addition, there is significant cosmic scatter suggesting that mass and density may not be the only parameters affecting the star formation history of a galaxy.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
The Origin of the Mass-Metallicity Relation: Insights from 53,000 Star-forming Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
Christy Tremonti,Christy Tremonti,Timothy M. Heckman,Guinevere Kauffmann,Jarle Brinchmann,Stephane Charlot,Simon D. M. White,Mark Seibert,Mark Seibert,Eric W. Peng,Eric W. Peng,David J. Schlegel,Alan Uomoto,Alan Uomoto,Masataka Fukugita,Jon Brinkmann +15 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the relation between stellar mass and gas-phase metallicity was studied using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey imaging and spectroscopy of ~53,000 star-forming galaxies at z = 0.1.
Journal ArticleDOI
The optical and near-infrared properties of galaxies. I. Luminosity and stellar mass functions
TL;DR: In this article, a large sample of galaxies from the 2MASS and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) was used to calculate galaxy luminosity and stellar mass functions in the local Universe.
Journal ArticleDOI
Stellar mass-to-light ratios and the Tully-Fisher relation
Eric F. Bell,Roelof S. de Jong +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used a suite of simplified spectrophotometric spiral galaxy evolution models to argue that there are substantial variations in stellar mass-to-light (M/L) ratios within and among galaxies, amounting to factors of between 3 and 7 in the optical and 2 in the near-infrared.
Journal ArticleDOI
Quantifying the Bimodal Color-Magnitude Distribution of Galaxies
Ivan K. Baldry,Karl Glazebrook,Jon Brinkmann,Željko Ivezić,Robert H. Lupton,Robert C. Nichol,Alexander S. Szalay +6 more
TL;DR: In this article, the bimodality of the distribution from luminous to faint galaxies is traced by fitting double Gaussians to the color functions separated in absolute magnitude bins.
Journal ArticleDOI
Metallicity Calibrations and the Mass-Metallicity Relation for Star-forming Galaxies
Lisa J. Kewley,Sara L. Ellison +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the effect of metallicity calibrations, AGN classification, and aperture covering fraction on the local mass-metallicity relation using 27,730 star-forming galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 4.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Maps of Dust Infrared Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation Foregrounds
TL;DR: In this article, a reprocessed composite of the COBE/DIRBE and IRAS/ISSA maps, with the zodiacal foreground and confirmed point sources removed, is presented.
Journal ArticleDOI
Maps of Dust IR Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and CMBR Foregrounds
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors presented a reprocessed composite of the COBE/DIRBE and IRAS/ISSA maps, with the zodiacal foreground and confirmed point sources removed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Numerical Recipes, The Art of Scientific Computing
Journal ArticleDOI
The Global Schmidt law in star forming galaxies
TL;DR: In this paper, the Schmidt law was used to model the global star formation law over the full range of gas densities and star formation rates observed in galaxies, and the results showed that the SFR scales with the ratio of the gas density to the average orbital timescale.