Demographics of Isolated Galaxies along the Hubble Sequence

  • Kim, Hong-Geun (Department of Astronomy, Yonsei University) ;
  • Park, Jongwon (Department of Astronomy, Yonsei University) ;
  • Seo, Seong-Woo (Department of Astronomy, Yonsei University) ;
  • Yi, Sukyoung K. (Department of Astronomy, Yonsei University)
  • Published : 2015.04.10

Abstract

Isolated galaxies in low-density regions are significant in the sense that they are least affected by the hierarchical pattern of galaxy growth and interactions with perturbers at least for the last few Gyr. To form a comprehensive picture of the star formation history of isolated galaxies, we construct a catalog of isolated galaxies and their comparison sample in relatively denser environments. The galaxies are drawn from SDSS DR7 in the redshift range of 0.025 < z < 0.044. We performed visual inspection and classified their morphology following the Hubble classification scheme. We have investigated the color-magnitude diagram and found elliptical and unbarred spiral galaxies in isolated systems are relatively fainter and bluer than those in denser regions. For the spectroscopic study, we make use of the OSSY catalog (Oh et al. 2011). Our analysis on the absorption-line properties based on the comparison with stellar population models suggests that isolated elliptical galaxies are likely to be younger and metal poorer, while isolated Sc-type galaxies seem to have older luminosity-weighted ages, than their high-density counterpart. In addition, according to the BPT diagnostics, early-type galaxies among isolated galaxies are rather evenly classified into star forming, composite, Seyfert and LINER, whereas their comparisons are mainly populated in the LINER region. On the other hand, late-type galaxies do not show any prominent difference. We discuss the evolutionary histories of isolated galaxies in the context of the standard ${\Lambda}CDM$ cosmology.

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