Journal article
Galaxy Zoo: The properties of merging galaxies in the nearby Universe - local environments, colours, masses, star-formation rates and AGN activity
- Abstract:
- Following the study of Darg et al. (2009; hereafter D09a) we explore the environments, optical colours, stellar masses, star formation and AGN activity in a sample of 3003 pairs of merging galaxies drawn from the SDSS using visual classifications from the Galaxy Zoo project. While D09a found that the spiral-to-elliptical ratio in (major) mergers appeared higher than that of the global galaxy population, no significant differences are found between the environmental distributions of mergers and a randomly selected control sample. This makes the high occurrence of spirals in mergers unlikely to be an environmental effect and must, therefore, arise from differing time-scales of detectability for spirals and ellipticals. We find that merging galaxies have a wider spread in colour than the global galaxy population, with a significant blue tail resulting from intense star formation in spiral mergers. Galaxies classed as star-forming using their emission-line properties have average star-formation rates approximately doubled by the merger process though star formation is negligibly enhanced in merging elliptical galaxies. We conclude that the internal properties of galaxies significantly affect the time-scales over which merging systems can be detected (as suggested by recent theoretical studies) which leads to spirals being `over-observed' in mergers. We also suggest that the transition mass $3\times10^{10}{M}_{\astrosun}$, noted by \citet{kauffmann1}, below which ellipticals are rare could be linked to disc survival/destruction in mergers.
- Publication status:
- Published
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Authors
- Journal:
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society More from this journal
- Volume:
- 401
- Issue:
- 3
- Pages:
- 1552-1563
- Publication date:
- 2009-03-29
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1365-2966
- ISSN:
-
0035-8711
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
pubs:46186
- UUID:
-
uuid:9a5940ff-0237-49a5-b489-053b464c9a05
- Local pid:
-
pubs:46186
- Source identifiers:
-
46186
- Deposit date:
-
2012-12-19
Terms of use
- Copyright date:
- 2009
- Notes:
-
Second of two papers on SDSS mergers. This is the version accepted
for publication by MNRAS (minus red-highlighted text from v2)
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