Found 8 talks width keyword elliptical galaxies

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I present a detailed analysis of the scaling relations of ETGs and suggest a way to predict the evolution of the distributions of galaxies in these planes. This new approach is able to account of several features observed in the FP projections and of the tilt of the Fundamental Plane.

Vimos Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS) is a spectroscopic survey designed to  investigate the spatial distribution of ~90k galaxies on redshift 0.4<z<1.2. The catalogue of spectroscopic observations, combined with auxiliary photometric data, is perfect for evolutionary studies of different types of galaxies. But also for tracing rare objects. One of them are the so-called “red nuggets”, progenitors of the most massive galaxies in the local Universe.  The discovery of red nuggets - highly massive, passive and extremely compact galaxies  -  at high redshift challenged the leading cosmological models, as they do not fit into the evolutionary paths of passive galaxies. Taking into account  that  the galaxies' mergers are stochastic events, it is possible that some red nuggets  remain relatively unaltered for billions of years. Those survivors constitute a group of unique galaxies in the local Universe,  commonly named “relics”. Despite numerous studies dedicated to red nuggets and relics, the link between the population of compact, massive, passive galaxies in the early Universe and their remnants in the local Universe, is still poorly understood.

In my talk I  will present the first spectroscopically selected catalogue of red nuggets at the intermediate redshift.  It is the most extensive catalogue of this kind of galaxies above redshift z > 0.5.  Selected under the most strict criteria, the group of 77 objects consists of a statistically important sample, which allows for analysis of physical properties of those rare passive giants. I will discuss the influence of compactness criteria on the sample size. Moreover I will present  VIPERS red nuggets number densities and discuss the environmental preferences of those exceptional galaxies.

In the local universe most of the stellar mass is in passive galaxies, where star formation is
absent or at very low levels. Understanding what are the mechanisms that have been
responsible for quenching star formation in galaxies, and transforming them into passive,
quiescent systems, is one of the main observational and theoretical challenges of extragalactic
astrophysics. I will give a brief overview of the several possible quenching causes and physical
processes that have been proposed so far, ranging from feedback from black hole accretion and
starburst activity, to effects associated with the large scale environment in which galaxies live.
Although most of these mechanisms and causes play a role in different classes of galaxies and
at different epochs, multi-band observations are providing growing evidences that just a few of
them play the key, dominant role.
I will conclude by providing prospects for further investigating these aspects and tackling open
questions with the next generation of observing facilities.

The ALHAMBRA (Advance Large Homogeneous Area Medium Band Redshift Astronomical; Moles et al. 2008) survey has observed 8 different regions of the sky, including sections of the COSMOS, DEEP2, ELAIS, GOODS-N, SDSS and Groth fields using a new photometric system with 20 contiguous, ~300A width, filters covering the optical range, plus deep JHKs imaging. The observations, carried out with the Calar Alto 3.5m telescope using the wide field (0.25 deg2 FOV) optical camera LAICA and the NIR instrument Omega-2000, correspond to ~700hrs of on-target science images. The photometric system was specifically designed to maximize the effective depth of the survey in terms of accurate spectral-type and photometric redshift estimation along with the capability of identification of relatively faint emission lines.

The ALHAMBRA Gold catalogue corresponds to a subsample of ~100k bright galaxies (+20.000 stars in the galactic halo and ~1000 AGN candidates), photometrically complete down to magnitude I=23AB, with very accurate and reliable photometric redshift estimations.

Considering that the Spanish community will have privileged access to the data until Nov15th 2013, this seminar is intended to be a brief introduction to the potential (doable) science with the ALHAMBRA-survey.

We find a distinct stellar population in the counterrotating and kinematically decoupled core of the isolated massive elliptical galaxy NGC 1700. Coinciding with the edge of this core, we find a significant change in the slope of the gradient of various representative absorption line indices. Our age estimate for this core is markedly younger than the main body of the galaxy. We find lower values for the age, metallicity, and Mg/Fe abundance ratio in the center of this galaxy when we compare them with other isolated elliptical galaxies with similar velocity dispersion. We discuss the different possible scenarios that might have lead to the formation of this younger kinematically decoupled structure and conclude that, in light of our findings, the ingestion of a small stellar companion on a retrograde orbit is the most favored.