Bibcode
Falcón-Barroso, Jesús; Peletier, Reynier F.; Balcells, Marc
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notice of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 335, Issue 3, pp. 741-752.
Advertised on:
9
2002
Citations
72
Refereed citations
57
Description
In an ongoing effort to study the formation and evolution of galactic
bulges, we have investigated the position of 19 bulges of type S0-Sbc on
the Fundamental Plane (FP). We find that bulges, in both B and K band,
lie close to but slightly below the FP defined by ellipticals and S0s,
i.e. are slightly brighter. There are hints that bulges of later
morphological type are situated below the other bulges in our sample.
The FP results are consistent with the picture, obtained from our recent
analysis of HST colours, that bulges are old, except for the Sbc
galaxies. The fact that bulges lie so close to the FP of ellipticals and
S0s implies that their formation epoch must have been similar to, at
most about 2.5 Gyr earlier than, cluster Es and S0s, and that the
surrounding disc does not significantly affect their structure.