Bibcode
Agulli, I.; Aguerri, J. A. L.; Barrena, R.; Diaferio, A.; Sánchez-Janssen, R.
Bibliographical reference
Multi-Object Spectroscopy in the Next Decade: Big Questions, Large Surveys, and Wide Fields. Proceedings of a conference held at Teatro Circo de Marte, Santa Cruz de La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain on 2-6 March 2015. Edited by Ian Skillen, Marc Barcells, and Scott Trager. ASP Conference Series, Vol. 507. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2016, p.247
Advertised on:
10
2016
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
Dwarf galaxies (Mb>-18) are important because of their
cosmological interest as tests of hierarchical theories. The formation
of these galaxies is still an open question but red dwarf galaxies are
preferentially located in high density environments, indicating that
they are end-products of galaxy transformations in clusters. Deep
spectroscopic studies of galaxy clusters are needed to put some
constraints on dwarf galaxy formation and evolution. We have observed
and analyzed Abell 85, a nearby (z = 0.055) and massive cluster down to
M*+6, using the MOS instruments VIMOS@VLT and AF2@WHT. The
first and powerful tool to study the characteristics of galaxies and
compare with different density environments is the galaxy luminosity
function. The comparison of the results for Abell 85 with literature
outcomes for clusters and field, allows us to conclude that, at least
for this cluster, the environment plays a major role in the nature of
the faint-end galaxies, transforming blue dwarfs in the field into red
ones in the cluster, but not in the formation of the luminosity function
slope.