Bibcode
Sánchez-Almeida, J.; Aguerri, J. A. L.; Muñoz-Tuñón, C.; Huertas-Company, M.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 735, Issue 2, article id. 125 (2011).
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7
2011
Journal
Citations
21
Refereed citations
17
Description
We compare the Hubble type and the spectroscopic class of the galaxies
with spectra in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7. As has long
been known, elliptical galaxies tend to be red whereas spiral galaxies
tend to be blue; however, this relationship presents a large scatter,
which we measure and quantify in detail for the first time. We compare
the Automatic Spectroscopic K-means-based classification (ASK) with most
of the commonly used morphological classifications. Despite the degree
of subjectivity involved in morphological classifications, all of them
provide consistent results. Given a spectral class, the morphological
type wavers with a standard deviation between 2 and 3 T types, and the
same large dispersion characterizes the variability of spectral classes
given a morphological type. The distributions of Hubble types for each
ASK class are very skewed—they present long tails that extend to
late morphological types in the red galaxies and to early morphological
types in the blue spectroscopic classes. The scatter is not produced by
problems with the classification and it remains when particular subsets
are considered—low and high galaxy masses, low and high density
environments, barred and non-barred galaxies, edge-on galaxies, small
and large galaxies, or when a volume-limited sample is considered. A
considerable fraction of red galaxies are spirals (40%-60%), but they
never present very late Hubble types (Sd or later). Even though red
spectra are not associated with ellipticals, most ellipticals do have
red spectra: 97% of the ellipticals in the morphological catalog by Nair
& Abraham used here for reference belong to ASK 0, 2, or 3; only 3%
of the ellipticals are blue. The galaxies in the green valley class (ASK
5) are mostly spirals, and the active galactic nuclei class (ASK 6)
presents a large scatter of Hubble types from E to Sd. We investigate
variations with redshift using a volume-limited subsample mainly formed
by luminous red galaxies. From redshift 0.25 to the present, the
galaxies redden from ASK 2 to ASK 0, as expected from the passive
evolution of their stellar populations. Two of the ASK classes (1 and 4)
gather edge-on spirals, and they may be useful in studies requiring
knowledge of the intrinsic shape of a galaxy (e.g., weak-lensing
calibration).
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Casiana
Muñoz Tuñón