Bibcode
Morales-Luis, A. B.; Sánchez-Almeida, J.; Aguerri, J. A. L.; Muñoz-Tuñón, C.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 743, Issue 1, article id. 77 (2011).
Advertised on:
12
2011
Journal
Citations
83
Refereed citations
72
Description
We carry out a systematic search for extremely metal-poor (XMP) galaxies
in the spectroscopic sample of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data
release 7 (DR7). The XMP candidates are found by classifying all the
galaxies according to the form of their spectra in a region 80 Å
wide around Hα. Due to the data size, the method requires an
automatic classification algorithm. We use k-means. Our systematic
search renders 32 galaxies having negligible [N II] lines, as expected
in XMP galaxy spectra. Twenty-one of them have been previously
identified as XMP galaxies in the literature—the remaining 11 are
new. This was established after a thorough bibliographic search that
yielded only some 130 galaxies known to have an oxygen metallicity 10
times smaller than the Sun (explicitly, with 12 + log (O/H) <= 7.65).
XMP galaxies are rare; they represent 0.01% of the galaxies with
emission lines in SDSS/DR7. Although the final metallicity estimate of
all candidates remains pending, strong-line empirical calibrations
indicate a metallicity about one-tenth solar, with the oxygen
metallicity of the 21 known targets being 12 + log (O/H) ~= 7.61
± 0.19. Since the SDSS catalog is limited in apparent magnitude,
we have been able to estimate the volume number density of XMP galaxies
in the local universe, which turns out to be (1.32 ± 0.23)
× 10-4 Mpc-3. The XMP galaxies
constitute 0.1% of the galaxies in the local volume, or ~0.2%
considering only emission-line galaxies. All but four of our candidates
are blue compact dwarf galaxies, and 24 of them have either cometary
shape or are formed by chained knots.
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Casiana
Muñoz Tuñón