The effects of environment on the intrinsic shape of galaxies

Abstract

We measure the effect of the environment on the intrinsic shapes of spiral and elliptical galaxies by finding the 3D shape distribution and dust extinction that fits better the projected shape of galaxies in different environment. We find that spiral galaxies in groups are very similar to field spirals with similar intrinsic properties (magnitudes, sizes and colours). But for spirals in groups, those in denser environments or closer to the centre of the group tend to have a more circular disc than similar galaxies in less dense environments or far from the group centres. Also we find that central spiral galaxies in their groups tend to be thinner than other similar spirals. For ellipticals, we do not find any important dependence of their shape on their position in a group or on the local density. However, we find that elliptical galaxies in groups tend to be more spherical than field ellipticals with similar intrinsic properties. We find that, once in groups, the shape of member galaxies do not depend on group mass, regardless of their morphological type.

8 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (6)

• Galaxy Zoo 1 : Data Release of Morphological Classifications for nearly 900,000 galaxies
• The shapes of galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Tidal debris morphology and the orbits of satellite galaxies
• Evidence of boosted 13CO/12CO ratio in early-type galaxies in dense environments
• The influence of halo assembly on galaxies and galaxy groups
• The Effect of Halo Mass on the HI Content of Galaxies in Groups and Clusters

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Intrinsic alignments in redMaPPer clusters -- I. Central galaxy alignments and angular segregation of satellites
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: The internal orbital structure and mass distribution of passive galaxies from triaxial orbit-superposition Schwarzschild models
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: the intrinsic shape of kinematically selected galaxies
• VEGAS: a VST Early-type GAlaxy Survey. IV. NGC 1533, IC 2038 and IC 2039: an interacting triplet in the Dorado group
• Prospects for Recovering Galaxy Intrinsic Shapes from Projected Quantities
• SOMBI: Bayesian identification of parameter relations in unstructured cosmological data
• Galaxy Image Restoration with Shape Constraint
• The intricate link between galaxy dynamics and intrinsic shape (or why so-called prolate rotation is a misnomer)