Average spectra of massive galaxies in the SDSS

Abstract

We combine Sloan Digital Sky Survey spectra of 22,000 luminous, red, bulge-dominated galaxies to get high S/N average spectra in the rest-frame optical and ultraviolet (2600A to 7000A). The average spectra of these massive, quiescent galaxies are early-type with weak emission lines and with absorption lines indicating an apparent excess of alpha elements over solar abundance ratios. We make average spectra of subsamples selected by luminosity, environment and redshift. The average spectra are remarkable in their similarity. What variations do exist in the average spectra as a function of luminosity and environment are found to form a nearly one-parameter family in spectrum space. We present a high signal-to-noise ratio spectrum of the variation. We measure the properties of the variation with a modified version of the Lick index system and compare to model spectra from stellar population syntheses. The variation may be a combination of age and chemical abundance differences, but the conservative conclusion is that the quality of the data considerably exceeds the current state of the models.

Astrophysical Journal, in press. 21 pages, LaTeX, 11 figures. Spectra available electronically from D. Eisenstein and eventually from ApJ

References in corpus (29)

• Maps of Dust IR Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and CMBR Foregrounds
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Technical Summary
• Spectroscopic Target Selection in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: The Main Galaxy Sample
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Photometric Camera
• Color Separation of Galaxy Types in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Imaging Data
• The u'g'r'i'z' Standard Star Network
• The Cosmic Baryon Budget
• Spectroscopic Target Selection for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: The Luminous Red Galaxy Sample
• A photometricity and extinction monitor at the Apache Point Observatory
• The Stellar Population Histories of Early-Type Galaxies. II. Controlling Parameters of the Stellar Populations
• Old Stellar Populations. VI. Absorption-Line Spectra of Galaxy Nuclei and Globular Clusters
• The Stellar Population Histories of Local Early-Type Galaxies. I. Population Parameters
• The Luminosity Function of Galaxies in SDSS Commissioning Data
• An Efficient Algorithm for Positioning Tiles in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Evolution of the Hubble Sequence in Hierarchical Models for Galaxy Formation
• The Ages of Elliptical Galaxies in a Merger Model
• Statistical Properties of Bright Galaxies in the SDSS Photometric System
• LBDS 53W091: An Old red Galaxy at z=1.552
• A JavaScript Passive Evolution Calculator
• A comparison of stellar populations in galaxy populations across a wide range of Hubble types
• Strong Balmer lines in old stellar populations: No need for young ages in ellipticals?
• A photometric and spectroscopic study of dwarf and giant galaxies in the Coma cluster -- III. Spectral ages and metallicities
• A Robust Age Indicator for Old Stellar Populations
• Galaxy mapping with the SAURON integral-field spectrograph: The star formation history of NGC 4365
• The luminosity density of red galaxies
• Colour-magnitude relations and spectral line strengths in the Coma cluster
• The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: constraints on cosmic star-formation history from the cosmic spectrum
• Stellar Population of Ellipticals in Different Environments: Near-infrared Spectroscopic Observations
• Luminous early-type field galaxies at z ~ 0.4 - II. Star-formation history and space density

Cited by in corpus (99)

• Detection of the Baryon Acoustic Peak in the Large-Scale Correlation Function of SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies
• The ages and metallicities of galaxies in the local universe
• The Fourth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey: Design, Observations, Data Reduction, and Redshifts
• Physical properties and environments of nearby galaxies
• The dependence on environment of the color-magnitude relation of galaxies
• Old Galaxies in the Young Universe
• Stellar Population Diagnostics of Elliptical Galaxy Formation
• Evolutionary synthesis of galaxies at high spectral resolution with the code PEGASE-HR
• Population Synthesis in the Blue IV: Accurate Model Predictions for Lick Indices and UBV Colors in Single Stellar Populations
• On the Origin of [OII] Emission in Red Sequence and Post-starburst Galaxies
• Higher-order Balmer line indices in alpha/Fe-enhanced stellar population models
• The Gemini Deep Deep Survey: I. Introduction to the Survey, Catalogs and Composite Spectra
• Active Galactic Nuclei in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: I. Sample Selection
• Theoretical isochrones in several photometric systems II. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey ugriz system
• Density profiles of galaxy groups and clusters from SDSS galaxy-galaxy weak lensing
• The K20 survey. VII. The spectroscopic catalogue: spectral properties and evolution of the galaxy population
• Modeling the color evolution of luminous red galaxies - improvements with empirical stellar spectra
• Evolved Galaxies at z > 1.5 from the Gemini Deep Deep Survey: The Formation Epoch of Massive Stellar Systems
• The Intermediate-Scale Clustering of Luminous Red Galaxies
• Distributions of Galaxy Spectral Types in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The BOSS Emission-Line Lens Survey (BELLS). I. A large spectroscopically selected sample of Lens Galaxies at redshift ~ 0.5
• Charting the evolution of the ages and metallicities of massive galaxies since z=0.7
• The 2dF-SDSS LRG and QSO (2SLAQ) Luminous Red Galaxy Survey
• Selection and photometric properties of K+A galaxies
• The DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey: Clustering of Galaxies in Early Data
• Characterizing Circumgalactic Gas around Massive Ellipticals at z~0.4 - II. Physical Properties and Elemental Abundances
• Measuring Baryon Acoustic Oscillations along the line of sight with photometric redshifs: the PAU survey
• The Assembly Histories of Quiescent Galaxies Since z=0.7 from Absorption Line Spectroscopy
• The XMM Cluster Survey: Active Galactic Nuclei and Starburst Galaxies in XMMXCS J2215.9-1738 at z=1.46
• Ages and Abundances of Red Sequence Galaxies as a Function of LINER Emission Line Strength
• MegaZ-LRG: A photometric redshift catalogue of one million SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies
• Sloan Digital Sky Survey Spectroscopic Lens Search. I. Discovery of Intermediate-Redshift Star-Forming Galaxies Behind Foreground Luminous Red Galaxies
• Luminosity Function Constraints on the Evolution of Massive Red Galaxies Since z~0.9
• The Ages and Abundances of a Sample of Globular Clusters in M49 (NGC 4472)
• Shapley Optical Survey II: The effect of environment on the colour-magnitude relation and galaxy colours
• The DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey: Mean Ages and Metallicities of Red Field Galaxies at z ~ 0.9 from Stacked Keck/DEIMOS Spectra
• Evolution of field early-type galaxies: The view from GOODS/CDFS
• Actively Star Forming Elliptical Galaxies at Low Redshifts in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• On the Assembly History of Early-Type Galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field North
• Stellar Populations of Elliptical Galaxies in the Local Universe
• Galaxies probing galaxies: cool halo gas from a z = 0.47 post-starburst galaxy
• The Bright End of the Luminosity Function of Red Sequence Galaxies
• The Las Campanas Infra-red Survey. V. Keck Spectroscopy of a large sample of Extremely Red Objects
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey: The Cosmic Spectrum and Star-Formation History
• SDSS J0903+5028: A New Gravitational Lens
• Panchromatic Properties of 99,000 Galaxies Detected by SDSS, and (some by) ROSAT, GALEX, 2MASS, IRAS, GB6, FIRST, NVSS and WENSS Surveys
• What triggers galaxy transformations? The environments of post-starburst galaxies
• The Gemini Deep Deep Survey: II. Metals in Star-Forming Galaxies at Redshift 1.3<z<2
• The XMM Cluster Survey: The Dynamical State of XMMXCS J2215.9-1738 at z=1.457
• The Colours of Elliptical galaxies
• Properties of Dark Matter Haloes and their Correlations: the Lesson from Principal Component Analysis
• Mining the SDSS archive. I. Photometric redshifts in the nearby universe
• Observational evidence of galaxy assembly bias
• A Principal Component Analysis approach to the Star Formation History of elliptical galaxies in Compact Groups
• Redshift Measurement and Spectral Classification for eBOSS Galaxies with the Redmonster Software
• Extracting Star Formation Histories from Medium-resolution Galaxy Spectra
• The MgII Cross-section of Luminous Red Galaxies
• The 2dF-SDSS LRG and QSO Survey: The Star Formation Histories of Luminous Red Galaxies
• Spectral classification and composites of galaxies in LAMOST DR4
• The stellar evolution of Luminous Red Galaxies, and its dependence on colour, redshift, luminosity and modelling
• An X-ray Selected Galaxy Cluster in the Lockman Hole at Redshift 1.753
• The progenitors of present-day massive red galaxies up to z ~ 0.7 - finding passive galaxies using SDSS-I/II and SDSS-III
• The Violent Youth of Bright and Massive Cluster Galaxies and their Maturation over 7 Billion Years
• A data-driven model for spectra: Finding double redshifts in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• A High Resolution Atlas of Composite SDSS Galaxy Spectra
• Population Synthesis Models for Late Build-Up of the Red Sequence
• Broadband Optical Properties of Massive Galaxies: the Dispersion Around the Field Galaxy Color-Magnitude Relation Out to z~0.4
• Kinematic and chemical evolution of early-type galaxies
• The age-redshift relation for Luminous Red Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Luminous Red Galaxy Clustering at z~0.7 - First Results using AAOmega
• Green galaxies in the COSMOS field
• Clustering analysis of high-redshift Luminous Red Galaxies in Stripe 82
• The Rest-frame Optical Colors of 99,000 SDSS Galaxies
• Decoding the spectra of SDSS early-type galaxies: New indicators of age and recent star formation
• Evidence for (and Against) Progenitor Bias in the Size Growth of Compact Red Galaxies
• A New Approach to Identifying the Most Powerful Gravitational Lensing Telescopes
• The Transparency of Galaxy Clusters
• The Evolution of Post-Starburst Galaxies from $z\sim 1$ to the Present
• The Age of Cluster Galaxies from Continuum Colors
• NUV-IR colours of red sequence galaxies in local clusters
• The effects of stellar populations on galaxy scaling relations in the 6dF Galaxy Survey
• Properties of Luminous Red Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Forward Modeling of Spectroscopic Galaxy Surveys: Application to SDSS
• Photometric Redshifts and Systematic Variations in the SEDs of Luminous Red Galaxies from the SDSS DR7
• Galaxy Evolution in the Environment of ABCG 209
• Emission Corrections for Hydrogen Features of the Graves et. al 2007 Sloan Digital Sky Survey Averages of Early Type, Non-liner Galaxies
• Discovery of the X-ray selected galaxy cluster XMMU J0338.8+0021 at z = 1.49 - Indications for a young system with a forming brightest galaxy
• Radio galaxies in the 2SLAQ Luminous Red Galaxy survey: II. The stellar populations of radio-loud and radio-quiet LRGs
• Optical to Near-IR Spectrum of a Massive Evolved Galaxy at z = 1.26
• The Circumgalactic Medium in Massive Halos
• The star-formation histories of elliptical galaxies across the fundamental plane
• Stellar populations of galaxies in the ALHAMBRA survey up to $z\sim 1$. III. The stellar content of the quiescent galaxy population during the last $8$ Gyr
• A Large Scale Structure at Redshift 1.71 in the Lockman Hole
• The Circular Velocity Function of Group Galaxies
• The Ultraviolet Upturn in field Luminous Red Galaxies at $0.3<z<0.7$
• F-VIPGI: a new adapted version of VIPGI for FORS2 spectroscopy. Application to a sample of 16 X-ray selected galaxy clusters at 0.6 < z < 1.2
• Updated Models for the Creation of a Low-z QSO Absorber by a Dwarf Galaxy Wind
• What best constrains galaxy evolution in the local Universe?