Broadband Optical Properties of Massive Galaxies: the Dispersion Around the Field Galaxy Color-Magnitude Relation Out to z~0.4

Abstract

Using a sample of nearly 20,000 massive early-type galaxies selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we study the color-magnitude relation for the most luminous (L > 2.2 L^{*}) field galaxies in the redshift range 0.1<z<0.4 in several colors. The intrinsic dispersion in galaxy colors is quite small in all colors studied, but the 40 milli-mag scatter in the bluest colors is a factor of two larger than the 20 milli-mag measured in the reddest bands. While each of three simple models constructed for the star formation history in these systems can satisfy the constraints placed by our measurements, none of them produce color distributions matching those observed. Subdividing by environment, we find the dispersion for galaxies in clusters to be about 11% smaller than that of more isolated systems. Finally, having resolved the red sequence, we study the color dependence of the composite spectra. Bluer galaxies on the red sequence are found to have more young stars than red galaxies; the extent of this spectral difference is marginally better described by passive evolution of an old stellar population than by a model consisting of a recent trace injection of young stars.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. 12 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables. Full resolution version of the paper can be found at http://mizar.as.arizona.edu/~rcool/papers/cmr/

References in corpus (40)

• Maps of Dust IR Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and CMBR Foregrounds
• Stellar population synthesis at the resolution of 2003
• 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
• The u'g'r'i'z' Standard Star Network
• Quantifying the bimodal color-magnitude distribution of galaxies
• The Second Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Spectroscopic Target Selection for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: The Luminous Red Galaxy Sample
• The formation history of elliptical galaxies
• The First Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Astrometric Calibration of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The Broad-band Optical Properties of Galaxies with Redshifts 0.0 < z < 0.2
• The Third Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• A photometricity and extinction monitor at the Apache Point Observatory
• 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
• Estimating Fixed Frame Galaxy Magnitudes in the SDSS
• SDSS Data Management and Photometric Quality Assessment
• A Modified Magnitude System that Produces Well-Behaved Magnitudes, Colors, and Errors Even for Low Signal-to-Noise Ratio Measurements
• The dependence on environment of the color-magnitude relation of galaxies
• The Homogeneity of Spheroidal Populations in Distant Clusters
• The stellar populations of spiral galaxies
• The overdensities of galaxy environments as a function of luminosity and color
• HST Photometry and Keck Spectroscopy of the Rich Cluster MS1054-03: Morphologies, Butcher-Oemler Effect and the Color-Magnitude Relation at z=0.83
• Advanced Camera for Surveys Photometry of the Cluster RDCS1252.9-2927: The Color-Magnitude Relation at z=1.24
• The Intermediate-Scale Clustering of Luminous Red Galaxies
• Early-type galaxies in the SDSS. IV. Colors and chemical evolution
• Colors, magnitudes and velocity dispersions in early-type galaxies: Implications for galaxy ages and metallicities
• The Color-Magnitude Relation in CL 1358+62 at z=0.33: Evidence for Significant Evolution in the S0 Population
• The Slope of the Cluster Elliptical Red Sequence: A Probe of Cluster Evolution
• A Merged Catalog of Clusters of Galaxies from Early SDSS Data
• The Color-Magnitude Effect in Early-Type Cluster Galaxies
• Average spectra of massive galaxies in the SDSS
• The Galaxy Population of Cluster RXJ0848+4453 at z=1.27
• Colour-magnitude relations and spectral line strengths in the Coma cluster
• The Small-scale Clustering of Luminous Red Galaxies via Cross-Correlation Techniques
• Homogeneity of early-type galaxies across clusters
• Testing the Universality of the (U-V) Color-Magnitude Relations for Nearby Clusters of Galaxies

Cited by in corpus (24)

• Observational constraints on Cosmic Reionization
• The Fifth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Density profiles of galaxy groups and clusters from SDSS galaxy-galaxy weak lensing
• Stellar masses of SDSS-III BOSS galaxies at z~0.5 and constraints to galaxy formation models
• Measuring Baryon Acoustic Oscillations along the line of sight with photometric redshifs: the PAU survey
• Dissecting the Red Sequence--I. Star Formation Histories of Quiescent Galaxies: The Color-Magnitude vs. the Color-Sigma Relation
• How is Star Formation Quenched in Massive Galaxies?
• Luminosity Function Constraints on the Evolution of Massive Red Galaxies Since z~0.9
• The history of mass assembly of faint red galaxies in 28 galaxy clusters since z=1.3
• On the Nature of Fossil Galaxy Groups: Are they really fossils ?
• SPIDER - III. Environmental Dependence of the Fundamental Plane of Early-type Galaxies
• Precision Measurements of the Cluster Red Sequence using an Error Corrected Gaussian Mixture Model
• The stellar evolution of Luminous Red Galaxies, and its dependence on colour, redshift, luminosity and modelling
• The Color Bimodality in Galaxy Clusters since z = 0.9
• The progenitors of present-day massive red galaxies up to z ~ 0.7 - finding passive galaxies using SDSS-I/II and SDSS-III
• Age and Metallicities of Cluster Galaxies: A1185 and Coma
• The evolution of the scatter of the cosmic average color-magnitude relation: Demonstrating consistency with the ongoing formation of elliptical galaxies
• Color-magnitude relations of late-type galaxies
• Frequency of Tidal Features Correlates with Age and Internal Structure of Early-type Galaxies
• $\mu$--PhotoZ: Photometric Redshifts by Inverting the Tolman Surface Brightness Test
• The luminosity function of galaxies to $M_{BgVriz}\sim -14$ in $z\sim 0.3$ clusters
• Dependence of the Fundamental Plane of Early-type Galaxies on Age and Internal Structure
• SDSS Pre-Burst Observations of Recent Gamma-Ray Burst Fields
• Evidence for merging or disruption of red galaxies from the evolution of their clustering