Related papers: Order statistics of the early-type galaxy luminosi…
The brightest, or first-ranked, galaxies (BCGs) in rich clusters show a very small dispersion in luminosity, making them excellent standard candles. This small dispersion has raised questions about the nature of BCGs. Are they simply the…
We analyse the K-band Hubble diagram for a sample of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) in the redshift range 0<z<1. In good agreement with earlier studies, we confirm that the scatter in the absolute magnitudes of the galaxies is small (0.3…
We study the reliability of the statistical background subtraction method for computing the Ks-band luminosity function of cluster galaxies at z~1 using mock Red-sequence Cluster Survey cluster catalogues constructed from GALFORM…
This paper concerns the K band Hubble diagram for the brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) in a sample of X-ray clusters covering the redshift range $0.05<z<0.8$. We show that BCGs in clusters of high X-ray luminosity are excellent standard…
The dependence of the luminosity function of cluster galaxies on the evolutionary state of the parent cluster is still an open issue, in particular as concern the formation/evolution of the brightest cluster galaxies. We plan to study the…
We use a sample of galaxies from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) Extended Source Catalog to refine a matched filter method of finding galaxy clusters that takes into account each galaxy's position, magnitude, and redshift if…
We compute the luminosity function of galaxies in groups. The data consists in two samples of groups of galaxies selected in distance and redshift space comprising a total number of 66 groups. The assignment of galaxies to the groups were…
We present detailed simulations of long exposure CCD images. The simulations are used to explore the validity of the statistical method for reconstructing the luminosity distribution of galaxies within a rich cluster i.e. by the subtraction…
Using new and published data, we construct a sample of 160 brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) spanning the redshift interval 0.03 < z < 1.63. We use this sample, which covers 70% of the history of the universe, to measure the growth in the…
We have measured the 3.6 micron luminosity evolution of about 1000 galaxies in 32 clusters at 0.2<z<1.25, without any a priori assumption about luminosity evolution, i.e. in a logically rigorous way. We find that the luminosity of our…
A magnitude limited sample of nearly 9000 early-type galaxies, in the redshift range 0.01 < z < 0.3, was selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey using morphological and spectral criteria. The sample was used to study how early-type…
We examine the alignment between Brightest Cluster Galaxies (BCGs) and their host clusters in a sample of 7031 clusters with 0.08<z<0.44 found using a matched-filter algorithm and an independent sample of 5744 clusters with 0.1<z<0.3…
The K-band Hubble diagram for a sample of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) in the redshift range 0<z<1 shows a very small scatter (0.3 magnitudes r.m.s). The BCGs exhibit very little luminosity evolution in this redshift range: if q_0=0.0…
We use the two-point correlation function in redshift space, $\xi(s)$, to study the clustering of the galaxies and groups of the Nearby Optical Galaxy (NOG) Sample, which is a nearly all-sky, complete, magnitude-limited sample of \~7000…
We use the Halo Model to explore the implications of assuming that galaxy luminosities in groups are randomly drawn from an underlying luminosity function. We show that even the simplest of such order statistics models -- one in which this…
A photometric redshift analysis of galaxies in the field of the wide-separation gravitational lens MG2016+112 reveals a population of 69 galaxies with photometric redshifts consistent with being in a cluster at the redshift of the giant…
abridged: We use a complete sample of about 140,000 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to study the size distribution of galaxies and its dependence on their luminosity, stellar mass, and morphological type. The large SDSS…
We identify a sample of 1959 massive clusters of galaxies in the redshift range of 0.7<z<1.0 from the survey data of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). These clusters are recognized as the…
We use the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to construct a sample of 625 brightest group and cluster galaxies (BCGs) together with control samples of non-BCGs matched in stellar mass, redshift, and color. We investigate how the systematic…
From R-band images of 39 Hickson compact groups (HCGs), we use galaxy counts to determine a luminosity function extending to M_R=-14.0, approximately two magnitudes deeper than previous compact group luminosity functions. We find that a…