Related papers: A Fundamental Line for Elliptical Galaxies
Compact elliptical galaxies are characterized by small sizes and high stellar densities. They are thought to form through tidal stripping of massive progenitors. However, only a handful of them were known, preventing us from understanding…
The structural properties of elliptical galaxies are consistent with their formation in a merging hierarchy. In this picture, the role of gaseous processes and dissipation decreased with increasing mass creating preferentially rotationally…
Most clusters and groups of galaxies contain a giant elliptical galaxy in their centres which far outshines and outweighs normal ellipticals. The origin of these brightest cluster galaxies is intimately related to the collapse and formation…
Mergers of gas-poor galaxies, so-called dry mergers, may play a fundamental role in the assembly of the most massive galaxies, and therefore, in galaxy formation theories. Using the SDSS, we have serendipitously discovered a rare system in…
Dedicated photometric and spectroscopic surveys have provided unambiguous evidence for a strong stellar mass-size evolution of galaxies within the last 10 Gyr. The likely progenitors of today's most massive galaxies are remarkably small,…
Galactic spheroids can form as a result of galaxy interactions and mergers of disks. Detailed analyses of the photometric properties, the intrinsic orbital structure, the line-of-sight velocity distributions and the kinemetry of simulated…
Once understood as the paradigm of passively evolving objects, the discovery that massive galaxies experienced an enormous structural evolution in the last ten billion years has opened an active line of research. The most significant…
Scaling relations are fundamental tools for exploring the morphological properties of galaxies and understanding their formation and evolution. Typically, galaxies follow a scaling relation between mass and size, measured by effective…
We study the formation and the evolution of galaxy groups in a critical universe, showing the importance of secondary infall for their dynamical evolution. Merging is only slightly accelerated if galaxies have massive halos, because the…
In four-particle scattering processes with transfer of mass, unlike mergers in which mass can only increase, mass of the most massive galaxies may be reduced. Elementary model describing such process is considered. In this way, it is…
Elliptical galaxies have been observed to cluster near a ribbon along a two-dimensional plane (the Fundamental Plane of Elliptical Galaxies) in the three dimensional space of effective radius, effective surface brightness and central…
We present the rotation velocities V and velocity dispersions sigma along the principal axes of seven elliptical galaxies less luminous than M_B= -19.5. These kinematics extend beyond the half-light radii for all systems in this…
We have determined a dust-free colour-magnitude (CM) relation for spiral galaxies, by using I-K colours in edge-on galaxies above the plane. We find that the scatter in this relation is small and approximately as large as can be explained…
We test the hypothesis that elliptical galaxies are formed by violent mergers in a universe with hierarchical structure formation. Within the framework of a semi-analytic scheme for galaxy formation, we predict the distribution of…
We derived solutions for the Smoluchowski kinetic equation for the mass function of galaxies, which describes mergers in differential approximation, where mergers with low-mass galaxies are the dominant factor. The evolution of the initial…
With the aid of a simple yet robust approach we investigate the influence of dissipationless and dissipative merging on galaxy structure, and the consequent effects on the scaling laws followed by elliptical galaxies. Our results suggest…
Observations indicate that the baryonic matter of galaxies is surrounded by vast dark matter halos, which nature remains unknown. This document details the analysis of the results published in MNRAS 438, 2, 1535 (2014) reporting an…
Like early-type galaxies, also nearby galaxy clusters define a Fundamental Plane, a luminosity-radius, and a luminosity-velocity dispersion relations, whose physical origin is still unclear. By means of high resolution N--body simulations…
We search for signatures of recent galaxy close interactions and mergers in a sample of 202 early-type galaxies in the local universe from the public SDSS Stripe82 deep images ($\mu_r \sim 28.5$ mag arcsec$^{-2}$). Using two different…
Lenticular galaxies (S0s) represent the majority of early-type galaxies in the local Universe, but their formation channels are still poorly understood. While galaxy mergers are obvious pathways to suppress star formation and increase bulge…