Related papers: The Stellar Halos of Massive Elliptical Galaxies
We present a 2D kinematic analysis out to ~2-5 effective radii (Re) of 33 massive elliptical galaxies with stellar velocity dispersions larger than 150 km/s. Our observations were taken using the Mitchell Spectrograph (formerly VIRUS-P), a…
We study the radial dependence in stellar populations of 33 nearby early-type galaxies with central stellar velocity dispersions sigma* > 150 km/s. We measure stellar population properties in composite spectra, and use ratios of these…
Recent progress is summarized on the determination of the density distributions of stars and dark matter, stellar kinematics, and stellar population properties, in the extended, low surface brightness halo regions of elliptical galaxies.…
We derive absorption indices of ellipticals in clusters at z=0.37 from medium-resolution spectroscopy together with kinematical parameters. These galaxies exhibit a relationship between the Mgb linestrength and their internal velocity…
Massive galaxies display extended light profiles that can reach several hundreds of kilo parsecs. These stellar halos provide a fossil record of galaxy assembly histories. Using data that is both wide (~100 square degree) and deep (i>28.5…
We characterise the radial density, metallicity and flattening profile of the Milky Way's stellar halo, based on the large sample of 1757 spectroscopically confirmed giant stars from SDSS/SEGUE-2 after excising stars that were…
Galaxies are thought to grow through accretion; as less massive galaxies are disrupted and merge over time, their debris results in diffuse, clumpy stellar halos enveloping the central galaxy. Here we present a study of the variation in the…
We study the stellar populations of 1,923 elliptical galaxies at z<0.05 selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey as a function of velocity dispersion, sigma, and environment. We construct average, high signal-to-noise spectra and find the…
Preliminary results based on a large compilation of line-strength profiles are presented and discussed. Elliptical galaxies (Es) with strong central Mg$_2$ show steeper line-strength gradients. These galaxies are more massive and have…
Context. The assembly history of the stellar component of a massive elliptical galaxy is closely related to that of its dark matter halo. Measuring how the properties of galaxies correlate with their halo mass can help understand their…
Stellar halos are the only major stellar component of disk galaxies that lack systematic observational characterization, yet they encode critical information about galaxy merger histories. We present the first systematic census of stellar…
We describe a major survey of the Milky Way halo designed to test for kinematic substructure caused by destruction of accreted satellites. We use the Washington photometric system to identify halo stars efficiently for spectroscopic…
We have re-studied line-strength gradients of 80 elliptical galaxies. Typical metallicity gradients are d[Fe/H]/dlogr = -0.3. The metallicity gradients do not correlate with any physical properties of galaxies, including central and mean…
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, we have resolved individual red-giant branch stars in the halos of eight nearby spiral galaxies. The fields lie at projected distances between 2 and 13 kpc along the galaxies' minor axes. The data set…
We present the first deep survey of resolved stellar populations in the remote outer halo of our nearest giant elliptical (gE), Centaurus A (D=3.8 Mpc). Using the VIMOS/VLT optical camera, we obtained deep photometry for four fields along…
We present the primary results from the Dragonfly Edge-on Galaxies Survey (DEGS), an exploration of the stellar halos of twelve nearby ($d < 25$ Mpc) edge-on disc galaxies with the Dragonfly Telephoto Array. The edge-on orientation of these…
We develop a new method to account for the finite lifetimes of stars and trace individual abundances within a semi-analytic model of galaxy formation. At variance with previous methods, based on the storage of the (binned) past star…
Early-type galaxies exhibit thermal and molecular resonance emission from dust that is shed and heated through stellar mass loss as a subset of the population moves through the AGB phase of evolution. Because this emission can give direct…
We analyze a sample of 23 supermassive elliptical galaxies (central velocity dispersion larger than 330 km s-1), drawn from the SDSS. For each object, we estimate the dynamical mass from the light profile and central velocity dispersion,…
We find that the relative contribution of satellite galaxies accreted at high redshift to the stellar population of the Milky Way's smooth halo increases with distance, becoming observable relative to the classical smooth halo about 15 kpc…