Related papers: Decoding NGC 7252 as a blue elliptical galaxy
Blue early-type galaxies with galaxy-scale ongoing star formation are interesting targets in order to understand the stellar mass buildup in elliptical and S0 galaxies in the local Universe. We study the star-forming population of blue…
Star-forming blue early-type galaxies at low redshift can give insight to the stellar mass growth of L$*$ elliptical galaxies in the local Universe. We wish to understand the reason for star formation in these otherwise passively evolving…
Using published luminosity and molecular gas profiles of the late-stage mergers NGC 3921, NGC 7252 and Arp 220, we examine the expected luminosity profiles of the evolved merger remnants, especially in light of the massive CO complexes that…
Shells in Elliptical Galaxies are faint, sharp-edged features, believed to provide evidence of a recent ($\sim 0.5 - 2 \times 10^9$ years ago) merger event. We analyse the Globular Cluster (GC) systems of six shell elliptical galaxies, to…
The modern merger hypothesis offers a method of forming a new elliptical galaxy through merging two equal-mass, gas-rich disk galaxies fuelling a nuclear starburst followed by efficient quenching and dynamical stabilization. A key…
We use the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to investigate the properties of massive elliptical galaxies in the local Universe (z\leq0.08) that have unusually blue optical colors. Through careful inspection, we distinguish elliptical from…
How elliptical galaxies form is a key question in observational cosmology. While the formation of massive ellipticals is strongly linked to mergers, the low mass (Mstar < 10^9.5 MSun) regime remains less well explored. In particular,…
It is commonly accepted that a merger of two spiral galaxies results in a remnant with an elliptical-like surface-brightness profile. Surprisingly, our recent study (Chitre & Jog 2002) of the 2MASS data for twenty-seven advanced mergers of…
The traditional view of elliptical galaxies has been that they formed in a single, rapid burst of star formation at high redshift, and have evolved quiescently since that time. In opposition to this traditional view is evidence that at…
We present near-IR K-band imaging and spectroscopy of a sample of galaxy mergers, which we use to derive light profile indices, absolute magnitudes and central velocity dispersions. It is found that the light distributions of mergers more…
The scenario of galaxy formation is believed to follow a structure that builds up from the bottom, with large galaxies being formed by several merging episodes of smaller ones. In this scenario a number of galaxies can be expected to be…
We use a cosmological numerical simulation to study the tidal features produced by a minor merger with an elliptical galaxy. We find that the simulated tidal features are quantitatively similar to the red tidal features, i.e., dry tidal…
A growing body of observational evidence suggests that the luminosity, photometric shape and amount of rotational or anisotropical support in elliptical galaxies may provide vital clues to how they formed. Elliptical galaxies appear to fall…
We present preliminary results of an HST/NICMOS program to image merger remnants in the J, H and K bands. The nuclear brightness profiles for most sample galaxies are similar to those typical for elliptical galaxies, but some (including the…
We present collisionless simulations of dry mergers in groups of three to twenty-five galaxies to test the hypothesis that elliptical galaxies form at the centers of such groups. Mock observations of the central remnants confirm their…
Numerical simulations predict that some poor groups of galaxies have merged by the present epoch into giant ellipticals (cf. Barnes 1989). To identify the possible remnants of such mergers, we have compiled a sample of nearby, isolated…
The formation of elliptical galaxies as a result of the merging of spiral galaxies is discussed. We analyse a large set of numerical N-Body merger simulations which show that major mergers can in principle explain the observed isophotal…
Numerical simulations of galaxy mergers are a powerful tool to study these fundamental events in the hierarchical built-up of galaxies. Recent progress have been made owing to improved modeling, increased resolution and large statistical…
The last decade of research on elliptical galaxies has produced a wealth of new information concerning both their detailed structure and their global scaling relations. We review the old and new results about isophote shapes and…
We have compiled a sample of 2728 nearby ($z<0.08$) elliptical galaxies with photometry in the $g,r,i,z$ bands from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and $J,H,K$ photometry from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS). Stellar masses,…