A Correlation between Light Concentration and Cluster Local Density for Elliptical Galaxies
Abstract
Using photometric and redshift data for the Virgo and Coma clusters, we present evidence for a correlation between the light concentration of elliptical galaxies (including dwarf ellipticals) and the local 3-D (i.e. non-projected) density of the clusters: more concentrated ellipticals are located in denser regions. The null hypothesis (i.e. the absence of any relation) is rejected at a significance level better than 99.9%. In order to explain the observed relation, a power law relating the galaxy light concentration and the cluster 3-D density is proposed. We study how the projection effects affect the form and dispersion of the data-points in the light concentration-projected density diagram. The agreement between our model and the observed data suggests that there is a paucity of dwarf elliptical galaxies in the cluster central regions.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0205291,
title = {A Correlation between Light Concentration and Cluster Local Density for Elliptical Galaxies},
author = {I. Trujillo and J. A. L. Aguerri and C. M. Gutierrez and N. Caon and J. Cepa},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0205291},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
7 pages, 2 figures, ApJL accepted