Surface Photometry of Early-Type Galaxies in Rich Clusters
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Durham E-Theses Surface photometry of early-type galaxies in rich clusters Steel, James How to cite: Steel, James (1998) Surface photometry of early-type galaxies in rich clusters, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/4868/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk Surface Photometry of Early-Type Galaxies in Rich Clusters James Steel A thesis submitted to the University of Durham in accordance with the regulations for admittance to the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. Department of Physics University of Durham August 1998 f he copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the written consent of the author an information derived from it should be acknowledged. AUG 1999 Preface The work described in this thesis was undertaken between 1992 and 1997 whilst the au• thor was a research student under the supervision of Dr. J.R. Lucey in the Department of Physics at the University of Durham. This work has not been submitted for any other degree at the University of Durham or at any other University. The work contained in this thesis is entirely the authors own work (the observing run at the Isaac Newton Telescope, La Palma, in March 1994, was carried out in collaboration with John Lucey and Dave Carter). It is expected that some of the work contained in this thesis will be published in the scientific press during 1998. Acknowledgements I would first and foremost like to thank my supervisor. Dr. John Lucey, for all his support, encouragement and patience over the past five years. The past year has been pretty stress• ful as I have struggled with holding down a full-time job and completing this thesis - John's comments and suggestions regarding the thesis have always been very helpful and much appreciated. I'd also like to thank the colleagues which I have collaborated with on various projects over the past years, including Rafael Guzman, Russell Smith, Mike Hudson and Roger Davies. The STARLINK computing facilities at Durham have improved continuously during my time here, and I thank Alan Lotts for his vital work maintaining the system which we all rely on. An important part of thesis has been the measurement of surface photometry, and I'd like to thank Marjin Franx for his permission to use the GALPHOT ellipse-fitting program. I acknowledge the support given to me by a SERC/PPARC stu• dentship during my first three years in Durham. A special thanks goes to all the colleagues who have had the grave misfortune of shar• ing an office with me! I hope I've remembered everyone: Luis Teodoro, Rafael Guzman, Ian Small, Jeremy Heyl, Vince Eke, Henry McCracken, Russell Smith, Andrew Ratcliffe, Scott Groom, Doug Burke, Glaire Halliday, Katherine Gunn, Eric Bell, Harald Kuntschner and Fiona Hoyle. Also the lucky ones who've never shared an office with me - Omar .Al- maini, Paul Young, Roger Haynes, Paul Alton and anyone else I've forgot! Outside the world of astronomy, I like to thank everyone at Durham University Hillwalking society for providing me with some much-needed light entertainment during my time in Durham - Saturday's are never going to be the same again! Finally, I'd like to thank my family in Yorkshire - Mum, Dad, Jonathan and Sid - for all their support over the long years while I have been a student in Leicester and Durham. James Steel 24th August 1998 Abstract This thesis investigates the morphology of early-type galaxies in two rich clusters using 2D surface photometry. In particular, the amount of light in the 'disk' component is focussed upon, as the presence of a disk is the main morphological criterion in distinguishing between the traditional 'elliptical' and 'SO' classes. Extensive and photometric i?-band CCD observations of continuous areas of the Coma and Abell 1367 clusters were obtained at the 2.5 m Isaac Newton telescope, La Palma during March 1994. A subset of this large data-set has been used in this study, comprising a magnitude-limited (to R = 15.6) sample of 153 galaxies in the two clusters. Surface photometry measurements, including surface brightness profiles and isophotal shapes, have been made for the sample. Atmospheric seeing is a major problem when measuring light profiles at the distance of Coma from ground-based telescopes. Typical seeing at La Palma {FWHM^l.2") is a significant fraction of the efi"ective radius of many Coma/Abell 1367 galaxies (re~3" for small eUipticals). An iterative algorithm was devel• oped to deconvolve the effects of seeing from surface brightness profiles. The result of the algorithm is to extend the range of useful surface photometry inwards to within 2 times the FWHM. In order to parametrise the surface brightness profiles and discriminate be• tween different profile-types, further software was developed to fit one- and two-component model profiles to the seeing-corrected data. The following parameters were measured and tabulated for each of the 153 galaxies: total magnitude Mt] half-light parameters ri/2 and (/i)j^2! 3B at half-light radius //(ri/2); photometric diameter Z^i9.23 (equivalent to Z7„); eUipticity at /? = 21.5 isophote £21.5; averaged isophote high-order terms (C3), (53), (C4) and (54); effective radii and surface brightnesses of 5 single power-law rn models, r"e and (n = 1,2,3,4,5); best-fitting power-law index n\ bulge effective radii and surface brightnesses from the two-component fit r^e and (/i) ^\ disk effective parameters r'^e and {nY^] and disk-to-bulge luminosity ratio DjB. The measured parameters have been used to investigate various aspects of early-type galaxy morphology. The conclusions are outlined below. Firstly, a two-component plus exponential model is a better fit to most galaxies than a single component law fit. Secondly, the traditional division of early-type galaxies into 'elliptical' and 'SO' classes is severely biased by the viewing angle. In fact, it appears that early-type galaxies comprise a population of objects with smoothly varying bulge-to-disk ratio - although a few ellipticals (less than 13%) do not appear to have a exponential component. Finally, there is a gen• eral correlation (with much scatter) between the size and the profile shapes of early-type galaxies. The interpretation is that smaller galaxies are more disk-dominated than larger galaxies, which can be linked to the merging process in rich clusters. Contents Introduction - Early-type Galaxies in Clusters 4 1.1 Overview 4 1.2 Galaxy Morphology 5 1.3 The Cluster Environment 6 1.4 Causes of the Morphology-Density Relation 7 1.5 Early-type Galaxies - Surface Photometry 9 1.6 Aims of This Study 13 Sample and Observations 16 2.1 Observational Overview 16 2.2 Sample Selection - Coma (Abell 1656) 18 2.3 Sample Selection - Abell 1367 20 2.4 The Project Sample 24 Calibration and Preparation 28 3.1 Introduction 28 3.2 CCD Calibration - Biasing and Flat-fielding 28 3.2.1 Bias Removal 28 3.2.2 Flat-fielding 29 3.3 Photometric Calibration - Standard Stars 31 3.4 Data Preparation 36 Aperture Photometry and Total Magnitudes 42 4.1 Introduction 42 4.2 Elliptical Aperture Magnitudes 42 4.3 Magnitude Extrapolation 44 4.4 Global Parameters 46 4.5 Internal Comparisons 46 4.6 External Comparisons 48 4.7 Conclusion 59 Seeing Deconvolution 60 5.1 Introduction - Galaxy Profiles and Seeing 60 5.2 Image Restoration Methods 62 5.3 Surface Photometry Measurement 63 5.4 Profile Deconvolution 67 5.5 Examples using Synthetic Galaxy Models 76 5.6 Seeing Corrections and Aperture Photometry 97 CONTENTS 2 5.7 Conclusions 99 6 Parametrising the Surface Brightness Profile 100 6.1 Introduction 100 6.2 Fitting Single Power-law Profiles 101 6.3 Fitting a Two-component Profile 103 6.4 Testing the Profile Fitting 112 6.5 Inchnation Effects 121 6.6 Fitting a Seeing-Convolved Model 127 6.7 Conclusions 127 7 Results and Discussion 130 7.1 Introduction 130 7.2 Two-Component Fitting - Comparisons 130 7.3 The Missing SO Problem 135 7.4 Bulge-Disk Model versus Power-Law Model 140 7.5 Isophotal Shapes 154 8 Conclusions 158 References 163 A Tables of Photometric and Isophotal Parameters 167 B Aperture Photometry - Output 174 B.l Early-Type Galaxies - Coma 174 B.2 Late-Type Galaxies - Coma 206 B.3 Irregular or PecuHar Galaxies - Coma 213 B.4 Unclassified Galaxies - Coma 216 B.5 Early-Type Galaxies - Abell 1367 219 B.6 Late-Type Galaxies - Abell 1367 226 B. 7 Irregular or Peculiar Galaxies - Abell 1367 228 C Surface Photometry - Output 229 C.