Contribution of Gaia Sausage to the Galactic Stellar Halo Revealed by K Giants and Blue Horizontal Branch Stars from the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope, Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and Gaia

We explore the contribution of the Gaia Sausage to the stellar halo of the Milky Way by making use of a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) and applying it to halo star samples of Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope K giants, Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration K giants, and Sloan Digital Sky Survey blue horizontal branch stars. The GMM divides the stellar halo into two parts, of which one represents a more metal-rich and highly radially biased component associated with an ancient, head-on collision referred to as the Gaia Sausage, and the other one is a more metal-poor and isotropic halo. A symmetric bimodal Gaussian is used to describe the distribution of spherical velocity of the Gaia Sausage, and we find that the mean absolute radial velocity of the two lobes decreases with the Galactocentric radius. We find that the Gaia Sausage contributes about 41%–74% of the inner (Galactocentric radius r gc < 30 kpc) stellar halo. The fraction of stars of the Gaia Sausage starts to decline beyond r gc ∼ 25–30 kpc, and the outer halo is found to be significantly less influenced by the Gaia Sausage than the inner halo. After the removal of halo substructures found by integrals of motion, the contribution of the Gaia Sausage falls slightly within r gc ∼ 25 kpc but is still as high as 30%–63%. Finally, we select several possible Sausage-related substructures consisting of stars on highly eccentric orbits. The GMM/Sausage component agrees well with the selected substructure stars in their chemodynamical properties, which increases our confidence in the reliability of the GMM fits.

Stellar loci IV. red giant stars

In the fourth paper of this series, we present the metallicity-dependent Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) stellar color loci of red giant stars, using a spectroscopic sample of red giants in the SDSS Stripe 82 region. The stars span a range of 0.55 – 1.2 mag in color g – i, –0.3 – –2.5 in metallicity [Fe/H], and have values of surface gravity log g smaller than 3.5 dex. As in the case of main-sequence (MS) stars, the intrinsic widths of loci of red giants are also found to be quite narrow, a few mmag at maximum. There are however systematic differences between the metallicity-dependent stellar loci of red giants and MS stars. The colors of red giants are less sensitive to metallicity than those of MS stars. With good photometry, photometric metallicities of red giants can be reliably determined by fitting the u – g, g – r, r – i, and i – z colors simultaneously to an accuracy of 0.2 – 0.25 dex, comparable to the precision achievable with low-resolution spectroscopy for a signal-to-noise ratio of 10. By comparing fitting results to the stellar loci of red giants and MS stars, we propose a new technique to discriminate between red giants and MS stars based on the SDSS photometry. The technique achieves completeness of ∼70 per cent and efficiency of ∼80 per cent in selecting metal-poor red giant stars of [Fe/H] ≤ –1.2. It thus provides an important tool to probe the structure and assemblage history of the Galactic halo using red giant stars.

Stellar Populations of Galaxies in the LAMOST Spectral Survey

We first derive the stellar population properties: age and metallicity for ∼43,000 low redshift galaxies in the DR7 of the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) survey, which have no spectroscopic observations in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We employ a fitting procedure based on the small-scale features of galaxy spectra so as to avoid possible biases from the uncertain flux calibration of the LAMOST spectroscopy. We show that our algorithm can successfully recover the average age and metallicity of the stellar populations of galaxies down to signal-to-noise ratio ≥5 through testing on both mock galaxies and real galaxies comprising LAMOST and their SDSS counterparts. We provide a catalog of the age and metallicity for ∼43,000 LAMOST galaxies online. As a demonstration of the scientific application of this catalog, we present the Holmberg effect on both age and metallicity of a sample of galaxies in galaxy pairs.

Comparison of Composite and Star-forming Early-type Galaxies

I assemble 4684 star-forming early-type galaxies (ETGs) and 2011 composite ETGs (located in the composite region on the BPT diagram) from the catalog of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 MPA-JHU emission-line measurements. I compare the properties of both ETG samples and investigate their compositions, stellar masses, specific star formation rates (sSFRs), and excitation mechanisms. Compared with star-forming ETGs, composite ETGs have higher stellar mass and lower sSFR. In the stellar mass and u − r color diagram, more than 60% of star-forming ETGs and composite ETGs are located in the green valley, showing that the two ETG samples may have experienced star formation and that ∼17% of star-forming ETGs lie in the blue cloud, while ∼30% of composite ETGs lie in the red sequence. In the [N II]/Hα versus EWHα (the Hα equivalent width) diagram, all star-forming ETGs and most of the composite ETGs are located in the star-forming galaxy region, and composite ETGs have lower EWHα than their counterparts. We show the relations between 12+log(O/H) and log(N/O) for both ETG samples, and suggest that nitrogen production of some star-forming ETGs can be explained by the evolution scheme of Coziol et al., while the prodution of composite ETGs may be a consequence of the inflowing of metal-poor gas and these more evolved massive galaxies.

Developing a photometric estimate of quasar redshifts: An independent measurement of the distances to the most powerful objects in the Universe

<p>While spectroscopy is the standard method of measuring the redshift of luminous objects, it is a time-intensive technique, requiring, in some cases, hours of telescope time for a single source. Additionally, spectroscopy favours brighter objects, and therefore introduces an intrinsic bias towards luminous or closer sources. A simple method of estimating the redshift through photometry would prove invaluable to forthcoming surveys on the next generation of large radio telescopes, as well as alleviating the inherent bias towards the most optically bright sources. While there is a well-established correlation between the near-infrared K-band magnitude and redshift for galaxies, we find that the K-z relation breaks down for samples dominated by quasi-stellar objects (QSOs). Current methods of estimating photometric redshift rely either on template spectra, which requires a high number of infrared photometry points, or computationally intensive machine learning methods. Using photometric data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) we investigate the relationship between combinations of magnitudes of a group of quasars, and their redshift. We find a high correlation between the colour relation (I-W2)/(W3-U) and redshift for a group of broad-line emission sources from the SDSS, and we conclude that this could be a robust estimator of the redshift.</p>

Developing a photometric estimate of quasar redshifts: An independent measurement of the distances to the most powerful objects in the Universe

<p>While spectroscopy is the standard method of measuring the redshift of luminous objects, it is a time-intensive technique, requiring, in some cases, hours of telescope time for a single source. Additionally, spectroscopy favours brighter objects, and therefore introduces an intrinsic bias towards luminous or closer sources. A simple method of estimating the redshift through photometry would prove invaluable to forthcoming surveys on the next generation of large radio telescopes, as well as alleviating the inherent bias towards the most optically bright sources. While there is a well-established correlation between the near-infrared K-band magnitude and redshift for galaxies, we find that the K-z relation breaks down for samples dominated by quasi-stellar objects (QSOs). Current methods of estimating photometric redshift rely either on template spectra, which requires a high number of infrared photometry points, or computationally intensive machine learning methods. Using photometric data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) we investigate the relationship between combinations of magnitudes of a group of quasars, and their redshift. We find a high correlation between the colour relation (I-W2)/(W3-U) and redshift for a group of broad-line emission sources from the SDSS, and we conclude that this could be a robust estimator of the redshift.</p>

Identifying Circumgalactic Medium Absorption in QSO Spectra: A Bayesian Approach

We present a study of candidate galaxy–absorber pairs for 43 low-redshift QSO sightlines (0.06 < z < 0.85) observed with the Hubble Space Telescope/Cosmic Origins Spectrograph that lie within the footprint of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey with a statistical approach to match absorbers with galaxies near the QSO lines of sight using only the SDSS Data Release 12 photometric data for the galaxies, including estimates of their redshifts. Our Bayesian methods combine the SDSS photometric information with measured properties of the circumgalactic medium to find the most probable galaxy match, if any, for each absorber in the line-of-sight QSO spectrum. We find ∼630 candidate galaxy–absorber pairs using two different statistics. The methods are able to reproduce pairs reported in the targeted spectroscopic studies upon which we base the statistics at a rate of 72%. The properties of the galaxies comprising the candidate pairs have median redshift, luminosity, and stellar mass, all estimated from the photometric data, z = 0.13, L = 0.1L *, and log ( M * / M ⊙ ) = 9.7 . The median impact parameter of the candidate pairs is ∼430 kpc, or ∼3.5 times the galaxy virial radius. The results are broadly consistent with the high Lyα covering fraction out to this radius found in previous studies. This method of matching absorbers and galaxies can be used to prioritize targets for spectroscopic studies, and we present specific examples of promising systems for such follow-up.

What is Important? Morphological Asymmetries are Useful Predictors of Star Formation Rates of Star-forming Galaxies in SDSS Stripe 82

The morphology and structure of galaxies reflect their star formation and assembly histories. We use the framework of mutual information (MI) to quantify the interdependence among several structural variables and to rank them according to their relevance for predicting the specific star formation rate (SSFR) by comparing the MI of the predictor variables with the SSFR and penalizing variables that are redundant. We apply this framework to study ∼3700 face-on star-forming galaxies (SFGs) with varying degrees of bulge dominance and central concentration and with stellar mass M ⋆ ≈ 109 M ⊙−5 × 1011 M ⊙ at redshift z = 0.02–0.12. We use the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Stripe 82 deep i-band imaging data, which improve measurements of asymmetry and bulge dominance indicators. We find that star-forming galaxies are a multiparameter family. In addition to M ⋆, asymmetry emerges as the most powerful predictor of SSFR residuals of SFGs, followed by bulge prominence/concentration. Star-forming galaxies with higher asymmetry and stronger bulges have higher SSFR at a given M ⋆. The asymmetry reflects both irregular spiral arms and lopsidedness in seemingly isolated SFGs and structural perturbations by galaxy interactions or mergers.

Rotation Curves of Galaxies and Their Dependence on Morphology and Stellar Mass

We study how stellar rotation curves (RCs) of galaxies are correlated on average with morphology and stellar mass (M star) using the final release of Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV MaNGA data. We use the visually assigned T-types for the morphology indicator, and adopt a functional form for the RC that can model non-flat RCs at large radii. We discover that within the radial coverage of the MaNGA data, the popularly known flat rotation curve at large radii applies only to the particular classes of galaxies, i.e., massive late types (T-type ≥ 1, M star ≳ 1010.8 M ⊙) and S0 types (T-type = −1 or 0, M star ≳ 1010.0 M ⊙). The RC of late-type galaxies at large radii rises more steeply as M star decreases, and its slope increases to about +9 km s−1 kpc−1 at M star ≈ 109.7 M ⊙. By contrast, elliptical galaxies (T-type ≤ −2) have descending RCs at large radii. Their slope becomes more negative as M star decreases, and reaches as negative as −15 km s−1 kpc−1 at M star ≈ 1010.2 M ⊙. We also find that the inner slope of the RC is highest for elliptical galaxies with M star ≈ 1010.5 M ⊙, and decreases as T-type increases or M star changes away from 1010.5 M ⊙. The velocity at the turnover radius R t is higher for higher M star, and R t is larger for higher M star and later T-types. We show that the inner slope of the RC is coupled with the central surface stellar mass density, which implies that the gravitational potential of central regions of galaxies is dominated by baryonic matter. With the aid of simple models for matter distribution, we discuss what determines the shapes of RCs.

Galaxy evolution in different environments along redshift within the local universe z < 0.8

This study presents the evolution of the galaxies in different matter density along redshift within the local universe. A sample of 702,352 galaxies was collected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Under the limitation of the spectroscopic data, the appropriate photometric redshift was used to represent the spectroscopic redshift in the range of 0.0 ≤ z ≤ 0.8. Number density of galaxies, galaxy’s colors, and star formation activities are considered to describe the evolution of galaxies. In summary, the number density is not clearly different although the Dec and RA of the sky areas are disparate, but it steeply declines along the redshift direction. Considering the number density together with galaxies’ Hα emission line from spectroscopic data, we find that both equivalent of hydrogen alpha and Hα flux tend to decrease along the redshift, similar to the decreasing trend of the number density. Furthermore, the galaxy color trend is found to be redder as a function of the redshift for the magnitude range of -19 ≤ M g ≤ -17. It implies that the overview of the star formation activity of the fainter galaxies at the lower redshift tend to show higher than the ones at higher redshift.