• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.36 no.3
• /
• pp.189-212
• /
• 2003

I review the current status of understanding when, how long, and how giant elliptical galaxies formed, focusing on the globular clusters. Several observational evidences show that massive elliptical galaxies formed at z > 2 (> 10 Gyr ago). Giant elliptical galaxies show mostly a bimodal color distribution of globular clusters, indicating a factor of $\approx$ 20 metallicity difference between the two peaks. The red globular clusters (RGCs) are closely related with the stellar halo in color and spatial distribution, while the blue globular clusters (BGCs) are not. The ratio of the number of the RGCs and that of the BGCs varies depending on galaxies. It is concluded that the BGCs might have formed 12-13 Gyr ago, while the RGCs and giant elliptical galaxies might have formed similarly 10-11 Gyr ago. It remains now to explain the existence of a gap between the RGC formation epoch and the BGC formation epoch, and the rapid metallicity increase during the gap (${\Delta}t{\approx}$ 2 Gyr). If hierarchical merging can form a significant number of giant elliptical galaxies > 10 Gyr ago, several observational constraints from stars and globular clusters in elliptical galaxies can be explained.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.27 no.2
• /
• pp.177-190
• /
• 1994

We have examined the photometric evolution of elliptical galaxies, using stellar evolutionary models covering the wide ranges of metallicity and mass, and the different IMFs (simple IMP & time-dependent bimodal IMF). The model with a time-dependent bimodal IMF can reproduce the observed integrated magnitudes and colors at all wavelengths. The computed model shows that the star formation in elliptical galaxies is still going on, although the number of newly born stars is very small. The chemical evolutionary effect is clearly seen in the C-M diagram of computed elliptical galaxies.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.38 no.2
• /
• pp.47.1-47.1
• /
• 2013

We present structural parameters of galaxies in the Extended Viro Cluster Catalog (EVCC), new catalog of galaxies in the Viro cluster using homogeneous Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Date Release 7 (DR7) data. The EVCC covers more extended region of the Viro cluster than of the Virgo Cluster Catalog (VCC) and presents updated morphologies of galaxies using multi-band images and spectral features. We obtain the surface brightness profiles of galaxies using ellipse task in IRAF. Based on the analysis of surface brightness profile we construct a catalog of various structural parameters of galaxies, i.e. central surface brightness, effective radius, sersic index, effective surface brightness, and mean effective surface brightness. Taking advantage of these structural parameters in various parameter spaces, we refine criteria of dividing giant elliptical and dwarf elliptical galaxies. In addition, we found that bulge dominated galaxies have larger sersic index and brighter central surface brightness than disk dominated galaxies. At fixed magnitude, dwarf elliptical galaxies dwarf lenticular galaxies, and dwarf irregular low surface brightness (LSB) galaxies show larger effective radii than giant elliptical galaxies, giant lenticular galaxies, and irregular high surface brightness (HSB) galaxies, respectively. Dwarf elliptical galaxies and dwarf irregular LSB galaxies occupy the similar structural parameter spaces. We suggest that giant elliptical galaxies and dwarf elliptical galaxies may have different origin.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.38 no.2
• /
• pp.149-151
• /
• 2005

We have studied the environmental effect on optical-NIR color gradients of 273 nearby elliptical galaxies. Color gradient is a good tool to study the evolutionary history of elliptical galaxies, since the steepness of the color gradient reflects merging history of early types. When an elliptical galaxy goes through many merging events, the color gradient can be get less steep or reversed due to mixing of stars. One simple way to measure color gradient is to compare half-light radii in different bands. We have compared the optical and near infrared half-light radii of 273 early-type galaxies from Pahre (1999). Not surprisingly, we find that $r_e(V)s$ (half-light radii measured in V-band) are in general larger than $r_e(K)s$ (half-light radii measured in K-band). However, when divided into different environments, we find that elliptical galaxies in the denser environment have gentler color gradients than those in the less dense environment. Our finding suggests that elliptical galaxies in the dense environment have undergone many merging events and the mixing of stars through the merging have created the gentle color gradients.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.30 no.2
• /
• pp.511-512
• /
• 2015

Star formation activities dominate the evolution of galaxies. Elliptical galaxies are believed to be old galaxies in the Hubble sequence, and elliptical galaxies at different evolution epochs might have different star formation activities and/or morphologies. We investigate the connection between star formation rates and the morphology of elliptical galaxies. With the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the Galaxy Zoo, we select a sample of elliptical galaxies by morphology and consider their infrared emission as an index of star formation rate to study the relation between the star formation rates and their morphological properties, such as ellipticities. In addition, we select some nearby spiral galaxies with very low MIR emission to probe the mechanisms of these red spiral galaxies. We display our preliminary results and discuss their implication on the evolution of galaxies in this poster.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.30 no.2
• /
• pp.375-379
• /
• 2015

Planetary nebula in elliptical galaxies pose a problem in dark matter theory. Using data from the Planetary Nebula Spectrograph (PN. S), Romanowsky et al. (2003) reported that less dark matter than expected was found within 5 to 6 effective radii of three elliptical galaxies. We attempt to explain similar observations of elliptical galaxies with MOdified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND). We collect 16 elliptical galaxies with planetary nebulae from the public web data of PN. S. We investigate the dynamical behavior by analyzing the line-of-sight velocity dispersion in the framework of MOND.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.36 no.1
• /
• pp.58.2-58.2
• /
• 2011

Park, Gott, & Choi (2008) found that when a galaxy is located within the virial radius from its closest neighbor and the neighbor is an elliptical, the probability of the galaxy to be an elliptical is very sensitive to the large-scale background density over a few Mpc scales. They suggested that the large-scale dependence can be arise if the temperature of a diffuse hot gas held by elliptical galaxies are higher in higher density environment. In this study, to understand the large-scale environment affects the X-ray properties of individual galaxies, we investigated the dependence of the X-ray luminosities of the elliptical galaxies on the large-scale environment using X-ray and optical data which we selected from the ROSAT All-Sky Survey and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7. To exclude galaxies embedded in an intra-group/cluster medium which could enhance their observed X-ray luminosity, we used isolated elliptical galaxies.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.30 no.2
• /
• pp.525-527
• /
• 2015

We prepare a catalog of the morphological types of 5840 galaxies within z = 0.01. We determine the morphological types by visual inspection using color images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR7. The majority of the sample galaxies are SDSS spectroscopic target galaxies, but we add ~ 900 galaxies whose redshifts are available in the NASA Extra Galactic Database (NED). The fraction of elliptical and lenticular galaxies is ~ 0.06 while spiral galaxies comprise ~ 30% of the sample with a bar fraction of ~ 0.6. About half of sample are dwarf galaxies of which ~ 35% are dwarf elliptical-like galaxies. There is a strong correlation between the morphological types and luminosities of the galaxies, i.e., high luminosities in the early type galaxies and low luminosity in the late type galaxies. The mean luminosity of dwarf elliptical-like galaxies is similar to that of irregular galaxies.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.42 no.1
• /
• pp.30.2-31
• /
• 2017

Compact elliptical (cE) galaxies are in a rare class of stellar systems characterized by high stellar densities, small sizes, high velocity dispersion, and high metallicity corresponding to elliptical galaxies. cE galaxies have been observed around massive galaxies, so they could be formed under strong influences of tidal stripping and truncation. However, the recent discovery of isolated cE galaxies requires the need of new formation scenarios. We aim at finding cE galaxies in various environments using SDSS DR12, and studying stellar population of cEs as function of environments. Based on the typical properties of cE galaxies, we selected cE candidates by restricting that low-luminosity Mg > 19.5 mag, small sizes Re < 700 pc, and high velocity dispersions ${\sigma}$ > $60kms^{-1}$. Since effect radii of cE candidates are mostly smaller than the seeing size of SDSS photometry, we calculated the effective radius by fitting a Sersic profile. In addition, we assumed that host galaxies have brightness with Mr < -21 mag, and an environmental parameter is computed as distances between cE galaxies and host-galaxies. We found 112 cE galaxies at z < 0.05, which have high sersic indices (mean value is 5.2) similar to the typical massive elliptical galaxies. Mgb values of cE galaxies increase as the distances from the host galaxies decrease. Especially, for cEs close to the host galaxies (NcE; $D_{host}$ < 300 pc), the Mgb values are similar to those of massive elliptical galaxies, which is consistent with the previous studies. On the other hand, cE galaxies distant from the host galaxies (DcE; Dhost >300 pc) have lower Mgb values than the conventional cE. The Mgb values follow the ${\sigma}$-Mgb relation of elliptical galaxies, and are connected to its faint end. This can be explained as a result of different merger histories for differing environments. For example, NcE galaxies are formed by tidal stripping by massive galaxies as suggested by previous studies, but DcE galaxies could be linked with high-redshift spheroids (e.g. red nuggets) which have not evolved into present-day elliptical galaxies because of the environmental influences.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.43 no.1
• /
• pp.32.2-32.2
• /
• 2018

We present the structural parameters of ~ 910 dwarf elliptical-like galaxies in the local universe ($z{\lesssim}0.01$) derived from the r-band images of the Sloan Digital SKy Survey (SDSS). We examine the dependence of structural parameters on the morphological types (dS0, dE, dEbc, dSph, and dEblue) and the environment. There is not much difference in the structural parameters among the five subtypes but the mean surface brightness within the effective radius (<${\mu}e$>) of dSph galaxies is clearly different from that of other subtypes. The frequency of disk features such as spiral arm, bar, lens, and rings strongly depends on the morphology of dwarf elliptical-like galaxies with no disk features in dSph galaxies. The absence of disk features and the low surface brightness of dSph galaxies are thought to be closely related to their low mass which leads to different evolution from other subtypes of dwarf elliptical-like galaxies. Density Environments Using IMSNG.