Born at the same time?

The brightest galaxies of groups and clusters are extremely luminous galaxies, usually located in the centres of those systems – central galaxies. In the hierarchical scenario of structure formation, galaxies grow in mass and size by merging with their neighbours. Simulations predict that central ga...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Santucci, Giulia, None
Format: Still Image
Language:unknown
Published: Zenodo 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2635376
https://zenodo.org/record/2635376
Description
Summary:The brightest galaxies of groups and clusters are extremely luminous galaxies, usually located in the centres of those systems – central galaxies. In the hierarchical scenario of structure formation, galaxies grow in mass and size by merging with their neighbours. Simulations predict that central galaxies have higher merger rates than other similarly luminous early type galaxies, mostly due to their privileged position at the bottom of the gravitational potential of the cluster. The recent accretion history of galaxies can be read through their stellar population gradients. Therefore, central galaxies with active merger histories are predicted to have shallower metallicity gradients than satellite galaxies of a similar mass. We are examining the stellar population gradients (age and metallicity) of 445 central galaxies in the SAMI galaxy survey to determine whether they are offset from similarly massive satellite galaxies in order to reach a better understanding of their formation and evolution history.