2003/10/16 by M. R. Blanton, D. J. Eisenstein, D. W. Hogg +2 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/422897
published as Astrophys.J.629:143-157,2005 · submitted to ApJ, pedagogy and bitmapped figures for presentations available at http://cosmo.nyu.edu/blanton/full_density.html
arxiv created 2003/10/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We examine the relationship between environment and the luminosities, surface brightnesses, colors, and profile shapes of luminous galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). For the SDSS sample, galaxy color is the galaxy property most predictive of the local environment. Galaxy color and luminosity jointly comprise the most predictive pair of properties. At fixed luminosity and color, density is not closely related to surface brightness or to Sersic index -- the parameter in this study that astronomers most often associate with morphology. In the text, we discuss what measureable residual relationships exist, generally finding that at red colors and fixed luminosity, the mean density decreases at the highest surface brightnesses and Sersic indices. In general, these results suggest that the morphological properties of galaxies are less closely related to galaxy environment than are their masses and star-formation histories.