2002/05/13 by J. Falcón‐Barroso, Jesús Falcón-Barroso, R. F. Peletier +3 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1046/j.1365-8711.2002.05656.x
published as Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 335 (2002) 741 · 13 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication on MNRAS
arxiv created 2002/05/13 · openalex publication_date 2002/09/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In an ongoing effort to study the formation and evolution of galactic bulges, we have investigated the position of 19 bulges of type S0–Sbc on the Fundamental Plane (FP). We find that bulges, in both B and K band, lie close to but slightly below the FP defined by ellipticals and S0s, i.e. are slightly brighter. There are hints that bulges of later morphological type are situated below the other bulges in our sample. The FP results are consistent with the picture, obtained from our recent analysis of HST colours, that bulges are old, except for the Sbc galaxies. The fact that bulges lie so close to the FP of ellipticals and S0s implies that their formation epoch must have been similar to, at most about 2.5 Gyr earlier than, cluster Es and S0s, and that the surrounding disc does not significantly affect their structure.