2004/03/23 by C. P. Haines, A. Mercurio, P. Merluzzi +4 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20035841
published as Astron.Astrophys. 425 (2004) 783-796 · 14 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in A&A with minor revisions
arxiv created 2004/03/23 · openalex publication_date 2004/09/28 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
We examine the environmental effects on the photometric properties of galaxies for the rich galaxy cluster ABCG 209 at . We use archive CFHT optical imaging of a field centred on the cluster to produce a galaxy sample complete to and . Both the composite and red sequence galaxy luminosity functions are found to be dependent on the local galaxy surface density, their faint-end slopes becoming shallower with increasing density. We explain this as a combination of the morphology-density relation, and dwarf galaxies being cannibalised and/or disrupted by the cD galaxy and the ICM in the cluster core. The colour of the red sequence itself appears 0.02 mag redder for the highest-density regions, indicative of their stellar populations being marginally (<5%) older or (<20%) more metal-rich. This may be due to the galaxies themselves forming earliest in the rarest overdensities marked by rich clusters, or their star-formation being suppressed earliest by the ICM.