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Ages and metallicities of faint red galaxies in the Shapley Supercluster

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2007

Russell J. Smith
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, University of Durham, Durham, United Kingdom
John R. Lucey
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, University of Durham, Durham, United Kingdom
Michael J. Hudson
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
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Abstract

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We present results on the stellar populations of 232 quiescent galaxies in the Shapley Supercluster, based on spectroscopy from the AAOmega spectrograph at the AAT. The key characteristic of this survey is its coverage of many low-luminosity objects (σ ~ 50 kms−1), with high signal-to-noise (~45 Å−1). Balmer-line age estimates are recovered with ~25% precision even for the faintest sample members. We summarize the observations and absorption line data, and present correlations of derived ages and metallicities with mass and luminosity. We highlight the strong correlation between age and α-element abundance ratio, and the anti-correlation of age and metallicity at fixed mass, which is shown to extend into the low-luminosity regime.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2008

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