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Quantifying secular evolution through structural decomposition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2015

Lee Kelvin*
Affiliation:
School of Physics & Astronomy, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, KY16 9SS, UK ICRAR, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Hwy, WA 6009, Australia Inst für Astro- u Teilchenphysik, Universität Innsbruck, Techstr 25, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria email: lee.kelvin@uibk.ac.at
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Abstract

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Structure within a galaxy is not random, instead emerging as a direct function of its evolutionary path. It is thought that secular evolutionary processes leave behind distinct structural tracers in the form of bars, pseudo-bulges and rings. We have developed a robust automated structural analysis pipeline (Kelvin et al., 2012) able to accurately map structure across a range of ground and space-based datasets. Using reprocessed SDSS and UKIDSS data from the GAMA survey: an imaging and spectroscopic survey with over 300,000 redshifts across 300 square degrees (Driver et al., 2009); we measure the relative abundance and stellar mass locked up within these structures in the local (z<0.06) Universe. Future robust calculations of the stellar mass budget within bulges, bars, disks and pseudo-bulges should allow us to measure the relative importance of secular evolution against other mechanisms across cosmic time.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2015 

References

Driver, S. P.et al., 2009, Astron. Geophys. 50, 050000Google Scholar
Kelvin, L. S.et al., 2012, MNRAS 421, 1007CrossRefGoogle Scholar