Disentangling Morphologies : Environment, Colour And Interactions In The Galaxy Zoo
Abstract
The Galaxy Zoo project has completed a morphological classification of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey using the work of more than 160,000 volunteers. We use the results to analyse the relationships between galaxy morphology, colour, environment and stellar mass. Surprisingly, we find that the colour and morphology bimodalities are largely independent functions of environment. We show the dependence of these relations both on stellar mass and environment. We will focus on the population of red spirals which accounts - at densities typical of the outer regions of clusters - for as much as one-third of the entire population. We will present the results of our work on these galaxies, which are significantly redder than the general population while retaining clear spiral arms. We are also able to constrain the role of galaxy mergers on the population, using a sample of more than 3000 mergers drawn from the Galaxy Zoo sample to constrain the merger rate in the local Universe.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #213
- Pub Date:
- January 2009
- Bibcode:
- 2009AAS...21330701L