The fossil record of the stellar populations at redshifts above 1.5
Abstract
Recent advances in stellar population modeling allow to determine physical properties such as mean age, iron and alpha-element abundances from integrated spectra using not only specific wavelength ranges as in traditional Lick-index-type methods, but from the full available spectrum. I will present an extension of this technique for low-redshift, massive early-type galaxies allowing to determine the [Fe/H] and [alpha/Fe] of only the stars older than 9.5 Gyr on a per galaxy basis. We find that these stars show uniformly high [alpha/Fe] abundances, allowing us to constrain the timescales over which star formation takes place in high-redshift galaxies that are being targeted directly by this symposium. I will also present analysis of the mass and environment dependancies of these properties.
- Publication:
-
IAU General Assembly
- Pub Date:
- August 2015
- Bibcode:
- 2015IAUGA..2194389W