We investigate the orientation correlation of giant elliptical galaxies by measuring the intrinsic ellipticity correlation function of 83,773 luminous red galaxies (LRGs) at redshifts 0.16 -- 0.47 from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We have accurately determined the correlation up to 30 $h^{-1}$Mpc. Luminosity dependence of the ellipticity correlation is also detected although the error bars are large, while no evidence is found for its redshift evolution between $z=0.2$ and $z=0.4$. Then we use a cosmological $N$-body simulation to examine misalignment between the central LRGs and their parent dark matter halos. Central and satellite galaxies are assigned to simulated halos by employing a halo occupation distribution model for the LRGs. The ellipticity correlation is predicted to have the same shape as but an amplitude about 4 times higher than our observation if the central LRGs are perfectly aligned with their host halos. This indicates that the central LRG galaxies are preferentially but not perfectly aligned with their host halos. With the assumption that there is a misalignment angle between a central LRG and its host halo which follows a Gaussian distribution with a zero mean and a width $σ_θ$, we obtain a tight constraint on the misalignment parameter, $σ_θ={35.4}^{+4.0}_{-3.3}$ deg. This type of intrinsic ellipticity correlation, if not corrected, can lead to contamination at 5% level to the shear power spectrum in weak lensing surveys of limiting magnitude $R_{AB}=24.5$ if the source central galaxies follow the same misalignment distribution as the LRGs.
We measure the ellipticity of isolated clusters of galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) using gravitational lensing. We stack the clusters, rotating so that the major axes of the ellipses determined by the positions of cluster member galaxies are aligned. We exclude the signal from the central 0.5 h^-1 Mpc to avoid problems with stacking alignment and cluster member contamination. We fit an elliptical NFW profile and find an axis ratio for the dark matter of f = b/a = 0.48+0.14-0.09 (1 sigma), and rule out f=1 at 99.6 per cent confidence thus ruling out a spherical halo. We find tha…
We examine whether the gravitational shear--intrinsic ellipticity (GI) correlation function of the luminous red galaxies (LRGs) can be modeled with the distribution function of a misalignment angle advocated recently by Okumura et al. For this purpose, we have accurately measured the GI correlation for the LRGs in the Data Release 6 (DR6) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), which confirms the results of Hirata et al. who used the DR4 data. By comparing the GI correlation functions in the simulation and in the observation, we find that the GI correlation can be modeled in the current $Λ$CDM…
A large position angle misalignment between the stellar bar and the distribution of dust in the late-type barred spiral NGC 3488 was discovered, using mid-infrared images from the Spitzer Space Telescope and optical images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The angle between the bar and dust patterns was measured to be 25+-2deg, larger than most of the misalignments found previously in barred systems based on Ha or HI/CO observations. The stellar bar is bright at optical and 3.6um, while the dust pattern is more prominent in the 8um band but also shows up in the SDSS u and g-band images…
The disks of spiral galaxies are generally elliptical rather than circular. The distribution of ellipticities can be fit with a log-normal distribution. For a sample of 12,764 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 1 (SDSS DR1), the distribution of apparent axis ratios in the i band is best fit by a log-normal distribution of intrinsic ellipticities with ln epsilon = -1.85 +/- 0.89. For a sample of nearly face-on spiral galaxies, analyzed by Andersen and Bershady using both photometric and spectroscopic data, the best fitting distribution of ellipticities has ln epsilon = -2.2…
The structural parameters of a magnitude-limited sample of 148 unbarred S0-Sb galaxies were derived to study the correlations between bulge and disk parameters as well as the probability distribution function (PDF) of the intrinsic equatorial ellipticity of bulges. A new algorithm (GASP2D) was used to perform the bidimensional bulge-disk decomposition of the J-band galaxy images extracted from the archive of the 2MASS survey. The PDF of intrinsic ellipticities was derived from the distribution of the observed ellipticities of the bulges and misalignments between the the bulges and disks. About…
The power spectrum of weak lensing shear caused by large-scale structure is an emerging tool for precision cosmology, in particular for measuring the effects of dark energy on the growth of structure at low redshift. One potential source of systematic error is intrinsic alignments of ellipticities of neighbouring galaxies (II correlation) that could mimic the correlations due to lensing. A related possibility pointed out by Hirata and Seljak (2004) is correlation between the intrinsic ellipticities of galaxies and the density field responsible for gravitational lensing shear (GI correlation). …
We study the three-dimensional and projected shapes of galaxy groups in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 4, and examine the alignment between the orientation of the central galaxy and the spatial distribution of satellite galaxies. The projected ellipticity of a group is measured using the moments of the discrete distribution of its member galaxies. We infer the three-dimensional and projected axis ratios of their dark matter haloes by comparing the measured ellipticity distributions with those obtained from Monte Carlo simulations of projected, triaxial dark matter haloes with differ…
(Abridged) A variety of formation scenarios was proposed to explain the diversity of properties observed in bulges. Studying their intrinsic shape can help in constraining the dominant mechanism at the epochs of their assembly. The structural parameters of a magnitude-limited sample of 148 unbarred S0--Sb galaxies were derived in order to study the correlations between bulges and disks as well as the probability distribution function (PDF) of the intrinsic equatorial ellipticity of bulges. It is presented a new fitting algorithm (GASP2D) to perform the two-dimensional photometric decomposition…
We revisit the shapes of isophotes for elliptical (E) and lenticular (S0) galaxies by studying 847 nearby early-type galaxies selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 4 with velocity dispersions above 200 km/s. The IRAF task {\tt ellipse} was used to derive the deviations of the isophotes from pure ellipses (Fourier coefficients a_3/a and a_4/a), position angles and ellipticities as a function of radius. We show the statistical distributions of the a_3/a and a_4/a parameters as a function of velocity dispersion, magnitude, and colour. The a_4/a parameter is correlated with the e…
We present the results of attempts to detect the ellipticity of dark matter halos using galaxy-galaxy weak lensing with SDSS data. We use 2,020,256 galaxies brighter than r=19 with photometric redshifts (divided into colour and luminosity subsamples) as lenses and 31,697,869 source galaxies. We search for and identify several signal contaminants, which if not removed lead to a spurious detection. These include systematic shear that leads to a slight spurious alignment of lens and source ellipticities, intrinsic alignments (due to contamination of the source sample by physically-associated lens…
Galaxies modeled as singular isothermal ellipsoids with an axis ratio distribution similar to the observed axis ratio distribution of E and S0 galaxies are statistically consistent with both the observed numbers of two-image and four-image lenses and the inferred ellipticities of individual lenses. However, no four-image lens is well fit by the model (typical $χ^2/N_{dof} \sim 20$), the axis ratio of the model can be significantly different from that of the observed lens galaxy, and the major axes of the model and the galaxy may be slightly misaligned. We found that models with a second, indep…
Galaxy-galaxy lensing has emerged as a powerful probe of the dark matter halos of galaxies, but is subject to contamination if intrinsically aligned satellites of the lens galaxy are used as part of the source sample. We present a measurement of this intrinsic shear using 200,747 lens galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) spectroscopic sample and a sample of satellites selected using photometric redshifts. The mean intrinsic shear at transverse separations of 30--446$h^{-1}$ kpc is constrained to be $-0.0062<Δγ<+0.0066$ (99.9 per cent confidence, including identified systematics), …
Correlations between intrinsic shear and the density field on large scales, a potentially important contaminant for cosmic shear surveys, have been robustly detected at low redshifts with bright galaxies in SDSS data. Here we present a more detailed characterization of this effect, which can cause anti-correlations between gravitational lensing shear and intrinsic ellipticity (GI correlations). This measurement uses 36278 Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) from the SDSS spectroscopic sample with 0.15<z<0.35, split by redshift and luminosity; 7758 LRGs from the 2SLAQ Survey at 0.4<z<0.8; and a variet…
We present a result of searching for galaxy clusters that show an indication of global rotation using a spectroscopic sample of galaxies in SDSS and 2dFGRS. We have determined the member galaxies of 899 Abell clusters covered in SDSS and 2dFGRS using the redshift and the positional data of galaxies, and have estimated the ratio of the cluster rotation amplitude to the cluster velocity dispersion and the velocity gradient across the cluster. We have found 12 tentative rotating clusters that have large ratios of rotation amplitude to dispersion and large velocity gradients. We have determined th…
We present the first study of bars in the local Universe, based on the Sloan Digitized Sky Survey (SDSS). The large sample of ~5000 local galaxies provides the largest study to date of local bars and minimizes the effect of cosmic variance. The sample galaxies have M_g<=-18.5 mag and cover the redshift range 0.01<=z<0.04. We use a color cut in the color-magnitude diagram and the Sersic index n to identify disk galaxies. We characterize bars and disks using r-band images and the method of iterative ellipse fits and quantitative criteria developed in Jogee at al. (2004, ApJL, 615, L105). After e…
We present a study of large-scale bars in the local Universe, based on a large sample of ~3692 galaxies, with -18.5 <= M_g < -22.0 mag and redshift 0.01 <= z < 0.03, drawn from the Sloan Digitized Sky Survey. Our sample includes many galaxies that are disk-dominated and of late Hubble types. Both color cuts and Sérsic cuts yield a similar sample of ~2000 disk galaxies. We characterize bars and disks by ellipse-fitting r-band images and applying quantitative criteria. After excluding highly inclined ($>60^{\circ}$) systems, we find the following results. (1) The optical r-band fraction (f_opt-r…
Based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR6 (SDSS) and Millennium Simulation (MS) we investigate the alignment between galaxies and large-scale structure. For this purpose we develop two new statistical tools, namely the alignment correlation function and the cos(2theta)-statistic. The former is a two-dimensional extension of the traditional two-point correlation function and the latter is related to the ellipticity correlation function used for cosmic shear measurements. Both are based on the cross correlation between a sample of galaxies with orientations and a reference sample which represent…
We measure the intrinsic alignments of the blue and the red galaxies separately by analyzing the spectroscopic data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 6 (SDSS DR6). For both samples of the red and the blue galaxies with axial ratios of b/a <= 0.8, we detect a 3 sigma signal of the ellipticity correlation in the redshift range of 0 <= z <= 0.4 for r-band absolute (model) magnitude cut of M_r <= -19.2 (no K correction). We note a difference in the strength and the distance scale for the red and the blue galaxy correlation eta_{2D}(r): For the bright blue galaxies, it behaves as a quadr…
Weak gravitational lensing is now established as a powerful method to measure mass fluctuations in the universe. It relies on the measurement of small coherent distortions of the images of background galaxies. Even low-level correlations in the intrinsic shapes of galaxies could however produce a significant spurious lensing signal. These correlations are also interesting in their own right, since their detection would constrain models of galaxy formation. Using $3\times 10^{4} - 10^5$ halos found in N-body simulations, we compute the correlation functions of the intrinsic ellipticity of spira…
We present a detailed analysis of the surface brightness distribution of the brightest cluster galaxy (BCG) in each of 24 galaxy clusters at 0.03<z<0.13. We use two-dimensional profile fitting to model the surface brightness out to r=300 kpc for each BCG, comparing r^{1/4}, r^{1/n}, and double r^{1/4} models. We obtain statistically superior fits using a two component model consisting of a pair of r^{1/4} profiles with independent scale lengths, ellipticities, and orientations. The two component model can simply reproduce the observed position angle and ellipticity gradients, which cannot gene…
We used the Advanced Camera for Surveys on board the Hubble Space Telescope to obtain high resolution i-band images of the centers of 23 single galaxies, which were selected because they have SDSS velocity dispersions larger than 350 km/s. The surface brightness profiles of the most luminous of these objects (M_i<-24) have well-resolved `cores' on scales of 150-1000 pc, and share similar properties to BCGs. The total luminosity of the galaxy is a better predictor of the core size than is the velocity dispersion. The correlations of luminosity and velocity dispersion with core size agree with t…
