Galaxies, as well as their satellites, are known to form within the cosmic web: the large, multi-scale distribution of matter in the universe. It is known that the surrounding large scale structure (LSS) can impact and influence the formation of galaxies, e.g. the spin and shape of haloes or galaxies are correlated with the LSS and the correlation depends on halo mass or galaxy morphology. In this work, we use group and filament catalogues constructed from the SDSS DR12 to investigate the correlation between satellite systems and the large scale filaments they are located in. We find that the distribution of satellites is significantly correlated with filaments, namely the major axis of the satellite systems are preferentially aligned with the spine of the closest filament. Stronger alignment signals are found for the cases where the system away from the filament spine, while systems close to the filament spine show significantly weaker alignment. Our results suggest that satellites are accreted along filaments, which agrees with previous works. The case of which away from the filament spine may help us to understand how the filament forms as well as the peculiar satellite distribution in the Local Universe.
We investigate whether the satellite luminosity function (LF) of primary galaxies identified in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) depends on whether the host galaxy is in a filament or not. Isolated primary galaxies are identified in the SDSS spectroscopic sample while potential satellites (that are up to 4 magnitudes fainter than their hosts) are searched for in the much deeper photometric sample. Filaments are constructed from the galaxy distribution by the "Bisous" process. Isolated primary galaxies are divided into two subsamples: those in filaments and those not in filaments. We examine…
It is sometimes argued that the uneven sky coverage of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) biases the distribution of satellite galaxies discovered by it to align with the polar plane defined by the 11 brighter, classical Milky Way (MW) satellites. This might prevent the SDSS satellites from adding significance to the MW's Vast Polar Structure (VPOS). We investigate whether this argument is valid by comparing the observed situation with model satellite distributions confined to the exact SDSS footprint area. We find that the SDSS satellites indeed add to the significance of the VPOS and that t…
Eighteen bright X-ray emitting galaxies were found in nearby filaments within SDSS region. Basic X-ray spectral parameters were estimated for these galaxies using power law model with photoelectric absorption. A close pair of X-ray galaxies was found.
The impact of cosmic filaments on the abundance of satellite galaxies
National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院国家天文台）；School of Astronomy and Space Science, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学天文与空间科学学院）；The Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University（北京大学科维理天文与天体物理研究所）；Astrophysics Center, Tianjin Normal University（天津师范大学天文中心）；Institute for Frontiers in Astronomy and Astrophysics, Beijing Normal University（北京师范大学天文与空间前沿研究院）；School of Physics and Laboratory of Zhongyuan Light, Zhengzhou University（郑州大学物理学院与中原之光实验室）
We investigate the impact of filament and void environments on galaxies, looking for residual effects beyond the known relations with environment density. We quantified the host environment of galaxies as the distance to the spine of the nearest filament, and compared various galaxy properties within 12 bins of this distance. We considered galaxies up to 10 $h^{-1}$Mpc from filaments, i.e. deep inside voids. The filaments were defined by a point process (the Bisous model) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data release 10. In order to remove the dependence of galaxy properties on the environmen…
Detecting the large-scale structure of the Universe based on the galaxy distribution and characterising its components is of fundamental importance in astrophysics but is also a difficult task to achieve. Wide-area spectroscopic redshift surveys are required to accurately measure galaxy positions in space that also need to cover large areas of the sky. It is also difficult to create algorithms that can extract cosmic web structures (e.g. filaments). Moreover, these detections will be affected by systematic uncertainties that stem from the characteristics of the survey used (e.g. its completene…
We present new results on the relationship between central galaxies and dark matter haloes inferred from observations of satellite kinematics in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR7. We employ an updated analysis framework that includes detailed mock catalogues to model observational effects in SDSS. Our results constrain the colour-dependent conditional luminosity function (CLF) of dark matter haloes, as well as the radial profile of satellite galaxies. Confirming previous results, we find that red central galaxies live in more massive haloes than blue galaxies at fixed luminosity. Additio…
It has been shown, both in simulations and observationally, that the tidal field of a large galaxy can torque its satellites such that the major axis of satellite galaxies points towards their hosts. This so-called `shape alignment' has been observed in isolated Milky Way-like galaxies but not in `Local Group'-like pairs. In this study, we investigate the shape alignment of satellite galaxies in galaxy pairs similar to the Local Group identified in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 13 (SDSS DR13). By stacking tens of thousands of satellite galaxies around primary galaxy pairs, we find …
We study the effects of radio jets on galaxies in their vicinity (satellites) and the role of satellites in triggering radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs). The study compares the aggregate properties of satellites of a sample of 7,220 radio AGNs at z < 0.3 (identified by Best & Heckman 2012 from the SDSS and NVSS+FIRST surveys) to the satellites of a control sample of radio-quiet galaxies, which are matched in redshift, color, luminosity, and axis ratio, as well as by environment type: field galaxies, cluster members and brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs). Remarkably, we find that radio AG…
We conduct a comprehensive and statistical study of the luminosity functions (LFs) for satellite galaxies, by counting photometric galaxies from HSC, DECaLS and SDSS around isolated central galaxies (ICGs) and paired galaxies from the SDSS/DR7 spectroscopic sample. Results of different surveys show very good agreement. The satellite LFs can be measured down to $M_V\sim-10$, and for central primary galaxies as small as $8.5<\log_{10}M_\ast/M_\odot<9.2$ and $9.2<\log_{10}M_\ast/M_\odot<9.9$, implying there are on average 3--8 satellites with $M_V<-10$ around LMC-mass ICGs. The bright end cutoff …
New sample of X-ray galaxies selected from 2XMMi catalogue in SDSS region is analysed in this work. Spatial distribution and X-ray AGN spectral properties are discussed. A new method for extragalactic filament detection and description is proposed.
The alignment between satellites and central galaxies has been studied in detail both in observational and theoretical works. The widely accepted fact is that the satellites preferentially reside along the major axis of their central galaxy. However, the origin and large-scale environment dependence of this alignment are still unknown. In an attempt to figure out those, we use data constructed from SDSS DR7 to investigate the large-scale environmental dependence of this alignment with emphasis on examining the alignments' dependence on the colour of the central galaxy. We find a very strong la…
Using the cosmological hydrodynamics simulation Horizon-AGN, we investigate the spatial distribution of satellite galaxies relative to their central counterpart in the redshift range between 0.3 and 0.8. We find that, on average, these satellites tend to be located on the galactic plane of the central object. This effect is detected for central galaxies with a stellar mass larger than 10^10 solar masses and found to be strongest for red passive galaxies, while blue galaxies exhibit a weaker trend. For galaxies with a minor axis parallel to the direction of the nearest filament, we find that th…
Anisotropy of Satellite Galaxies-I: Contrasting Correlations with Central Galaxy, Host Halo, and Large-Scale Filament Structures
National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院国家天文台）；College of Astronomy and Space Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学天文与空间科学学院）；Universidad Autónoma de Madrid（马德里自治大学）；Centro de Investigación Avanzada en Física Fundamental (CIAFF), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid（马德里自治大学基础物理前沿研究中心）；Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh（爱丁堡大学天体物理研究所）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of the Western Cape（西开普大学物理与天文学系）；Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg, UMR 7550, CNRS, Université de Strasbourg（斯特拉斯堡天文台）
We investigate the 3D spin alignment of galaxies with respect to the large-scale filaments using the MaNGA survey. The cosmic web is reconstructed from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey using Disperse and the 3D spins of MaNGA galaxies are estimated using the thin disk approximation with integral field spectroscopy kinematics. Late-type spiral galaxies are found to have their spins parallel to the closest filament's axis. The alignment signal is found to be dominated by low-mass spirals. Spins of S0-type galaxies tend to be oriented preferentially in perpendicular direction with respect to the fila…
Several scenarios have been suggested to explain the phase-space distribution of the Milky Way (MW) satellite galaxies in a disc of satellites (DoS). To quantitatively compare these different possibilities, a new method analysing angular momentum directions in modelled data is presented. It determines how likely it is to find sets of angular momenta as concentrated and as close to a polar orientation as is observed for the MW satellite orbital poles. The method can be easily applied to orbital pole data from different models. The observed distribution of satellite orbital poles is compared to …
We measure the angular clustering of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 in order to probe the spatial distribution of satellite galaxies within their dark matter halos. Specifically, we measure the angular correlation function on very small scales (7-320") in a range of luminosity threshold samples (absolute r-band magnitudes of -18 up to -21) that are constructed from the subset of SDSS that has been spectroscopically observed more than once (the so-called plate overlap region). We choose to measure angular clustering in this reduced survey footprint in order to minimiz…
Zippers and Twisters: Planes of Satellite Galaxies Emerge from Whirling and Shocking Gas Streams in the Cosmic Web
Johns Hopkins University（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学）；NYC College of Technology, City University of New York（纽约市立大学学院技术学院）；Graduate Center, City University of New York（纽约市立大学研究生中心）；Institut d’Astrophsyique de Paris, UMR 7095, CNRS, UPMC Univ.（巴黎天体物理研究所）；Kyung Hee University（庆熙大学）；LSST-DA Catalyst Fellowship, LSST Discovery Alliance（LSST-DA催化剂奖学金，LSST发现联盟）；Centre for Astrophysics Research, University of Hertfordshire（赫特福德大学天体物理学研究中心）
Filaments are clearly visible in galaxy distributions, but they are hardly detected by computer algorithms. Most methods of filament detection can be used only with numerical simulations of a large-scale structure. New simple and effective methods for the real filament detection should be developed. The method of a smoothed galaxy density field was applied in this work to SDSS data of galaxy positions. Five concentric radial layers of 100 Mpc are appropriate for filaments detection. Two methods were tested for the first layer and one more method is proposed.
We investigate the angular and kinematic distributions of satellite galaxies around a large sample of bright isolated primaries in the spectroscopic and photometric catalogues of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We detect significant anisotropy in the spatial distribution of satellites. To test whether this anisotropy could be related to the rotating disks of satellites recently found by Ibata et al. in a sample of SDSS galaxies, we repeat and extend their analysis. Ibata et al. found an excess of satellites on opposite sides of their primaries having anticorrelated radial velocities. We f…
We track subhalo orbits of galaxy and group sized halos in cosmological simulations. We identify filamentary structures around halos and we use these to define a sample of subhalos accreted from filaments as well as a control sample of subhalos accreted from other directions. We use these samples to study differences in satellite orbits produced by filamentary accretion. Our results depend on host halo mass. We find that for low masses, subhalos accreted from filaments show $\sim10\%$ shorter lifetimes compared to the control sample, they show a tendency towards more radial orbits, reach halo …
Observational Evidence for the Kinematic Memory of Cosmic Filaments from Satellite Orbital Orientations
Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院上海天文台）；Key Laboratory for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (MOE)/Shanghai Key Laboratory for Particle Physics and Cosmology（粒子天体物理与宇宙学教育部重点实验室/上海粒子物理与宇宙学重点实验室）；State Key Laboratory of Dark Matter Physics, School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学物理与天文学院暗物质物理国家重点实验室）；School of Physics and Technology, Nanjing Normal University（南京师范大学物理科学与技术学院）；Institute for Astronomy, School of Physics, Zhejiang University（浙江大学物理学院天体物理研究所）；Center for Cosmology and Computational Astrophysics, Zhejiang University（浙江大学宇宙学与计算天体物理中心）
The presence of Galactic cirrus is an obstacle for studying both faint objects in our Galaxy and low surface brightness extragalactic structures. With the aim of studying individual cirrus filaments in SDSS Stripe 82 data, we develop techniques based on machine learning and neural networks that allow one to isolate filaments from foreground and background sources in the entirety of Stripe 82 with a precision similar to that of the human expert. Our photometric study of individual filaments indicates that only those brighter than 26 mag arcsec$^{-2}$ in the SDSS $r$ band are likely to be identi…
We present a statistical study of the luminosity functions of galaxies surrounding luminous red galaxies (LRGs) at average redshifts <z>=0.34 and <z>=0.65. The luminosity functions are derived by extracting source photometry around more than 40,000 LRGs and subtracting foreground and background contamination using randomly selected control fields. We show that at both studied redshifts the average luminosity functions of the LRGs and their satellite galaxies are poorly fitted by a Schechter function due to a luminosity gap between the centrals and their most luminous satellites. We utilize a t…
The spatial distribution of satellite galaxies around pairs of galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have been found to bulge significantly towards the respective partner. Highly anisotropic, planar distributions of satellite galaxies are in conflict with expectations derived from cosmological simulations. Does the lopsided distribution of satellite systems around host galaxy pairs constitute a similar challenge to the standard model of cosmology? We investigate whether such satellite distributions are present around stacked pairs of hosts extracted from the $Λ$CDM simulations Millen…
The Milky Way (MW) is surrounded by numerous satellite objects: dwarf galaxies, globular clusters and streams of disrupted systems. Together, these form a vast polar structure (VPOS), a thin plane spreading to Galactocentric distances as large as 250 kpc. The orbital directions of satellite galaxies and the preferred alignment of streams with the VPOS demonstrate that the objects orbit within the structure. This strong phase-space correlation is at odds with the expectations from simulations of structure formation based on the cold dark matter cosmology (LCDM). The accretion of sub-halos along…
We analyze a set of volume limited samples from the SDSS to study the dependence of galaxy colour on different environments of the cosmic web. We measure the local dimension of galaxies to determine the geometry of their embedding environments and find that filaments host a higher fraction of red galaxies than sheets at each luminosity. We repeat the analysis at a fixed density and recover the same trend which shows that galaxy colours depend on geometry of environments besides local density. At a fixed luminosity, the fraction of red galaxies in filaments and sheets increases with the extent …
We study the effects of filaments on galaxy properties in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 12 using filaments from the `Cosmic Web Reconstruction' catalogue (Chen et al. 2016), a publicly available filament catalogue for SDSS. Since filaments are tracers of medium-to-high density regions, we expect that galaxy properties associated with the environment are dependent on the distance to the nearest filament. Our analysis demonstrates that a red galaxy or a high-mass galaxy tend to reside closer to filaments than a blue or low-mass galaxy. After adjusting the effect from stellar m…
In the standard model of non-linear structure formation, a cosmic web of dark-matter dominated filaments connects dark matter halos. In this paper, we stack the weak lensing signal of an ensemble of filaments between groups and clusters of galaxies. Specifically, we detect the weak lensing signal, using CFHTLenS galaxy ellipticities, from stacked filaments between SDSS-III/BOSS luminous red galaxies (LRGs). As a control, we compare the physical LRG pairs with projected LRG pairs that are more widely separated in redshift space. We detect the excess filament mass density in the projected pairs …
We revisit the well known discrepancy between the observed number of Milky Way (MW) dwarf satellite companions and the predicted population of cold dark matter (CDM) sub-halos, in light of the dozen new low luminosity satellites found in SDSS imaging data and our recent calibration of the SDSS satellite detection efficiency, which implies a total population far larger than these dozen discoveries. We combine a dynamical model for the CDM sub-halo population with simple, physically motivated prescriptions for assigning stellar content to each sub-halo, then apply observational selection effects…
We use SDSS-DR14 to construct a sample of galaxy systems consisting of a central object and two satellites. We adopt projected distance and radial velocity difference criteria and impose an isolation criterion to avoid membership in larger structures. We also classify the interaction between the members of each system through a visual inspection of galaxy images, finding $\sim80\%$ of the systems lack evidence of interactions whilst the remaining $\sim20\%$ involve some kind of interaction, as inferred from their observed distorted morphology. We have considered separately, samples of satellit…
We quantify the impact that a variety of galactic and environmental properties have on the quenching of star formation. We collate a sample of $\sim$ 400,000 central and $\sim$ 100,000 satellite galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 (SDSS DR7). Specifically, we consider central velocity dispersion ($σ_{c}$), stellar, halo, bulge and disk mass, local density, bulge-to-total ratio, group-centric distance and galaxy-halo mass ratio. We develop and apply a new statistical technique to quantify the impact on the quenched fraction ($f_{\rm Quench}$) of varying one parameter, whil…
Using a sample of galaxies selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 (SDSS DR7) and a catalog of bulge-disk decompositions, we study how the size distribution of galaxies depends on the intrinsic properties of galaxies, such as concentration, morphology, specific star formation rate (sSFR), and bulge fraction, and on the large-scale environments in the context of central/satellite decomposition, halo environment, the cosmic web: \cluster, \filament, \sheet ~and \void, as well as galaxy number density. We find that there is a strong dependence of the luminosity- or mass-size rel…
We re-examine the fraction of low-redshift Sloan Digital Sky Survey satellites and centrals in which star formation has been quenched, using the environment quenching efficiency formalism that separates out the dependence of stellar mass. We show that the centrals of the groups containing the satellites are responding to the environment in the same way as their satellites (at least for stellar masses above 10^10.3 Msun), and that the well-known differences between satellites and the general set of centrals arise because the latter are overwhelmingly dominated by isolated galaxies. The widespre…
We calculate the probability that a Milky-Way-like halo in the standard cosmological model has the observed number of Magellanic Clouds (MCs). The statistics of the number of MCs in the LCDM model are in good agreement with observations of a large sample of SDSS galaxies. Under the sub-halo abundance matching assumption of a relationship with small scatter between galaxy r-band luminosities and halo internal velocities v_max, we make detailed comparisons to similar measurements using SDSS DR7 data by Liu et al. (2010). Models and observational data give very similar probabilities for having ze…
Intrinsic alignments (IA) of galaxies, i.e. correlations of galaxy shapes with each other or with the density field, are a major astrophysical source of contamination for weak lensing surveys. We present the results of IA measurements of galaxies on 0.1- 200 Mpc/h scales using the SDSS-III BOSS LOWZ sample, in the redshift range 0.16<z<0.36. We extend the existing IA measurements for spectroscopic LRGs to lower luminosities, and show that the luminosity dependence of large-scale IA can be well-described by a power law. Within the limited redshift and color range of our sample, we observe no si…
We investigate the environmental dependence of the local gas-phase metallicity in a sample of star-forming galaxies from the MaNGA survey. Satellite galaxies with stellar masses in the range $9<\log(M_{*}/M_{\odot})<10$ are found to be $\sim 0.05 \, \mathrm{dex}$ higher in metallicity than centrals of similar stellar mass. Within the low-mass satellite population, we find that the interstellar medium (ISM) metallicity depends most strongly on the stellar mass of the galaxy that is central to the halo, though there is no obvious difference in the metallicity gradients. At fixed total stellar ma…
Within the standard model of hierarchical galaxy formation in a ΛCDM Universe, the environment of galaxies is expected to play a key role in driving galaxy formation and evolution. In this paper we investigate whether and how the gas metallicity and the star formation surface density (Σ_SFR) depend on galaxy environment. To this end we analyse a sample of 1162 local, star-forming galaxies from the galaxy survey Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA). Generally, both parameters do not show any significant dependence on environment. However, in agreement with previous studies, we find that low-m…
Aims. With the aim of performing an analysis of the orientations of galaxy pair systems with respect to the underlying large-scale structure, we study the alignment between the axis connecting the pair galaxies and the host cosmic filament where the pair resides. In addition, we analyze the dependence of the amplitude of the alignment on the morphology of pair members as well as filament properties. Methods. We build a galaxy pair catalog requiring $r_p < 100\kpc$ and $ΔV < 500 \kms $ within redshift $z<0.1$ from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We divided the galaxy pair catalog taking in…
The cold dark matter model predicts that dark matter haloes are connected by filaments. Direct measurements of the masses and structure of these filaments are difficult, but recently several studies have detected these dark-matter-dominated filaments using weak lensing. Here we study the efficiency of galaxy formation within the filaments by measuring their total mass-to-light ratios and stellar mass fractions. Specifically, we stack pairs of Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) with a typical separation on the sky of $8 h^{-1}$ Mpc. We stack background galaxy shapes around pairs to obtain mass maps t…
Determining the positions of halo centres in large-scale structure surveys is crucial for many cosmological studies. A common assumption is that halo centres correspond to the location of their brightest member galaxies. In this paper, we study the dynamics of brightest galaxies with respect to other halo members in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR7. Specifically, we look at the line-of-sight velocity and spatial offsets between brightest galaxies and their neighbours. We compare those to detailed mock catalogues, constructed from high-resolution, dark-matter-only $N$-body simulations, in which…
We perform a Halo Occupation Distribution (HOD) modeling of the projected two-point correlation function (2PCF) of quasars that are observed in the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope with counter-parts in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release (DR)-8 quasar catalog at a median redshift of $z\sim 1.04 (\pm 0.58)$. Using a four parameter HOD model we derive the host mass scales of WISE selected quasars. Our results show that the median halo masses of central and satellite quasars lie in the range $M_{\mathrm{cen}} = (5 \pm 1.0) \times 10^{12} M_{\odot}$ and $M_{\mathr…
We conduct a survey of satellite galaxies around the nearby spiral NGC 4258 by combining spectroscopic observations from the Apache Point Observatory 3.5-meter telescope with SDSS spectra. New spectroscopy is obtained for 15 galaxies. Of the 47 observed objects, we categorize 8 of them as probable satellites, 8 as possible satellites, and 17 as unlikely to be satellites. We do not speculate on the membership of the remaining 14 galaxies due to a lack of velocity and distance information. Radially integrating our best fit NFW profile for NGC 4258 yields a total mass of 1.8e12 Msun within 200 kp…
We present the measurements and modelling of the small-to-intermediate scale (0.1--25 Mpc/h) projected and three-dimensional (3D) redshift-space two-point correlation functions (2PCFs) of local galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 7. We find a clear dependence of galaxy clustering on luminosity in both projected and redshift spaces, generally being stronger for more luminous samples. The measurements are successfully interpreted within the halo occupation distribution (HOD) framework with central and satellite velocity bias parameters to describe galaxy kinematics insid…
Using reconstructed initial conditions in the SDSS survey volume, we carry out constrained hydrodynamic simulations in three regions representing different types of the cosmic web: the Coma cluster of galaxies; the SDSS great wall; and a large low-density region at $z\sim 0.05$. These simulations, which include star formation and stellar feedback but no AGN formation and feedback, are used to investigate the properties and evolution of intergalactic and intra-cluster media. About half of the warm-hot intergalactic gas is associated with filaments in the local cosmic web. Gas in the outskirts o…
We investigate how environment affects satellite galaxies using their location within the projected phase-space of their host haloes from the Wang et al.'s group catalogue. Using the Yonsei Zoom in Cluster Simulations, we derive zones of constant mean infall time T_inf in projected phase-space, and catalogue in which zone each observed galaxy falls. Within each zone we compute the mean observed galaxy properties including specific star formation rate, luminosity-weighted age, stellar metallicity and [alpha/Fe] abundance ratio. By comparing galaxies in different zones, we inspect how shifting t…
We investigate how large-scale cosmic filaments impact the quenching of galaxies within one virial radius of 324 simulated clusters from The Three Hundred project. We track cosmic filaments with the versatile, observation-friendly program DisPerSE and identify halos hosting galaxies with VELOCIRaptor. We find that cluster galaxies close to filaments tend to be more star-forming, bluer, and contain more cold gas than their counterparts further away from filaments. This effect is recovered at all stellar masses. This is in stark contrast with galaxies residing outside of clusters, where galaxies…
We perform a comparative analysis of the properties of galaxies infalling into groups classifying them accordingly to whether they are: falling along filamentary structures; or they are falling isotropically. For this purpose, we identify filamentary structures connecting massive groups of galaxies in the SDSS. We perform a comparative analysis of some properties of galaxies in filaments, in the isotropic infall region, in the field, and in groups. We study the luminosity functions (LF) and the dependence of the specific star formation rate (SSFR) on stellar mass, galaxy type, and projected di…
We study 379 central and 159 satellite early-type galaxies with two-dimensional kinematics from the integral-field survey Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) to determine how their angular momentum content depends on stellar and halo mass. Using the Yang et. al. (2007) group catalog, we identify central and satellite galaxies in groups with halo masses in the range 10^12.5 h^-1 M_sun < M_200b < 10^15 h^-1 M_sun. As in previous work, we see a sharp dependence on stellar mass, in the sense that ~ 70% of galaxies with stellar mass M_* > 10^11 h^-2 M_sun tend to have very little rotation, while…
We have investigated the effect of group environment on residual star formation in galaxies, using Galex NUV galaxy photometry with the SDSS group catalogue of Yang et al. (2007). We compared the (NUV $- r$) colours of grouped and non-grouped galaxies, and find a significant increase in the fraction of red sequence galaxies with blue (NUV $- r$) colours outside of groups. When comparing galaxies in mass matched samples of satellite (non-central), and non-grouped galaxies, we found a > 4σ difference in the distribution of (NUV $- r$) colours, and an (NUV $- r$) blue fraction $> 3σ$ higher outsi…
We announce the discovery of the Aquarius~2 dwarf galaxy, a new distant satellite of the Milky Way, detected on the fringes of the VST ATLAS and the SDSS surveys. The object was originally identified as an overdensity of Red Giant Branch stars, but chosen for subsequent follow-up based on the presence of a strong Blue Horizontal Branch, which was also used to measure its distance of $\sim 110$ kpc. Using deeper imaging from the IMACS camera on the 6.5m Baade and spectroscopy with DEIMOS on Keck, we measured the satellite's half-light radius $5.1\pm 0.8$ arcmin, or $\sim 160$ pc at this distanc…
