Calibrating the fundamental plane with SDSS DR8 data

Autor(en)
Christoph Saulder, Steffen Mieske, Werner W. Zeilinger, Igor Chilingarian
Abstrakt

We present a calibration of the fundamental plane using SDSS Data Release 8. We analysed about 93 000 elliptical galaxies up to z < 0.2, the largest sample used for the calibration of the fundamental plane so far. We incorporated up-to-date K-corrections and used GalaxyZoo data to classify the galaxies in our sample. We derived independent fundamental plane fits in all five Sloan filters u, g, r, i, and z. A direct fit using a volume-weighted least-squares method was applied to obtain the coefficients of the fundamental plane, which implicitly corrects for the Malmquist bias. We achieved an accuracy of 15% for the fundamental plane as a distance indicator. We provide a detailed discussion on the calibrations and their influence on the resulting fits. These re-calibrated fundamental plane relations form a well-suited anchor for large-scale peculiar-velocity studies in the nearby universe. In addition to the fundamental plane, we discuss the redshift distribution of the elliptical galaxies and their global parameters.

Organisation(en)
Institut für Astrophysik
Externe Organisation(en)
European Southern Observatory (Germany), Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU)
Journal
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Band
557
Anzahl der Seiten
36
ISSN
0004-6361
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201321466
Publikationsdatum
09-2013
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
103004 Astrophysik, 103003 Astronomie
Schlagwörter
Link zum Portal
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/69ec5120-8314-4f91-b626-47f84a7dfbcf