Star formation histories of nearby elliptical galaxies. II. Merger remnant sample

Creators: Howell, Justin H.

Abstract

This work presents high signal-to-noise spectroscopic observations of a sample of six suspected merger remnants, selected primarily on the basis of H I tidal debris detections. Single stellar population analysis of these galaxies indicates that their ages, metallicities, and α-enhancement ratios are consistent with those of a representative sample of nearby elliptical galaxies. The expected stellar population of a recent merger remnant, a young age combined with low [α/Fe], is not seen in any H I-selected galaxy. However, one galaxy (NGC 2534) is found to deviate from the Z-plane in the sense expected for a merger remnant. Another galaxy (NGC 7332), selected by other criteria, best matches the merger remnant expectations.

Additional Information

© 2006 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2005 January 3; accepted 2006 January 30. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This work also made use of the Gauss-Hermite Pixel Fitting Software developed by R. P. van der Marel. J. H. H. was supported in part by an ARCS Fellowship. This research was supported in part by NSF grant AST 05-07483 to the University of California, Santa Cruz. We thank Ricardo Schiavon, Sandy Faber, Jean Brodie, and Mike Beasley for helpful conversations, Rob Proctor for the use of his multi-index fitting code and several important comments, and the anonymous referee for comments that significantly improved the paper.

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