Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21560223k&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #215, #602.23; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 36, p.1124
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The arrival of galaxies on the red-sequence (RS) marks the beginning of the end in galaxy evolution, making the RS a cornerstone of many galaxy formation models. Measurements of the slope, scatter, and zeropoint of the cluster galaxy RS have been limited to z 1 clusters observed at high precision with HST, or to statistical samples at z 0.1 with unknown systematics in galaxy photometry. Here, we present two recent studies using each approach. The first employs HST observations of 13 galaxy clusters from the HST Cluster SN Survey and finds evidence that optically-selected galaxy clusters at z 1 have a larger intrinsic scatter in the RS than their X-ray selected counterparts. This suggests that RS galaxies in the former may have truncated their star-formation 1 Gyr later than those in X-ray selected clusters. The second uses 13,823 MaxBCG clusters from the SDSS to measure an apparent factor of 2 increase in the RS slope from z=0.1 to z=0.3; interestingly, this apparent increase is stronger than that expected by simple passive evolution models.
However, in addition to their limited redshift ranges, shortcomings in each study complicate interpretation: the former suffers from a small sample size, while the latter has systematic effects in the galaxy photometry and in the selection of RS galaxies. We thus conclude this poster by outlining a comprehensive solution that uses spectroscopy and precision HST measurements of a handful of clusters to calibrate systematics in RS measurements of 100,000 groups and clusters derived from the Red-Sequence Cluster Survey-2 over 0.1 < z < 1.0. Using these vast resources, this program will be the first to exhaustively "pinpoint" the RS. The resulting precision measurements will naturally challenge galaxy formation models to consistently explain the observed evolution in the RS over the last 8 Gyrs.
Barbary Kyle
Dawson Kyle S.
Gilbank David
Gladders Mike
Hao Jian-gang
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