Barred Spirals on the Red Sequence - an important evolutionary stepping stone?

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Scientific paper

The first results from Galaxy Zoo 2 (Masters et al. 2011) show that the fraction of bars visually identified in SDSS disk galaxies is a strong function of the galaxy colour. We showed clear evidence for a colour bi-modality within disk galaxies, with a "red sequence" that is both bulge and bar dominated, and a "blue cloud" which has little, or no, evidence for a (classical) bulge or bar. The extreme of this population are the Galaxy Zoo red spirals (Masters et al. 2010) which are as red and passive as most ellipticals - and almost all have bars.
The bar forming instability in disk galaxies is well understood, but it remains unclear why some disks have bars and others do not. Bars have a clear impact on the evolution of a disk galaxy through their ability to move gas, stars and dark matter radially. We question if the bars can be responsible for the cessation of star formation which creates red spirals, or if bars are simply important side effects to environmental processes which turn spirals red.
Red spirals are not merely an unusual subset of disk galaxies of interest as a "curiosity", but may represent an important evolutionary stepping stone for all galaxies. Most disk galaxies may pass through a red spiral phase as they evolve from the blue cloud to the red sequence, and our work suggests that bars are intimately connected to this transformation.
This work was supported by the Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation through the 2008 IAU Fellowship, and by a 2010 Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship.

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