Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2001-01-05
Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 327 (2001) 849
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Submitted to MNRAS, 19 pages
Scientific paper
10.1046/j.1365-8711.2001.04768.x
We derive physical parameters of galaxies from their observed spectrum, using MOPED, the optimized data compression algorithm of Heavens, Jimenez & Lahav 2000. Here we concentrate on parametrising galaxy properties, and apply the method to the NGC galaxies in Kennicutt's spectral atlas. We focus on deriving the star formation history, metallicity and dust content of galaxies. The method is very fast, taking a few seconds of CPU time to estimate 17 parameters, and so specially suited to study of large data sets, such as the Anglo-Australian 2 degree field galaxy survey and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Without the power of MOPED, the recovery of star formation histories in these surveys would be impractical. In the Kennicutt atlas, we find that for the spheroidals a small recent burst of star formation is required to provide the best fit to the spectrum. There is clearly a need for theoretical stellar atmospheric models with spectral resolution better than 1\AA if we are to extract all the rich information that large redshift surveys contain in their galaxy spectra.
Heavens Alan
Jimenez Raul
Reichardt Christian
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