Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2008-12-03
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
8 pages, 4 figures, requires asp2006.sty, to be published in Galaxy Evolution: Emerging Insights and Future Challenges, ed. S.
Scientific paper
This paper summarizes Kormendy et al. (2009, ApJS, in press, arXiv:0810.1681). We confirm that spheroidal galaxies have fundamental plane correlations that are almost perpendicular to those for bulges and ellipticals. Spheroidals are not dwarf ellipticals. They are structurally similar to late-type galaxies. We suggest that they are defunct ("red and dead") late-type galaxies transformed by a variety of gas removal processes. Minus spheroidals, ellipticals come in two varieties: giant, non-rotating, boxy galaxies with cuspy cores and smaller, rotating, disky galaxies that lack cores. We find a new feature of this "E-E dichotomy": Coreless ellipticals have extra light at the center with respect to an inward extrapolation of the outer Sersic profile. We suggest that extra light is made in starbursts that swamp core scouring in wet mergers. In general, only giant, core ellipticals contain X-ray gas halos. We suggest that they formed in mergers that were kept dry by X-ray gas heated by active galactic nuclei.
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