Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2004-05-07
Astrophys.J. 611 (2004) L89-
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
accepted to ApJ Letters with minor revisions; color printing essential to understand figures; full-resolution version at htt
Scientific paper
10.1086/423785
Galaxies over four decades in stellar mass are shown to obey a strong correlation between u-K colors and atomic-gas-to-stellar mass ratios (G/S), using stellar mass-to-light ratios derived from optical colors. The correlation holds for G/S ranging from nearly 10:1 to 1:100 for a sample obtained by merging the SDSS DR2, 2MASS, and HYPERLEDA HI catalogs. This result implies that u-K colors can be calibrated to provide ``photometric gas fractions'' for statistical applications. Here this technique is applied to a sample of ~35,000 SDSS-2MASS galaxies to examine the relationship of gas fractions to observed bimodalities in galaxy properties as a function of color and stellar mass. The recently identified transition in galaxy properties at stellar masses \~2-3x10^10 Msun corresponds to a shift in gas richness, dividing low-mass late-type galaxies with G/S ~ 1:1 from high-mass galaxies with intermediate-to-low G/S. Early-type galaxies below the transition mass also show elevated G/S, consistent with formation scenarios involving mergers of low-mass gas-rich systems and/or cold-mode gas accretion.
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