On the plane to LA, I sketched out a short paper on using the central stellar densities of galaxies to show that red galaxies are not faded versions of blue galaxies, that if blue galaxies are to fade into red galaxies, there need to be huge star-formation events, and that we can identify the predecessors of present-day red galaxies by looking for blue galaxies with huge surface brightnesses. Working title: Blue galaxies would rather burn out than fade away
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2006-05-15
central stellar densities
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What do the faded blue galaxies become? Small bulge S0s?
ReplyDeleteanon: The point is that there are no galaxies (or virtually no galaxies) in the local Universe that look like faded spirals (there are some at z=1, as shown by Ben Weiner), so all the blue galaxies must choose to burn out rather than fade away. Strange, huh? Or else no transformations ever occur...?
ReplyDeleteSo are the starbursts we do see right to be the ancestors of red galaxies?
ReplyDeleteAnd do we see enough of them to make the observed numbers of red galaxies?
anon: great question; that is the goal of a number of our projects right now.
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