Bibcode
Mills, John; Spiniello, Chiara; Sergeyev, Alexey; Tortora, Crescenzo; Khramtsov, Vladyslav; D'Ago, Giuseppe; Maksymowicz-Maciata, Michalina; Benedetti, João P. V.; Ferré-Mateu, Anna; Cappellari, Michele; Davies, Roger; Hartke, Johanna; Rosen, Charles
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Advertised on:
8
2025
Citations
1
Refereed citations
1
Description
This paper presents the first effort to Extend the Investigation of Stellar Populations In RElics (E-INSPIRE). We present a catalogue of 430 spectroscopically confirmed ultra-compact massive galaxies (UCMGs) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey at redshifts $0.01< z< 0.3$. This increases the original INSPIRE sample eightfold, bridging the gap with the local Universe. For each object, we compute integrated stellar velocity dispersion, age, metallicity, and [Mg/Fe] through spectroscopic stellar population analysis. We infer star formation histories (SFHs), metallicity evolution histories (MEHs) and compute the Degree of Relicness (DoR) of each object. The UCMGs, covering a wide range of DoR from 0.05 to 0.88, can be divided into three groups, according to how extreme their SFH was. The first group consists of 81 extreme relics ($\text{DoR}\gtrsim 0.6$) that have formed the totality of their stellar mass by $z\sim 2$ and have super-solar metallicities at all cosmic epochs. The second group ($0.3\lesssim \text{DoR}\lesssim 0.6$) contains 293 objects also characterized by peaked SFHs but with a small percentage of later-formed stars and with a variety of MEHs. The third group ($\text{DoR}\lesssim 0.3$), has 56 objects that cannot be considered relics since they have extended SFHs and formed a non-negligible fraction (${>}25$ per cent) of their stellar mass at $z< 2$. We conclude that the most efficient method of finding relics is to select UCMGs with a combination of large velocity dispersion values (as already found by INSPIRE), super-solar metallicities and high [Mg/Fe].
Related projects
Traces of Galaxy Formation: Stellar populations, Dynamics and Morphology
We are a large, diverse, and very active research group aiming to provide a comprehensive picture for the formation of galaxies in the Universe. Rooted in detailed stellar population analysis, we are constantly exploring and developing new tools and ideas to understand how galaxies came to be what we now observe.
Anna
Ferré Mateu