Bibcode
Koleva, M.; Prugniel, Ph.; De Rijcke, S.; Zeilinger, W. W.; Michielsen, D.
Bibliographical reference
Astronomische Nachrichten, Vol.330, Issue , p.960
Advertised on:
12
2009
Citations
21
Refereed citations
20
Description
The formation and evolution of galaxies is imprinted on their stellar
population radial gradients. Two recent articles present conflicting
results concerning the mass dependence of the metallicity gradients for
early-type dwarf galaxies. On one side, Spolaor et al. (2009) show a
tight positive correlation between the total metallicity [Z/H] and the
mass. On the other side, in a distinct sample, we do not find any trend
involving [Fe/H] (Koleva et al. 2009). In order to investigate the
origin of the discrepancy, we examine various factors that may affect
the determination of the gradients: namely the sky subtraction and the
signal-to-noise ratio. We conclude that our detection of gradients are
well above the possible analysis biases. Then, we measured the [Mg/Fe]
relative abundance profile and found moderate gradients. The derived
[Z/H] gradients scatter around -0.4 dex/r_e. The two samples contain the
same types of objects and the reason of the disagreement is still not
understood.
Based on observations made with ESO telescopes at La Silla Paranal
observatory under program ID076.B-0196