Clusters at half hubble time: galaxy structure and colors in rx j0152.7-1357 and ms 1054-03

Mar, 2006
30 pages
Published in:
  • Astrophys.J. 644 (2006) 30-53
e-Print:

Citations per year

20062010201420182022051015
Abstract: (arXiv)
We study the photometric and structural properties of spectroscopically confirmed members in the two massive X-ray--selected z=0.83 galaxy clusters MS1054-03 and RXJ0152-1357 using three-band mosaic imaging with the Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys. The samples include 105 and 140 members of MS1054-03 and RXJ0152-1357, respectively, with ACS F775W magnitude < 24.0. We develop a promising new structural classification method, based on a combination of the best-fit Sersic indices and the normalized root-mean-square residuals from the fits: the resulting classes agree well with the visual ones, but are less affected by galaxy orientation. We examine the color--magnitude relations in detail and find that the color residuals correlate with the local mass density measured from our weak lensing maps: we identify a threshold density of Σ0.1\Sigma \approx 0.1, in units of the critical density, above which the star formation appears to cease. For RXJ0152-1357, we also find a trend in the color residuals with velocity, resulting from an offset of about 980 km/s in the mean redshifts of the early- and late-type galaxies. Analysis of the color--color diagrams indicates that a range of star formation time-scales are needed to reproduce the loci of the galaxy colors. We also identify some cluster galaxies whose colors can only be explained by large amounts, AV1A_V \approx 1 mag, of internal dust extinction. [Abstract shortened]
  • cosmology: observations
  • galaxies: clusters: individual (MS 1054-0321, RX J0152.7-1357)
  • galaxies: elliptical and lenticular, cD
  • galaxies: evolution