AAS Meeting #193 - Austin, Texas, January 1999
Session 9. Elliptical Galaxies
Display, Wednesday, January 6, 1999, 9:20am-6:30pm, Exhibit Hall 1

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[9.08] Isolated Elliptical Galaxies: A Survey

C. E. Aars, P. M. Marcum (TCU), M. N. Fanelli (UNT)

Elliptical galaxies are believed to be the remnants of interaction or merger (Kormendy and Djorgovski, 1989) and are typically found in highly clustered regions of the universe. We are investigating a sample of elliptical galaxies that have been potentially isolated for longer than 15 Gyr. If these elliptical galaxies have indeed been isolated for that period of time, "environmental conditions" at the time of formation remain as the only way to explain these ellipticals' current morphology. We present the results of an initial survey of elliptical galaxies, in the northern hemisphere, that are potentially isolated from their nearest neighbors by distances of more than 5 Mpc. Each galaxy in the survey has been imaged in a mosaic that covers a 2 Mpc region around it. The mosaics have been searched for galaxies that are potentially physically close to the survey galaxy. Furthermore, within the limits of each image's resolution, each survey galaxy's morphology has been confirmed as elliptical. This is the first step in an ongoing project to study these candidate isolated galaxies in detail.


The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: ceaars@delta.is.tcu.edu

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