AAS 205th Meeting, 9-13 January 2005
Session 38 Cosmic Evolution of Mass and Metallicity
Oral, Monday, January 10, 2005, 2:00-3:30pm, Town and Country

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[38.05] The Evolution of the Mass-Metallicity Relation

J. Moustakas, D. Zaritsky (University of Arizona), AGN and Galaxy Evolution Survey (AGES) Team

We investigate the star-formation and chemical-abundance properties of ~3500 field galaxies at 0< z<0.4 from the AGN and Galaxy Evolution Survey (AGES). AGES has obtained spectrophotometry for ~10,000 galaxies brighter than R=19.2 in the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey (NDWFS) Bootes field, which has existing BwRIK and Spitzer 3.6-160-micron imaging. We use population synthesis to derive accurate stellar absorption corrections and estimates of the dust reddening from the Balmer decrement. We study the metallicity, excitation, and star-formation properties of our sample as a function of luminosity and stellar mass. We quantify the evolution in the mass-metallicity relation over the past ~4 Gyr by comparing our results with the mass-metallicity relation derived locally from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Observations reported here were obtained at the MMT Observatory, a joint facility of the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Arizona.


The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: jmoustakas@as.arizona.edu

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© 2004. The American Astronomical Society.