Relationship between Environment and the Broadband Optical Properties of Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

We examine the relationship between environment and the luminosities, surfacebrightnesses, colors, and profile shapes of luminous galaxies in the SloanDigital Sky Survey (SDSS). For the SDSS sample, galaxy color is the galaxyproperty most predictive of the local environment. Galaxy color and luminosityjointly comprise the most predictive pair of properties. At fixed luminosityand color, density is not closely related to surface brightness or to Sersicindex -- the parameter in this study that astronomers most often associate withmorphology. In the text, we discuss what measureable residual relationshipsexist, generally finding that at red colors and fixed luminosity, the meandensity decreases at the highest surface brightnesses and Sersic indices. Ingeneral, these results suggest that the morphological properties of galaxiesare less closely related to galaxy environment than are their masses andstar-formation histories.