Open AccessThe sizes of disc galaxies in intermediate‐redshift clusters
Author(s) -
Bamford S. P.,
MilvangJensen B.,
AragónSalamanca A.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
monthly notices of the royal astronomical society: letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.067
H-Index - 122
eISSN - 1745-3933
pISSN - 1745-3925
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-3933.2007.00307.x
Subject(s) - astrophysics , physics , cluster (spacecraft) , redshift , galaxy , galaxy cluster , computer science , programming language
We examine how the location of star formation within disc galaxies depends on environment at intermediate redshift. This is achieved by comparing emission‐line ( r em ) and rest‐frame B ‐band ( r B ) scalelengths for matched samples of 50 field and 19 cluster, star‐forming, disc galaxies, with 0.25 ≤ z ≤ 1.0 and M B ≤−19.5 mag. We find that at a given r B the majority of our cluster galaxies have r em smaller than those in the field, by 25 per cent on average. These results are compared with studies of local galaxies, which find a very similar behaviour. From the relations of r em and r B versus B ‐band absolute magnitude ( M B ) we infer that the difference between the intermediate‐ z cluster and field samples is mostly attributable to variation in r em at a given M B , while the r B versus M B relation is similar for the two samples.