Seminar
Structural properties of isolated galaxies

Abstract

Different components of galaxies are the result of internal and environmental processes during their lifetimes. Disentangling these processes is an important issue for understanding how galaxies form and evolve. In this context isolated galaxies provide a fruitful sample for exploring galaxies which have evolved mainly by internal processes (minimal merger/accretion/tidal effects). I will present the structural analysis performed as part of the AMIGA (Analysis of the interstellar Medium of Isolated GAlaxies; http://www.amiga.iaa.es) project. The analysis of the stellar mass-size relation of our spiral galaxies reveals a larger size for disks in low-density environments, as well as a dependence of disk size on the number of satellites. A 2D bulge/disk/bar decomposition of SDSS i-band images was performed in order to identify the pseudobulges in our sample. We derived (g-i) bulge colors and find a large fraction of pseudobulges in the red sequence of early-type galaxies. The bluer pseudobulges in our sample tend to be located in those galaxies more affected by tidal interactions. The properties of the majority of bulges in isolated galaxies suggest that pseudobulges formed most of their mass at an early epoch, and that specific environmental events may rejuvenate pseudobulges.