Bibcode
Mármol-Queraltó, E.; Trujillo, I.; Pérez-González, P. G.; Barro, G.; Varela, J.; Villar, V.
Bibliographical reference
The Intriguing Life of Massive Galaxies, Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, IAU Symposium, Volume 295, pp. 181-181
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7
2013
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
Accretion of minor satellites has been postulated as the most likely
mechanism to explain the significant size evolution of massive galaxies
over cosmic time. A direct way of probing this scenario is to measure
the frequency of satellites around massive galaxies at different
redshifts. Here we present our study of satellites around massive
galaxies (M star ~ 1011 M⊙) up to z
~ 2. We find (Fig. 1) that the fraction of massive galaxies with
satellites down to 1:10 mass ratio is ~15% (~30% down to 1:100), not
varying with redshift (Mármol-Queraltó et al., (2012)). We
also find that our satellites are younger than their central galaxies at
low z (Mármol-Queraltó et al., 2013). Then, if minor
merging is acting to form massive galaxies, their ourtskirts should be
younger than their cores. The challenge to find this age gradient in
nearby massive galaxies is opened.