The size of galaxies does not depend on their environment

21/08/2014

Cosmological models predict that the evolution of galaxies is different depending on their environment. One of the observational tools that reflects the evolutionary paths followed by galaxies after their formation is the relation between their size and stellar mass. María Cebrián (SO PhD student) and Ignacio Trujillo, researchers of the IAC and the ULL, have investigated that relation for nearby galaxies, finding that environment does not play a key role in it. While galaxies in less dense environments are slightly larger than those in high-density regions, this difference is very small. Their results, which have been recently published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, suggest an earlier evolution of galaxies in clusters, which may have slowed down in the past few Gyr, allowing objects in less dense environments to reach similar sizes to those located in high-density regions.