E-INSPIRE – I. Bridging the gap with the local Universe: stellar population of a statistical sample of ultra-compact massive galaxies at z < 0.3
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press 541:3 (2025) 2440-2458
Abstract:
This paper presents the first effort to Extend the Investigation of Stellar Populations In RElics (E-INSPIRE). We present a catalogue of 430 spectroscopically confirmed ultra-compact massive galaxies (UCMGs) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey at redshifts . This increases the original INSPIRE sample eightfold, bridging the gap with the local Universe. For each object, we compute integrated stellar velocity dispersion, age, metallicity, and [Mg/Fe] through spectroscopic stellar population analysis. We infer star formation histories (SFHs), metallicity evolution histories (MEHs) and compute the Degree of Relicness (DoR) of each object. The UCMGs, covering a wide range of DoR from 0.05 to 0.88, can be divided into three groups, according to how extreme their SFH was. The first group consists of 81 extreme relics () that have formed the totality of their stellar mass by and have super-solar metallicities at all cosmic epochs. The second group () contains 293 objects also characterized by peaked SFHs but with a small percentage of later-formed stars and with a variety of MEHs. The third group (), has 56 objects that cannot be considered relics since they have extended SFHs and formed a non-negligible fraction ( per cent) of their stellar mass at . We conclude that the most efficient method of finding relics is to select UCMGs with a combination of large velocity dispersion values (as already found by INSPIRE), super-solar metallicities and high [Mg/Fe].The ALMA-CRISTAL survey
Astronomy & Astrophysics EDP Sciences 689 (2024) a145
Using the motion of S2 to constrain vector clouds around Sgr A*
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) 530:4 (2024) 3740-3751
An ∼600 pc View of the Strongly Lensed, Massive Main-sequence Galaxy J0901: A Baryon-dominated, Thick Turbulent Rotating Disk with a Clumpy Cold Gas Ring at z = 2.259
The Astrophysical Journal American Astronomical Society 942:2 (2023) 98
First light for GRAVITY Wide
Astronomy & Astrophysics EDP Sciences 665 (2022) a75