Semi-empirical analysis of Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies - I. Spectral synthesis method

The study of stellar populations in galaxies is entering a new era with the availability of large and high-quality data bases of both observed galactic spectra and state-of-the-art evolutionary synthesis models. In this paper we investigate the power of spectral synthesis as a means to estimate the physical properties of galaxies. Spectral synthesis is nothing more than the decomposition of an observed spectrum in terms of a superposition of a base of simple stellar populations of various ages and metallicities, producing as output the star formation and chemical histories of a galaxy, its extinction and velocity dispersion. Our implementation of this method uses the recent models of Bruzual & Charlot and…

• NS
  National Science Foundation
• UD
  U.S. Department of Energy
• NA
  National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• AP
  Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
• PU
  Princeton University
• UO
  University of Chicago
• UO
  University of Washington
• JH
  Johns Hopkins University
• NM
  New Mexico State University
• FD
  Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo
• CN
  Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico
• M
  Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
• MF
  Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie
• UN
  U.S. Naval Observatory
• F
  Fermilab
• LA
  Los Alamos National Laboratory