Kinematic morphology and it's relationship to local and global environment
Nicholas Scott (University of Sydney)
Nature vs. nurture is one of the most hotly debated topics in galaxy evolution and recent and upcoming 3D integral field spectroscopy of galaxies is providing a new and fruitful avenue to address this issue.
The SAURON and ATLAS3D integral field surveys proposed a new classification scheme for galaxies, based on the morphology of their stellar kinematics - their velocity fields - rather than simply their light profiles. They showed that a galaxy's kinematic morphology is closely related to its assembly history. Drawing on data from four separate integral field surveys of galaxies in the local Universe (covering the local field and the Fornax, Virgo, Coma and Abell1689 clusters), I will show how kinematic morphology depends on both a galaxy's global and local environments, and how this can be used to constrain the dominant formation mechanisms operating in these environments.