Galactic Morphology and Environmental Analysis using the Pointwise Fractal Dimension
Session 62 -- Large Scale Structures
Display presentation, Thursday, 2, 1994, 10:00-11:30

## [62.02] Galactic Morphology and Environmental Analysis using the Pointwise Fractal Dimension

J. S. Best, J. C. Charlton (Pennsylvania State University)

The aim of this paper is to explore a new statistical technique, for the description of large-scale structure, that should be particularly illuminating for the study of correlations between the morphological type of a galaxy and its environment. We use a technique called the pointwise fractal dimension (Holzfuss and Mayer-Kress 1986) to analyze a sample of galaxies selected from the RC3 catalog (de Vaucouleurs et al. 1991). In studies of the varying clustering properties of galaxies of different morphological types, the two-point correlation function has often been calculated for separate samples containing only galaxies of a given type. The pointwise fractal dimension allows study of the environments around each galaxy separately, including all other galaxies. We have found that the tendency for early type galaxies to cluster more strongly than late type galaxies still holds true on scales up to roughly 30 Mpc. However, the similarity of the pointwise fractal dimensions of certain early and late type galaxies raises the issue of whether or not environment alone is responsible for morphological segregation.

\bigskip \noindent de Vaucouleurs, G. et al. 1991, Third Reference Catalog of Bright Galaxies (New York: Springer-Verlag).

\noindent Holzfuss, J., \& Mayer-Kress, G. 1986, in Dimensions and Entropies in Chaotic Systems, ed. G. Mayer-Kress (Berlin: Springer-Verlag), 114.