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2.8. Galactic Content in Rich Clusters
The fraction of elliptical, S0, and spiral galaxies in rich clusters differs from that in the field, and depends on the classification type, or density, of the cluster (see Section 2.11) (Bahcall 1977; Oemler 1974; Dressler 1980). See Table 4.
Cluster type | E | S0 | Sp | (E+S0)/Sp |
Regular clusters (cD) | 35% | 45% | 20% | 4.0 |
Intermediate clusters (spiral-poor) | 20% | 50% | 30% | 2.3 |
Irregular clusters (spiral-rich) | 15% | 35% | 50% | 1.0 |
Field | 10% | 20% | 70% | 0.5 |
The fraction of elliptical (E) and S0 galaxies increases and the fraction of spirals decreases toward the central cores of rich compact clusters. The fraction of spiral galaxies in the dense cores of some rich clusters (e.g., the Coma cluster) may be close to zero.
The galactic content of clusters as represented in
Table 4
is part of the general density-morphology relation of galaxies
(Dressler 1980;
Postman and Geller 1984);
as the local density of galaxies increases, the fraction
of E and S0 galaxies increases and the fraction of spirals decreases. For
local galaxy densities ng
5 galaxies
Mpc-3, the fractions remain
approximately constant at the average "Field" fractions listed above.