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# COLOR GRADIENTS IN EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES IN ABELL 2199

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Elliptical galaxies which reside in a cluster show a tight color-magnitude (CM) relation; brighter ellipticals are systematically redder than fainter ones (e.g., Bower, Lucey, & Ellis 1992). Recently, it has been found that the relation still holds even in distant rich clusters up to $`z1`$ (e.g., Stanford, Eisenhardt, & Dickinson 1998). Based on these observational results, galaxy evolution models taking into account chemical evolution claim that ellipticals in rich clusters formed at high redshift (e.g., $`z>3`$) by a monolithic collapse of a gas cloud (e.g., Kodama & Arimoto 1997; Kodama et al. 1998). However there is another formation scenario for elliptical galaxies, i.e., the hierarchical merging scenario, which may also explain these observational results (e.g., Kauffmann & Charlot 1998; Shioya & Bekki 1998). Which of the scenarios dominates the formation of elliptical galaxies has been one of the controversial issues. In order to address this problem, observational properties representing histories of dynamical evolution such as merging histories as well as histories of chemical evolution of galaxies should be focused on. One of the promising candidates is a radial variation of stellar metallicity, i.e., a metallicity gradient, in an elliptical galaxy.

Metallicity gradients in elliptical galaxies are expected to represent how the galaxies have assembled. In the monolithic collapse scenario, a metallicity gradient in an elliptical galaxy can be built up by a dissipative collapse in its formation phase associated with a burst of star formation and a subsequent galactic wind, because of a more extended period of active star formation and more metal enrichment in the inner region (Larson 1974a, b; Carlberg 1984; Martinelli et al. 1998; Tantalo et al. 1998; Kawata 1999). In addition, more massive ellipticals are predicted to have steeper gradients (Larson 1974b; Carlberg 1984). In the hierarchical merging scenario, stellar populations in the progenitor galaxies are expected to be well mixed in major mergers and the existing metallicity gradients are likely to be diluted (White 1980). Although metallicity gradients may be newly produced due to secondary star formations induced by mergers (e.g., Mihos & Hernquist 1994), these gradients are suggested to be appreciably shallower than those expected by the monolithic collapse scenario (Bekki & Shioya 1999). It should be mentioned that in this scenario, the metallicity gradients would be different from galaxy to galaxy due to their different histories of mass assembly and star formation. Therefore, no strong correlation between metallicity gradient and galaxy mass would be expected. Although more massive ellipticals might have shallower gradients because they are expected to experience more galaxy mergers in the hierarchical merging scheme and their metallicity gradients may be smeared out more seriously, it is opposite to the correlation expected by the monolithic collapse scenario.

Evolutionary histories of elliptical galaxies can be dependent on galaxy environment. The presence of tight CM relations in rich clusters at high redshift seems to support the monolithic formation at, e.g., $`z3`$ for ellipticals in such high density environments (e.g., Kodama et al. 1998). Even in the Cold Dark Matter (CDM) universe, high peaks of density fluctuations at such high redshifts could form giant galaxies and be related to clusters of galaxies along the biased galaxy formation scenario (Peacock 1999 and references therein). Since it is expected that the mean density of matter is high and objects are gas-rich at those epochs, formations of galaxies are predicted to be accelerated. This implies that elliptical galaxies in dense environments formed through bursts of star formation at high redshift, which mimic the initial starbursts expected in the monolithic collapse scenario, and tend to reside in rich clusters. On the other hand, the field corresponds to the environment without such high peaks of density fluctuations. The density fluctuations are expected to evolve more slowly and collapse at lower redshifts. Galaxies would evolve more quiescently through bottom-up processes of smaller sub-galaxies and could settle down to disk galaxies preferentially. In this case, elliptical galaxies are more likely to form through major mergers of disk galaxies at low redshifts (e.g., $`z<2`$). Indeed, some recent observational or theoretical studies suggest that elliptical galaxies which formed through major mergers tend to inhabit in field environments and they have experienced mergers inducing star formation until recent epochs such as $`z\begin{array}{c}<\hfill \\ \hfill \end{array}1`$ (e.g., Baugh et al. 1996; Governato et al. 1999; Kauffmann 1996; Menanteau et al. 1999; Menanteau, Abraham, & Ellis 2001). Such late star forming activities could make their luminosity-weighted ages at $`z=0`$ systematically younger (Terlevich & Forbes 2002).

In summary, if we consider that elliptical galaxies in cluster environments are suggested to have formed through a process like the monolithic collapse while those in sparse environments are through major mergers, the formers are predicted to have steeper metallicity gradients on average than the latter. Also, a clear correlation between metallicity gradients and global properties of galaxies (mass, size, luminosity, etc) is not expected for ellipticals in sparse environments but expected for cluster ellipticals. To see whether observational data show these kinds of environmental dependence or not will provide strong constraints on the formation processes of galaxies and the roles played by galaxy environments in evolutionary histories of galaxies.

Although the above issues motivate us to examine metallicity gradients in elliptical galaxies, the problem is how the gradients are to be examined observationally. It is known that nearby elliptical galaxies have color gradients; colors in an elliptical galaxy gradually become bluer with increasing radius (e.g., Vader et al. 1988; Franx, Illingworth, & Heckman 1989; Peletier et al. 1990a; Peletier, Valentijn, & Jameson 1990b; Goudfrooij et al. 1994; Michard 1999; Idiart, Michard, & de Freitas Pacheco 2002). Although the age–metallicity degeneracy prevents us from interpreting the origin of the color gradients to be the metallicity gradients, an evolution of a color gradient with redshift has been studied to disentangle the degeneracy and it is concluded that the primary origin of color gradients in elliptical are not the age gradients but the metallicity gradients both for the elliptical galaxies in field environments and for those in cluster environments (Tamura et al. 2000; Tamura & Ohta 2000; Saglia et al. 2000; see also Hinkley & Im 2001). It should be mentioned here that dust extinction may have some effects on a color gradient in an elliptical galaxy (Goudfrooij & de Jong 1995). As a matter of fact, if an elliptical galaxy consists of a mixture of stars without any population gradients and diffusely distributed dust, a calculation of the radiative transfer within the galaxy suggests that the color gradients could be reproduced only by the dust effects (Witt, Thronson, & Capuano 1992; Wise & Silva 1996). However, many elliptical galaxies show radial gradients of metal absorption line index such as Mg2, Fe1(5270 Å) and Fe2(5335 Å) as well as the color gradients (e.g., Carollo, Danziger, & Buson 1993; Davies, Sadler, & Peletier 1993; González 1993; Kobayashi & Arimoto 1999; Mehlert et al. 2000), and the radial gradients of the metal absorption line indices are unlikely to be created by dust extinction. It has also been suggested that on average, metallicity gradients in elliptical galaxies as estimated by a population synthesis model from color gradients are consistent with those estimated from absorption line index gradients (e.g., Peletier et al. 1990a; Davies et al. 1993), although there are exceptions. We thus assume that metallicity effects seem to be the prime cause of color gradients in elliptical galaxies. Although both color gradients and metal absorption line strength gradients can be used to trace the metallicity gradients, we study color gradients in this paper because broad band imaging observations are much easier to obtain high $`S/N`$ data to study the gradients in elliptical galaxies and to enlarge samples including further extension towards high $`z`$ in future.

The previous studies suggest that the color gradients in nearby elliptical galaxies do not correlate with any global properties (mass, luminosity, etc) of elliptical galaxies (e.g., Peletier et al. 1990a). Kobayashi & Arimoto (1999) presented the same results by compiling the data of the Mg2 gradients in the literature and constructing a large sample of nearby elliptical galaxies. These studies may support the merging scenario. However, it should be stressed that most of the ellipticals studied reside in low density environments such as field or group. Although some elliptical galaxies in Virgo cluster have been studied (Peletier et al. 1990a; Goudfrooij et al. 1994; Michard 1999; Idiart et al. 2002), Virgo cluster is not a rich cluster but a poor cluster with a rather sparse spatial distribution of galaxies. Therefore, it is unlikely to be sufficient to know whether there is a dependence of color gradient on galaxy environment or not, and one of the straightforward extensions to address this issue is to study elliptical galaxies in rich clusters.

In this study, we examine color gradients in elliptical galaxies in a nearby rich cluster, ABELL 2199. It is known that this cluster is significantly richer than Virgo cluster and is a spiral poor and centrally concentrated cD cluster (e.g., Butcher & Oemler 1985). It is also considered to be a relaxed cluster based on its regular and symmetrical appearance in X-ray (e.g., Buote & Canizares 1996). Although Coma cluster is a good candidate as a nearby typical rich cluster and global properties of the member galaxies have been well studied, it has been pointed out to be a merging cluster with two X-ray peaks (e.g., Caldwell et al. 1993; Burns et al. 1994) and thus the galaxies in Coma cluster may have been also disturbed by recent galaxy mergers. We consider that elliptical galaxies in a more regular and relaxed cluster should be studied at first.

The layout of this paper is as follows. Observation and data reduction are described in the next section. In § 3, sample definition is described and radial profiles of surface brightness and color of the sample galaxies are presented. Also, color gradients in the sample galaxies are derived and their statistical properties are investigated. We discuss implications of the results in § 4, and summarize this paper in § 5. We assume $`H_0=50`$ km s-1 Mpc-1 throughout this paper.

## 2 OBSERVATION AND DATA REDUCTION

Imaging observations in $`B`$ and $`R`$ bands were made on June 20 and 21, 2001, with Tektronix 2K$`\times `$2K CCD on the University of Hawaii 2.2m telescope. One pixel of the CCD chip corresponds to $`0_{}^{\prime \prime }22`$ and thus each frame covers an area of about $`7_{}^{}5\times 7_{}^{}5`$. Observation log is presented in Table 1. Although early-type (E, E/S0, and S0) galaxies in ABELL 2199 were primary targets in this observing run, the central region of ABELL 2634 was also observed as a pilot study to extend our sample to other clusters. (ABELL 2634 is also a centrally concentrated cluster but slightly less rich than ABELL 2199 (e.g., Pinkney et al. 1993).) In addition, 3 elliptical galaxies (NGC 5638, NGC 5831, and NGC 7619), of which color gradients were examined in the previous studies, were observed for comparison. A typical seeing size during the observing run was $`0_{}^{\prime \prime }9`$ in FWHM. Total exposure time at each field is typically 1,800 sec for $`B`$ band and 750 sec for $`R`$ band, each of which was divided into three or four exposures with dithering.

All of the imaging data were reduced with IRAF111IRAF is distributed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatories, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation in the standard procedure. After bias subtraction, flat-fielding by dome-flat frames, and sky subtraction were carried out in each frame, both of the $`B`$ and $`R`$ band images at each field were registered by sub-pixel shifts. Next, slight differences in flux among the images in each band were corrected by multiplying an image by a constant, and the FWHMs of the point spread functions (PSFs) were matched by convolutions of images with Gaussian kernels. These images were combined with the 3 $`\sigma `$ clipping algorithm. After a stacked image was made in each band, a PSF size in one band was matched to that in the other band by smoothing with Gaussian kernels. A resulting PSF size is typically $`1_{}^{\prime \prime }1`$ in FWHM.

The photometric calibration was done by using the standard stars in Landolt (1992). Aperture photometry was carried out after a subtraction of a local residual sky background around each galaxy, which was determined by “mode” in an annulus with an inner radius of $`3R_{25}`$ and a width of $`11^{\prime \prime }`$ (50 pix). In order to check the accuracy of the photometry and sky subtraction, growth curves of the objects were compared with those taken from HYPERCAT222http://www-obs.univ-lyon1.fr/hypercat: several galaxies in the clusters as well as NGC 5638, NGC 5831, and NGC 7619 have the data of aperture photometry. It is found that there seem to be zero-point offsets between our growth curves and those taken from HYPERCAT, though the amounts of the offsets are $`00.1`$ mag in each band. This may imply that the observational condition was slightly non-photometric. However, if we correct for the offsets in each field, a tight CM relation consistent with that observed in Coma cluster is obtained both in ABELL 2199 and in ABELL 2634. We calculated an average amount of the zero-point shift on each night and it is corrected for by a constant offset in the following analyses. Since we focus on a color gradient in a galaxy in this study, such zero-point offset does not cause any serious effects.

## 3 DATA ANALYSES AND RESULTS

### 3.1 Sample Definition

The target fields were chosen based on the catalogs of early-type galaxies in the clusters by Lucey et al. (1997). 40 early-type (E, E/S0, and S0) galaxies in ABELL 2199 and 11 early-type galaxies in ABELL 2634 are included in the fields; most of the galaxy morphology is originally from Butcher & Oemler (1985) and Rood & Sastry (1972), while for several galaxies which had not been classified in the literature, we provided morphological types to the galaxies based on eye inspection. Although we may be able to study color gradients of these morphologically selected galaxies, it is worth noting that there is a variety in spheroidal-to-total luminosity ratio among galaxies in each morphological type (Simien & de Vaucouleurs 1986). In addition, since the clusters studied here are relatively distant, visual classifications of morphology of fainter galaxies may be less reliable. In order to reduce contamination of disk dominated galaxies in a sample, we made azimuthally averaged radial surface brightness profiles in $`B`$ and $`R`$ bands of each galaxy, and performed decompositions of the profiles into bulge and disk components to estimate a bulge-to-total luminosity ratio ($`B/T`$).

The radial surface brightness profiles are obtained along ellipses fitted to the isophotes with the ELLIPSE task in the STSDAS package with a radial sampling of 0$`{}_{}{}^{\prime \prime }{}_{}{}^{}`$22 (1 pix) along major axis. In fitting an ellipse to an isophote, ellipticity is set to be a free parameter. Galaxy center is fixed to a centroid of a galaxy in the $`R`$ band image and position angle is also fixed to that of an ellipse within which half of the galaxy light is included. Even though position angle is allowed to be a free parameter, no significant differences in the surface brightness profiles appear. In the following analyses, all of the radial profiles and the parameters related to radius are expressed in terms of the equivalent radius of an ellipse: $`\sqrt{ab}`$, where $`a`$ and $`b`$ are the semi-major and semi-minor axes of the ellipse. The ELLIPSE task employs an iterative algorithm of rejecting pixels significantly deviant from an average on each ellipse. This enables us to eliminate effects of contamination of background/foreground objects at least to some extent. However, since bright objects in the neighbor of a target galaxy may have serious effects on the fitted ellipses, the neighbors are masked out beforehand. It is found that effective radii and color gradients are nearly invariant to whether these masking processes are applied or not and the differences are comparable to or smaller than errors in the individual measurements of the parameters. In practice, some galaxies are “embedded” in an envelope of a large galaxy in the neighbor. In order to dig a galaxy out of the envelope, we model the neighboring galaxy using the BMODEL task in the STSDAS package and subtract it. In most cases, an estimated effective radius and color gradient in such an “embedded” galaxy only slightly depend on whether the subtraction process is applied or not, though there are a few galaxies in which the discrepancies can amount to $`50`$% in effective radius and $`0.05`$ mag/dex in color gradient. Although we include galaxies in the following analyses and adopt the parameters estimated after the subtraction processes, they are flagged in the results to show that the subtraction processes are employed and the measurements of effective radii and color gradients may be more uncertain.

The decomposition was performed by fitting a surface brightness profile with the sum of an $`r^{1/4}`$ law bulge and an exponential disk profiles so as to minimize $`\chi ^2`$. We considered seeing effects on the surface brightness profiles using the formulation by Pritchet & Kline (1981). We chose to sample early-type galaxies of which $`B/T`$s in $`B`$ band are estimated to be larger than 0.6. This criterion isolates galaxies earlier than E/S0 or $`T3`$ according to Simien & de Vaucouleurs (1986), where $`B/T`$s of nearby galaxies are also derived in $`B`$ band. In this selection procedure, 31 galaxies are picked out in ABELL 2199, while $`13`$% (3/25) of the ellipticals (E and E/S0) and $`40`$% (6/15) of the S0 galaxies among the 40 ellipticals and S0s were excluded. In ABELL 2634, 7 galaxies are picked out and two of the elliptical galaxies and one of the S0 galaxies were excluded. These fractions are consistent with those expected from the dispersion of the relation between morphological type and $`B/T`$ suggested by Simien & de Vaucouleurs (1986). It is suggested according to the decomposition that in almost all the sample galaxies, spheroidal components dominate in surface brightness at radii where radial profiles of color are obtained reliably and color gradients are calculated. However, for two of the galaxies in ABELL 2199, their surface brightness profiles suggest that disk light starts dominating at a radius smaller than the outer cut-off radius in deriving a color gradient (see § 3.3 for detail of outer cut-off radius). Therefore, we excluded these two galaxies. Hence, the sample in ABELL 2199 consists of 29 early-type galaxies. The R band images of the sample galaxies are shown in the top panels of Figure 1, and their observational properties are listed in Table 2. The total magnitudes were obtained by using SExtractor (Bertin & Arnouts 1996) and the “BEST” magnitudes were adopted. A $`BR`$ color was calculated within an aperture whose radius is set to an effective radius of the galaxy in question. A central velocity dispersion ($`\sigma _0`$) and an Mg2 index are taken from Lucey et al. (1997).

The surface brightness profiles of these sample galaxies are shown in the middle panels of Figure 1. An error bar attached to each of the data points includes an photometric error, a local sky subtraction error, and a dispersion of surface brightness along each fitted ellipse. A local background around each object and its subtraction error were estimated by calculating a standard deviation around the mode in an annulus with an inner radius of $`3R_{25}`$ and a width of $`11^{\prime \prime }`$ (50 pix). In Figure 1(a) and 1(b), the sample galaxies in ABELL 2199 and those in ABELL 2634, respectively, are presented in order of $`R`$ band total magnitude. The three galaxies (NGC 5638, NGC 5831, and NGC 7619) which were taken for calibration purposes are shown in Figure 1(c). Effective radii ($`r_e`$) of the sample galaxies were derived by regression lines best fitted to the $`R`$ band surface brightness profiles. In fitting a regression line, the data points in the outermost regions of which $`S/N`$s are low were removed beforehand. In addition, the innermost regions probably flattened by the seeing effects were not used. The resulting fitting regions are shown by the two vertical solid lines in the middle panels of Figure 1. The effective radii obtained are presented in Table 2. It is mentioned that if the innermost regions are removed properly, they are almost insensitive to the inner and outer cutoff radii. The effective radii correlate with the $`R`$ band total magnitudes: more luminous galaxies have larger effective radii, which is related to the Fundamental Plane. (This correlation is referred to “scaling relation” hereafter.) Most of the sample galaxies have $`R`$ band total magnitudes between 14 mag and 16 mag, and in this magnitude range an effective radius typically varies from 6′′ to $`1^{\prime \prime }`$.

### 3.2 Two Dimensional Color Distributions and Radial Color Profiles

Before obtaining radial color profiles in the sample galaxies, it is worth addressing any trends seen in their two dimensional color distributions. We made the $`BR`$ color maps of the galaxies after the seeing sizes in both of the images were matched. In Figure 2(a) and 2(b), the color maps of the sample galaxies in ABELL 2199 and ABELL 2634, respectively, are presented in order of $`R`$ band total magnitude of a galaxy from left to right and from top to bottom. The three calibration galaxies (NGC 5638, NGC 5831, and NGC 7619) are presented in Figure 2(c). A cross mark in each panel shows the centroid of a galaxy in $`R`$ band. The regions with $`B`$ band surface brightness brighter than $``$ 23 mag/arcsec2 in the galaxies are indicated in these color maps and Gaussian smoothing with a kernel of $`0_{}^{\prime \prime }3`$ was performed for the clearer presentation. These are the pseudo color maps; a range of color adopted in each map is shown by the wedge at the right side of the panel and is different from galaxy to galaxy. We note that the features like vertical lines seen in BO 24 and NGC 7720 are caused by bad columns on the CCD surviving due to a small dithering scale in the horizontal direction at the fields. It is found that almost all the galaxies show axisymmetric color distributions independent of morphology and luminosity. This demonstrates that their radial color profiles and the color gradients represent the color distributions well.

The radial profiles of $`BR`$ color of the sample galaxies are shown in the bottom panels in Figure 1. Each color profile was constructed by subtracting the surface brightness profile in an $`R`$ band image from that in a $`B`$ band image. Both of these surface brightness profiles were made along the same ellipses fitted to isophotes in the $`R`$ band image. An error bar attached to each data point in the color profile includes a photometric error, a local sky subtraction error, and a dispersion of colors along each elliptical isophote. Most of these color profiles between the inner and outer cut-off radii (see next subsection for detail) seem to be linear, while some of them appear to bend in the outermost regions. Deeper data are essential to confirm whether the bends are real or not and to define a color profile of a galaxy out to a larger radius.

### 3.3 Color Gradients

A slope of a radial color profile, that is, a color gradient in each galaxy is derived by the least square fitting method using a portion of a color profile between an inner and outer cut-off radii, which are defined as follows.

The outer cut-off radius is defined to be a radius at which $`R`$ band surface brightness of a galaxy is 22.5 mag/arcsec2. This typically corresponds to a radius at which an error of $`BR`$ color amounts to $``$ 0.1 mag. An alternative definition of the outer cut-off radius could be effective radius. However, since a less luminous early-type galaxy tends to have a smaller effective radius, the number of data points available to fit a regression line to derive a color gradient is significantly reduced and thus the number of galaxies in which color gradients are derived reliably is also reduced. If a threshold in surface brightness is adopted to define the cut-off radius, the effects of the reductions are mitigated. It should be stressed here that the color profiles in most of the sample galaxies are well approximated by lines even if the regions beyond their effective radii are included. For these reasons, we have chosen to use not an effective radius but a radius defined by the surface brightness for the outer cut-off radius.

The inner cut-off radius is necessary to avoid seeing effects on color profiles. Colors in the inner regions of a galaxy are affected more seriously by seeing than those in the outer regions, which can cause some amount of change in color gradient. In order to understand seeing effects on color gradients in our data and to define the inner cut-off radius optimal for our study, galaxies simulated with the MKOBJECT task in the ARTDATA package are put onto blank fields in the stacked images. The model galaxies are assumed to have de Vaucouleurs law profiles, each of which is convolved with a Gaussian kernel with the same FWHM as that in the image. An integrated $`BR`$ color in a model galaxy is assumed to be 1.5 mag. An “intrinsic” color gradient is given to a model galaxy by adopting a smaller effective radius in $`R`$ band than that in $`B`$ band, and three cases of color gradient ($`d(BR)/d\mathrm{log}r=0.1,0.2`$, and $``$0.3 mag$`/`$dex) are simulated. Since seeing effects on color gradients may depend on angular size and ellipticity of galaxy (e.g., Peletier et al. 1990a), the parameters of the model galaxies are sampled from the ranges covered by the sample galaxies: apparent magnitude in $`R`$ band (14, 15, and 16 mag), effective radius (1′′, 3′′, and 6′′) and ellipticity (0.1, 0.4, and 0.7). The magnitude and effective radius were assigned to a model galaxy taking into account the scaling relation at the distance of the cluster and the typical dispersion around the relation. It should be also kept in mind that PSFs are not necessarily circular in real images. Since such non-circular PSFs may have effects on color gradients, they are also to be considered in the simulations. In order to see whether PSFs are circular in our data or not, we picked up bright stellar objects using SExtractor based on the “CLASS STAR” parameter and examined their shapes. It is found that PSFs tend to be slightly deviant from circles and the ellipticities are between 0 and 0.1, and a typical value is $`0.05`$. For position angle, it is suggested that the seeing effects on a color profile are more serious when the position angle of a non-circular PSF is perpendicular to that of a galaxy (e.g., Michard 1999). Accordingly, we assume a PSF with an ellipticity of 0.1 and a position angle perpendicular to that of a model galaxy to simulate the worse case.

The model galaxies are analyzed in the same way as the real galaxies including corrections for differences in seeing size between the $`B`$ and $`R`$ images, and their color profiles and color gradients are obtained. The simulations are executed in all the stacked images. In the following, several characteristics of the seeing effects on color profiles and color gradients are mentioned based on the results of the simulations.

(1) First, basic trends of the seeing effects on radial color profiles are described in a qualitative way. If a seeing size in a $`B`$ band image is larger than that in an $`R`$ band image, a color in the innermost portion after correction for the difference in seeing size between the images, which is referred to “convolved color” hereafter, becomes redder than the intrinsic color. The convolved color becomes bluer monotonically with increasing radius, and in the outer region, it becomes bluer than the intrinsic color. (The turnover occurs around an effective radius of a galaxy.) In other words, a color gradient steeper than the intrinsic value would be obtained due to the seeing effects. If a seeing size in an $`R`$ band image is larger, the convolved color becomes slightly bluer than the intrinsic one near the galaxy center and becomes redder with radius. After it overtakes the intrinsic color, the color profile has a peak and the convolved color becomes bluer with radius. Eventually, it becomes bluer than the intrinsic color in the outer region. Even in this case, a color gradient is estimated to be steeper than the intrinsic one, unless all the data points including the innermost one are used to derive a color gradient from the color profile.

(2) In the following, we mention the seeing effects more quantitatively together with dependencies of the seeing effects on parameters of the model galaxies. The deviation of the color gradient affected by seeing from the intrinsic value is larger for a galaxy with a smaller effective radius, i.e., with a more compact light distribution. A typical amount of the deviation is estimated to be $`0.02`$ mag/dex, $`0.04`$ mag/dex and $`0.08`$ mag/dex for an effective radius of $`6^{\prime \prime }`$, $`3^{\prime \prime }`$, and $`1^{\prime \prime }`$, respectively.

(3) The deviation is larger for a galaxy with a steeper intrinsic color gradient. Along with the variation of the intrinsic color gradient from $`0.1`$ to $`0.3`$ mag/dex, a typical amount of the deviation increases from $`0.02`$ mag/dex to $`0.08`$ mag/dex.

(4) If the intrinsic color gradient and effective radius are fixed to some values, there is no clear dependency of the seeing effects on ellipticity of the model galaxy.

Basically, a larger inner cut-off radius tends to make the seeing effects on a color gradient less serious. However, the number of the data points with high $`S/N`$s available to fit the regression line to the color profile would be also reduced and thus the error in the measurement of color gradient would be larger. This is likely to be more serious for the less luminous and thus smaller galaxy. Considering these effects, we decided to compromise and adopt $`1_{}^{\prime \prime }5`$ as the inner cut-off radius. It has to be mentioned that some residual seeing effects could still exist and the color gradient might be estimated to be steeper than the intrinsic one. The typical amount of the deviation is predicted to be $`0.01`$ mag$`/`$dex, $`0.02`$ mag$`/`$dex, and $`0.06`$ mag$`/`$dex for a galaxy with an effective radius of $`6^{\prime \prime }`$, $`3^{\prime \prime }`$, and $`1^{\prime \prime }`$, respectively. It is worth mentioning that each of these deviations is comparable to or smaller than the typical error in the individual measurement of color gradient in the model galaxy with each of the effective radii.

Finally, some comments are mentioned on the three galaxies of which color gradients were studied by Peletier et al. (1990a) (NGC 5638 and NGC 5831) and by Franx et al. (1989) (NGC 7619). In Figure 3, the radial profiles of $`BR`$ color obtained in this study and those in the previous studies are compared in the upper panels, and the differences are presented in the lower panels. The uncertainty of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }(BR)`$ at each radius is comparable to or larger than the error bar in the color profile obtained in this study. Color gradients of these galaxies are re-estimated by using the data for the color profiles in the literature and the outer cut-off radii defined in this study, while we adopted the inner cut-off radii defined in the literature. The resultant color gradients are compared in Table 3. For NGC 5638 and NGC 5831, the values agree reasonably with each other. For NGC 7619, although the difference in color gradient seems to be large, it is unlikely to be significant if the large error in the color profile presented by Franx et al. (1989) is considered.

### 3.4 Statistical Properties of Color Gradients

In Figure 4, histograms of $`BR`$ color gradients of the sample galaxies in ABELL 2199 and ABELL 2634 are shown. A width of each bin in the histograms is taken to be 0.05 mag/dex of $`d(BR)/d\mathrm{log}r`$, which is the typical uncertainty of the derived individual color gradient. A red solid line and a red dashed line depict the histograms for the galaxies in ABELL 2199 and in ABELL 2634, respectively. We calculated a mean value of color gradient and a standard deviation of each distribution, and summarized the results in Table 4. The mean value of the whole sample of ABELL 2199 and ABELL 2634 is $`d(BR)/d\mathrm{log}r=0.09`$ mag/dex with the standard deviation of $`0.030.04`$. A median value is also close to this. Although less luminous ($`R>15`$ mag) and smaller ($`r_e<3^{\prime \prime }`$) galaxies show steeper color gradients on average, this is unlikely to be significant in the histogram or the Table, if the characteristics of the seeing effects found in the simulations as well as the larger uncertainty in measurement of color gradient are taken into account. These results are independent of whether the “embedded” galaxies are excluded from the samples or not.

We next examine the relations between the color gradients and global properties of the cluster galaxies. In Figure 5, the $`BR`$ color gradients in the sample galaxies are plotted against $`R`$ band total magnitudes, effective radii, central velocity dispersions, and Mg2 indices. The $`R`$ band total magnitude and the effective radius are based on our data. For the $`R`$ band total magnitudes, the error includes the calibration error. For the effective radii, the error is based on 1 $`\sigma `$ fitting error in slope of the regression line to the surface brightness profile. The central velocity dispersion, Mg2 index, and their errors are taken from Lucey et al. (1997). Open circles denote the galaxies embedded in the envelope of a neighboring galaxy of which color gradients were obtained after the neighboring galaxy was modeled and subtracted. Red symbols indicate the galaxies with both the effective radius larger than $`3^{\prime \prime }`$ and the $`R`$ band total magnitude brighter than 15 mag. As seen in Figure 5, there are no clear correlations when we consider the whole sample. However, in the relation between the color gradients and $`R`$ band total magnitudes of the galaxies in ABELL 2199, it is suggested that there is a discontinuity in the relation around $`R=15`$ mag, that is, the relation in the magnitude range brighter than $`R=15`$ mag may be different from that in the fainter magnitude range. For the galaxies brighter than $`R=15`$ mag, a weak correlation may exist: brighter galaxies have steeper color gradients. (The correlation probability is estimated to be larger than 99% based on the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, while the linear correlation coefficient is estimated to be 0.6.) In the lower luminosity range, on the other hand, it is hard to see whether the correlation exists or not due to the larger uncertainties in the color gradients. The $`R`$ band apparent magnitude of 15 mag corresponds to an absolute magnitude of $`21.3`$ mag and thus $`L^{}`$ (e.g., Lin et al. 1996).

Similar features appear to exist in the relation between the color gradients and effective radii: there seems to be a break around an effective radius of $`3^{\prime \prime }`$, which roughly corresponds to $`R=15`$ mag considering the scaling relation, and for the galaxies with effective radii larger than $`3^{\prime \prime }`$, the galaxies with larger effective radii tend to have steeper color gradients. These trends are preserved if the “embedded” galaxies (open circles in Figure 5) are excluded from the diagrams. Although it is unclear for the galaxies in ABELL 2634 whether such trends exist or not due to the small number of the galaxies, the data points appear to be consistent with the trends seen for the galaxies in ABELL 2199. It should be stressed here that these trends are not expected by the seeing effects, because the seeing effects could make color gradients steeper for less luminous and thus smaller galaxies. Almost the same trends are seen when the inner cut-off radius is adopted to be $`2^{\prime \prime }`$. On the other hand, they disappear when the cut-off radius is defined to be $`1^{\prime \prime }`$, probably because of the seeing effects. Although similar trends are expected to be seen in the relations with the central velocity dispersions and Mg2 indices, no clear trends are seen. We suggest that this is at least partly due to the relatively large errors of central velocity dispersion and Mg2 index. In fact, these quantities from Lucey et al. (1997) only weakly correlate with the $`R`$ band total magnitudes and effective radii obtained from our data.

## 4 DISCUSSION

If evolutionary histories of elliptical galaxies depend on galaxy environment, their metallicity gradients and thus color gradients could also have some environmental dependences. As described in § 1, recent studies either observationally or theoretically suggest that ellipticals which reside in rich clusters tend to have formed through the formation processes quite similar to the monolithic collapse, in which more massive ellipticals have been suggested to have steeper metallicity gradients (Larson 1974b; Carlberg 1984). On the other hand, elliptical galaxies in less dense environments are likely to have formed through major mergers, which are expected to dilute the existing metallicity gradients and any correlations between metallicity gradients and global properties of the galaxies. Consequently, a significant difference in statistical property of color gradient between elliptical galaxies in rich clusters and those in the sparse environments is expected. The motivation of this study is to examine these issues observationally by adding the data of color gradients in elliptical galaxies in rich clusters, which have been rarely studied.

### 4.1 Comparison with Monolithic Collapse Models

The mean value of the color gradient obtained in the ellipticals in ABELL 2199 and ABELL 2634 is $`0.09\pm 0.04`$ mag/dex. Using a simple stellar population model by Vazdekis et al. (1996), this color gradient is converted to a metallicity gradient ($`d\mathrm{log}Z/d\mathrm{log}r`$) of $`0.3\pm 0.1`$ by assuming an age of 12 Gyr. On the other hand, numerical simulations based on the monolithic collapse scenario by Carlberg (1984) and by Kobayashi (2002) predicted a metallicity gradient of $`0.5`$ and $`1.0`$, respectively, which are significantly steeper than our estimated metallicity gradient.

However, it has been recently suggested that if a proto-galactic gas cloud has small scale density fluctuations expected in the CDM universe rather than a uniform density, an elliptical galaxy could form by the initial starburst following the successive assembly of low mass and gas-rich sub-clumps, and the metallicity gradient and $`BR`$ color gradient in the galaxy could be consistent with our results (Kawata 2001). In his simulation, a giant elliptical with a $`B`$ band absolute magnitude of $`21.4`$ mag at $`z=0`$ was studied, and its metallicity gradient and $`BR`$ color gradient were estimated to be $`0.30`$ and $`0.13`$ mag/dex, respectively. These values are consistent with the gradients in the brightest galaxies obtained in our study. If that process is more realistic in the monolithic collapse, our results may imply that elliptical galaxies in rich clusters tend to have formed through a process like the monolithic collapse.

Our data suggest that for the galaxies in the clusters brighter than $`R=15`$ mag and those with effective radii larger than $`3^{\prime \prime }`$, more luminous and larger galaxies tend to have steeper color gradients. This tendency can be seen in the results by numerical simulation based on the monolithic collapse scenario (Larson 1974b; Carlberg 1984; see also Kawata & Gibson 2002). Thus it also seems to support the view that the cluster ellipticals formed by the monolithic collapse scenario. Since the trend found is rather weak and may not be very convincing, it is important to study ellipticals in other rich clusters.

It is interesting that the correlation seen for the galaxies brighter than $`R=15`$ mag does not seem to continue to the lower luminosity range. It has been suggested that ellipticals less luminous than $`L^{}`$ have observational properties (isophotal shape, kinematics, etc) different from more luminous ones (e.g., Bender, Burstein & Faber 1992; Faber et al. 1997) and thus have different formation mechanisms. The discontinuity found here may be another piece of the evidence, even though the color gradients in the less luminous galaxies obtained in this study are still uncertain. Deeper observations in sub-arcsecond seeing conditions are necessary for more detailed study.

### 4.2 Environmental Dependence

We are now in a position to compare the cluster ellipticals with those in less dense environments. In Figure 4, the histograms of the color gradients of the galaxies in ABELL 2199 and ABELL 2634 are compared with those of 42 nearby elliptical galaxies studied by Michard (1999), 39 elliptical galaxies by Peletier et al. (1990a), and 17 elliptical galaxies by Franx et al. (1989). Some of the ellipticals studied in the literature are located in nearby clusters. Most of them are Virgo ellipticals, and a handful of ellipticals in the other poor clusters (Fornax, AWM 4, and AWM 5) or rich clusters (Coma cluster, Pegasus cluster, ABELL 2029, and ABELL 2162) are included. We also calculated the mean value of the color gradient and the standard deviation in a sub-sample of the cluster ellipticals, and the results are presented in Table 4. The distributions of the color gradients for ABELL 2199 and ABELL 2634 seem to be quite similar to those by Peletier et al. (1990a) and by Franx et al. (1989), though it is slightly shifted to a steeper side than the distribution by Michard (1999). 333It is suggested that for the 19 galaxies studied by both Michard (1999) and Peletier et al. (1990a), their $`BR`$ color gradients do not well correlate with each other (Michard 1999). The similarity in the distribution suggests that distribution of color gradient is almost independent of galaxy environment.

Next, using the published data, color gradients in nearby elliptical galaxies are plotted against the $`B`$ band absolute magnitudes (Figure 6(a)) and effective radii (Figure 6(b)). The $`B`$ band absolute magnitudes and effective radii in the diagram by Idiart et al. (2002) were taken from Michard (1999) and Michard & Marchal (1994). In the other diagrams, the data presented in each literature were used. Since effective radii measured along major axis are tabulated in Peletier et al. (1990a) and Goudfrooij et al. (1994), we converted them to the equivalent radii using the ellipticities in the literature. Solid circles indicate ellipticals in sparse environments such as field or group. Open circles and open squares denote ellipticals in Virgo cluster and those in the other poor clusters, respectively. Open triangles indicate those in rich clusters. (Most of them are the brightest cluster galaxies.) It should be emphasized that Virgo cluster is not a rich cluster but a poor cluster in which a spatial distribution of galaxies is known to be rather sparse, and color gradients in only a few ellipticals in a cluster as rich as ABELL 2199 have been studied so far. We note that a $`B`$ band absolute magnitude of $`20`$ mag and an effective radii of 2.5 kpc roughly correspond to an $`R`$ band magnitude of 15 mag considering a typical color of an elliptical galaxy and an angular size of 3′′ at the distance of the clusters.

Figure 6 suggests that, contrary to the galaxies in ABELL 2199 and ABELL 2634, there are no clear trends between the color gradients and galaxy luminosities or effective radii for ellipticals in the less dense environments. This is consistent with the conclusion by Kobayashi & Arimoto (1999) based on the studies of the radial gradients of metal absorption line index. Although there seems to be a marginal trend in the study by Peletier et al. (1990a) that for the cluster ellipticals (open symbols), brighter and larger ellipticals have steeper color gradients, 444This trend would be consistent with those found in ABELL 2199 and ABELL 2634. However, it should be interpreted carefully because the ellipticals are sampled from several clusters. It seems that the color gradients of the Virgo ellipticals (open circles) do not strongly correlate with their luminosities or effective radii. It should be also noted that the ellipticals in the clusters other than Virgo occupy the high luminosity end. Therefore, it is not obvious whether such a trend as that found in ABELL 2199/2634 exists in each cluster. it is still worth mentioning that the color gradients in the non-cluster ellipticals (solid symbols) do not correlate with their global photometric properties.

In summary, while it is suggested that distribution of color gradient in dense environment such as in ABELL 2199 is not significantly different from that in sparse environment, there seems to be an environmental dependence in relation between color gradients and global properties of ellipticals: more luminous and larger ellipticals have steeper color gradients in dense environment, but any such trend is clearly weaker in less dense environments. These results do not fully support the view that ellipticals in rich clusters formed through the monolithic collapse while those in sparse environments formed through galaxy mergers, because the latter ellipticals are expected to have color gradients shallower on average than the formers. This apparent conflict may be reconciled if star formation and subsequent chemical enrichment induced by the mergers are taken into account. It is suggested by numerical simulations that if a galaxy merger occurs, a significant fraction of gas in the progenitor galaxies falls into the central regions of the merger remnant and thus star formation activities are also expected to be more active in the inner regions (e.g., Barnes & Hernquist 1991). Consequently, stellar populations in the inner regions would be more chemically enriched and thus the merger remnant could acquire a metallicity gradient (Mihos & Hernquist 1994). If this effect compensates the dilution of the metallicity gradient existing in the progenitors by mixing stars during the merger, a resultant metallicity gradient in the merger remnant would not become significantly shallower. Nevertheless, it is still difficult to address which is more important, the acquisition or the dilution, to determine a metallicity gradient in a merger remnant, because it is likely to depend on initial condition of galaxy merger. It is also possible that a galaxy has experienced several mergers before the present time and thus the metallicity gradient is defined by its whole merging history.

### 4.3 Similarity to Color Gradient in Spiral Bulge

It is interesting to point out here that a similar trend to that found in this work has been suggested for a sample of bulges of spiral galaxies. In Balcells & Peletier (1994), $`UR`$ and $`BR`$ color gradients in 18 nearby spiral bulges were studied. Their sample consists of bulges of spiral galaxies earlier than Sc, and barred spirals and dusty spirals are excluded. They found that for the bulges more luminous than an $`R`$ band absolute magnitude of $`20`$ mag, the bulge luminosities correlate with the color gradients in the sense that more luminous bulges have steeper color gradients. No clear correlations were found between the bulge color gradients and the total luminosities or any of the parameters related to disk light. Since the $`BR`$ color gradients in the bulges vary from $`0`$ mag/dex to $`0.2`$ mag/dex for an increase of the bulge luminosities by 2 magnitudes, the correlation seems to be quite similar to the trend found in this study both qualitatively and quantitatively, though the cluster ellipticals studied here are $`1`$ magnitude more luminous on average than the bulges. It is also suggested by Balcells & Peletier (1994) that there is a correlation between the bulge color gradients and bulge luminosities for the less luminous bulges ($`M_{R,Bulge}20`$), but it is opposite to that for the more luminous ones: less luminous bulges have steeper color gradients. Although it is unclear in our study whether there is a correlation for the cluster ellipticals in the low luminosity range, our data do not exclude the possibility that there is a discontinuity in the relation around $`R=15`$ mag. These common features may suggest that luminous bulges of spiral galaxies have formation histories more similar to ellipticals in rich clusters. However, once the environmental dependence found in this work for elliptical galaxies is taken into account, it does not seem to be simply explained because spiral galaxies tend to be in sparse environments, while no clear trends between color gradients and galaxy luminosities have been found for ellipticals in sparse environments. More observational and theoretical works would be necessary to understand what this similarity implies.

## 5 SUMMARY

We performed $`B`$ and $`R`$ band surface photometry for E/S0 galaxies in ABELL 2199 and ABELL 2634, and studied their $`BR`$ color gradients. In order to sample spheroid dominated galaxies, the decomposition of the surface brightness profiles into $`r^{1/4}`$ bulge and exponential disk profiles was performed and the sample selection was based on the $`B`$ band bulge-to-total luminosity ratios. Resultantly, 29 galaxies in ABELL 2199 and 7 galaxies in ABELL 2634 were sampled. We evaluated the seeing effects on the color gradient by simulating with artificial galaxies having various parameters and defined the inner cut-off radius in deriving color gradients to mitigate the effects.

The mean value of the color gradient is estimated to be $`0.09\pm 0.04`$ mag/dex, which can be converted to a metallicity gradient of $`0.3\pm 0.1`$. This gradient seems to be consistent with that expected by a recent monolithic collapse model. We further studied the relations between the $`BR`$ color gradients and global properties of the sample galaxies. It is found that for the galaxies in ABELL 2199 brighter than $`R=15`$ mag, which roughly corresponds to $`L^{}`$ at the distance of the cluster, there may be a correlation in the sense that more luminous galaxies have steeper color gradients. Also, for the galaxies with effective radii larger than $`3^{\prime \prime }`$, which nearly corresponds to $`R=15`$ mag considering the scaling relation, the galaxies with larger effective radii seem to have steeper color gradients. The ellipticals in ABELL 2634 appear to follow the same trends, though the sample is small. These trends also suggest that elliptical galaxies in rich clusters formed through the monolithic collapse scenario. Since this is the first systematic study of color gradients in ellipticals in a rich cluster, it is important to study ellipticals in other rich clusters and to see whether the characteristics of the color gradients found in this study are generally seen or not.

We compared the results with the color gradients in elliptical galaxies in less dense environments using data from the literature. It is found that no clear trends between color gradient and galaxy luminosity or effective radius are seen, suggesting that elliptical galaxies in sparse environments formed through galaxy mergers, while the distributions of the color gradients seem to be quite similar to those obtained in ABELL 2199 and ABELL 2634. These results suggest that while distribution of color gradient is almost independent of galaxy environment, there may be an environmental dependence in relation between color gradients and global properties of ellipticals: more luminous and larger ellipticals have steeper color gradients in dense environment, but any such trend is clearly weaker in less dense environments. This does not fully support the view that ellipticals in rich clusters formed through the monolithic collapse while those in sparse environments formed through galaxy mergers, because the latter ellipticals are expected to have color gradients shallower on average than the formers. This apparent conflict may be reconciled if we take into account star formation and subsequent chemical enrichment induced by the mergers. Since the chemical enrichment could proceed more in the inner regions of the merger remnant, a metallicity gradient could be newly formed and it may compensate the dilution of the metallicity gradient.

The correlation between the color gradient and the galaxy luminosity (or the effective radius) found for the brighter cluster ellipticals cannot be seen for the fainter ellipticals; this may imply the difference of formation process between them, though it should be confirmed by data for the fainter ellipticals with a higher spatial resolution. On the other hand, the relation seems to be similar, both qualitatively and quantitatively, to that previously found for luminous bulges of spiral galaxies. This may indicate that cluster ellipticals and bulges of spiral galaxies have similar formation mechanisms.

We appreciate the support from members of the University of Hawaii observatory during the observations. We are grateful to the anonymous referee for useful comments and suggestions to improve our paper. We would like to thank C. Kobayashi and N. Arimoto for fruitful discussions. This research made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Figure Caption

Figure 1 — A top panel shows $`R`$ band image of a sample galaxy. In Figure 1(a) and 1(b), the sample galaxies in ABELL 2199 and those in ABELL 2634 are presented in order of apparent magnitude in $`R`$ band, respectively. The three calibration galaxies (NGC 5638, NGC 5831, and NGC 7619) are presented in Figure 1(c). Value of $`B/T`$ and morphology are indicated in parentheses. In a middle panel, azimuthally averaged surface brightness profiles in $`B`$ band (open circles) and in $`R`$ band (filled circles) are shown. The data points in the $`R`$ band profile between the two vertical lines are used to fit a regression line to derive an effective radius of a galaxy. The best-fit line and the lines with the slopes $`\pm 1\sigma `$ deviant from the best-fit are shown. Dashed line indicates the outer cutoff radius in deriving a color gradient. In a bottom panel, a radial profile of $`BR`$ color is shown. Abscissa refers to a logarithmic radius along major axis. The two vertical lines indicate the inner and outer cutoff radii. The regression line best fit to the color profile and the lines with the slopes $`\pm 1\sigma `$ deviant from the best-fit are shown.

Figure 2 — Color maps of the sample galaxies. In Figure 2(a), the sample galaxies in ABELL 2199 are presented, and in Figure 2(b), those in ABELL 2634 are shown. The three galaxies (NGC 5638, NGC 5831, and NGC 7619) are presented in Figure 2(c). These maps are put in order of $`R`$ band magnitude of a galaxy from left to right and from top to bottom. A cross mark in each panel shows the centroid of the $`R`$ band image. These are the pseudo color maps, and a range of color adopted in each map, which is shown by the wedge on the right side of the panel, is different from galaxy to galaxy. We note that vertical lines seen in BO 24 and NGC 7720 are artificial and are caused by bad columns on the CCD.

Figure 3 — Comparison of radial color profile for NGC 5638, NGC 5831, and NGC 7619. Two panels are shown for each galaxy. In the upper panels, the $`BR`$ color profiles obtained in this study are shown by filled circles with error bars, and those taken from the previous studies (Peletier et al. (1990a) for NGC 5638 and NGC 5831 and Franx et al. (1989) for NGC 7619) are shown by open circles. Zero points of the color profiles in the previous studies are arbitrarily shifted for clearer presentation. In the lower panel, a color difference between the two data at each radius is shown. The uncertainty of the $`\mathrm{\Delta }(BR)`$ can be comparable to or larger than the error bars attached to the color profile obtained in this study. The two vertical lines indicate the inner and outer cutoff radii used to derive a color gradient. One of them at a smaller radius shows the inner cut-off radius defined in the literature. Another one indicates the outer cutoff radius defined in this paper. Note that a mean value of the difference, which is presumably caused by the zero-point error of our photometry, was removed because it has no effect on color gradient.

Figure 4 — Histograms of color gradients. Red solid line and red dashed line indicate histograms for the sample galaxies in ABELL 2199 and in ABELL 2634, respectively. Blue line, green line, and cyan line show histograms for the galaxies studied by Michard (1999), by Peletier et al. (1990a) and by Franx et al. (1989), respectively. A width of each bin in the histograms is taken to be 0.05 mag/dex of $`d(BR)/d\mathrm{log}r`$, which is comparable to an error typically seen in an individual measurement of $`BR`$ color gradient in our data.

Figure 5 — Relations between color gradients and global properties of the sample galaxies. Left panels are the diagrams for the galaxies in ABELL 2199, and right panels are for the galaxies in ABELL 2634. The total magnitudes and effective radii are based on our data. The central velocity dispersions and Mg2 indices are taken from Lucey et al. (1997). Open stars denote the brightest cluster galaxies (NGC 6166 in ABELL 2199 and NGC 7720 in ABELL 2634). Open circles indicate the galaxies embedded in the envelope of a neighboring galaxy and their color gradients were obtained after the neighbor was modeled and subtracted. Red symbols show the galaxies with both an effective radius larger than $`3^{\prime \prime }`$ and an $`R`$ band total magnitude brighter than 15 mag. Solid lines in the diagrams of the color gradients and total magnitudes and effective radii for the galaxies in ABELL 2199 are shown as references of the trends. In the relation between color gradient and effective radius, the brightest cluster galaxy is not taken into account in the reference line because it seems to be deviant from the trend. The same lines are also shown in the right panels for comparison.

Figure 6 — Relation between color gradients and $`B`$ band absolute magnitudes (Figure 6(a)) and that between color gradients and effective radii (Figure 6(b)) for nearby elliptical galaxies based on the published data. The data are basically taken from each literature, but the $`B`$ band absolute magnitudes and effective radii in the diagram by Idiart et al. (2002) are taken from Michard (1999) and Michard & Marchal (1994). Solid circles indicate ellipticals in sparse environments such as field or group. Open circles indicate ellipticals in Virgo cluster and open squares are ellipticals in the other poor clusters (Fornax, AWM 4, and AWM 5). Open triangles indicate those in rich clusters (Coma cluster, Pegasus cluster, ABELL 2029, and ABELL 2162). It is noted that one Virgo elliptical and one Fornax elliptical in Goudfrooij et al. (1994) are not included here because their color gradients are studied in $`BV`$ or $`VI`$ color, not in $`BI`$ color as the other ellipticals are studied.


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# New infrared star clusters in the Northern and Equatorial Milky Way with 2MASS

## 1 Introduction

Embedded star clusters allow one to study the very initial phases of star formation. Since they are in general deeply embedded in dust and/or located in heavily reddened lines of sight, the infrared domain is necessary to study them (e.g. Lada & Lada 1991; Hodapp 1994; Deharveng et al. 1997; Carpenter 2000).

A large sample of embedded clusters and the knowledge of their distribution throughout the Galaxy – both angularly and in depth – are fundamental to be established, which in turn is important for subsequent detailed studies of individual objects and of the Galactic structures to which they belong. Besides serendipitous discoveries and findings in specific directions such as those of molecular clouds (Hodapp 1994) or nebulae (Dutra et al. 2003a, hereafter Paper I), systematic methods can be applied: visual inspections of a whole area (Dutra & Bica 2000a) or automated methods (Reylé & Robin 2002, Ivanov et al. 2002).

The near infrared Two Micron All Sky Survey (hereafter 2MASS, Skrutskie et al. 1997) has become a fundamental tool for the discovery of star clusters and stellar groups in the Galaxy, most of them embedded in dust. A literature compilation of 276 infrared clusters and stellar groups (Bica et al. 2003) included objects reported until mid 2002. Several entries in that catalogue had been found on the basis of 2MASS material. In addition to those objects, Dutra & Bica (2000a) surveyed 2MASS images of central parts of the Galaxy and reported 58 small angular size cluster candidates resembling the Arches and Quintuplet clusters as seen on 2MASS images. Recently, Dutra et al. (2003b) have observed most of them deeper and at higher angular resolution with the ESO NTT telescope: 31 turned out to be blended star images in the 2MASS Atlas, while 27 were confirmed as clusters or remain as cluster candidates.

More recent discoveries are 10 objects from Le Duigou & Knödlseder (2002) and Ivanov et al. (2002) using 2MASS, 2 objects from Deharveng et al. (2002) using their own observations, and finally, 179 objects from Paper I using J, H and Ks images from the 2MASS all-sky release Atlas. In Paper I we performed a search for clusters and stellar groups in the directions of known optical and radio nebulae throughout the Southern Milky Way (230 $`<\mathrm{}<`$ 350).

The present study aims to complete the search for infrared stellar clusters and stellar groups around the Milky Way disk in the directions of known optical and radio nebulae, which was initiated in Paper I. In Sect. 2 we present the search method. In Sect. 3 we provide the newly found objects related to optical and radio nebulae. In Sect. 4 we discuss some properties of the new samples. Finally, in Sect. 5 concluding remarks are given.

## 2 Search method

Using the same procedures as in Paper I, we searched for infrared clusters and stellar groups in the J, H and Ks 2MASS images around the central positions of optical and radio nebulae in the Milky Way region 350 $`<\mathrm{}<`$ 360, 0 $`<\mathrm{}<`$ 230. We extracted J, H and Ks images with 5$`{}_{}{}^{}\times `$5 centred on the coordinates of each nebula from the 2MASS Survey Visualization & Image Server facility in the web interface http://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/. For the nebulae with sizes larger than 5$`{}_{}{}^{}\times `$ 5 we took additional images with size 10$`{}_{}{}^{}\times `$10 or 15$`{}_{}{}^{}\times `$15. The Ks band images allow one to probe deeper in more absorbed regions, whereas the J and H band images were used to detect blended images by bright star contamination.

The optical nebula list was compiled from: Ber (Bernes 1977), BFS (Blitz et al. 1982), BRC (Sugitani et al. 1991), Ced (Cederblad 1946), DG (von Dorschner & Gurtler 1963), GGD (Gyulbudaghian et al. 1978), GM1- (Gyulbudaghian & Maghakian 1977a), GM2- (Gyulbudaghian & Maghakian 1977b), GM3- (Gyulbudaghian & Maghakian 1977c), Gy1- (Gyulbudaghian 1982a), Gy2- (Gyulbudaghian 1984a), Gy3- (Gyulbudaghian 1984b), Gy82- (Gyulbudaghian 1982b), NS (Neckel & Staude 1984), Parsamian (Parsamian 1965), PP (Parsamian & Petrosian 1979), RNO (Cohen 1980), Sh1- (Sharpless 1953), Sh2- (Sharpless 1959) and vdB-RN (van de Bergh 1966).

Several southern catalogues have extensions to equatorial zones, and have also been investigated: ESO (Lauberts 1982), Gum (Gum 1955), RCW (Rodgers et al. 1960) and vdBH-RN (van den Bergh & Herbst 1975).

The radio nebula list was compiled from: G - Reifenstad III et al. (1970), Downes et al. (1980), Lockman (1989) and Kuchar & Clark (1997), CTB - Wilson & Bolton (1960) and Wilson (1963), and W - Westerhout (1958). We also indicate some infrared nebulae related to sources in the AFGL and IRAS catalogues. The list of SNRs is from Green (2001). The identification of optical SNRs is according to van den Bergh (1978).

Each detection before becoming a discovery was checked against the known objects, i.e. the infrared catalogue (Bica et al. 2003) and optical open cluster catalogues (Alter et al. 1970; Lyngå 1987; Dias et al. 2002) in the studied region.

For the resulting IR star clusters we determined accurate positions and dimensions from their $`K_s`$ images (in FITS format) using SAOIMAGE 1.27.2 developed by Doug Mink.

## 3 Newly found objects

Embedded clusters are expected to occur in the areas of nebulae, thus we concentrated our search efforts on known optical and radio nebulae, mostly HII regions but also reflection nebulae and supernova remnants.

We merged the different catalogues and lists of nebulae into a radio/infrared and an optical nebula files. We cross-identified nebulae in each file, and between both files. Radio nebulae with optical counterparts were transferred to the optical nebula file. The resulting input lists of optical and radio nebulae make in total respectively 1361 and 826 objects in the present Milky Way regions, whose directions were inspected. The whole Milky Way radio and optical nebula catalogue currently has 4450 entries after cross-identifications, and will be provided in a forthcoming study. The optical and radio nebula catalogues are similar to the recent dark nebula catalogue with 5004 entries by Dutra & Bica (2002).

The results of the cluster survey are shown in Tables 1 and 2, respectively for optical and radio nebulae. By Cols.: (1) running number, (2) and (3) Galactic coordinates, (4) and (5) J2000.0 equatorial coordinates, (6) and (7) major and minor angular dimensions, (8) related nebulae, (9) class, (10) remarks including distance (in case of kinematical ambiguity the near and far distances are shown), multiplicity and linear dimension.

The new infrared clusters, stellar groups and candidates from the optical nebula survey amount to 103, and from the radio nebulae survey they are 64. The detection rates relative to the input nebula catalogues are both 8% for optical and radio nebulae. These detection rates are lower than those obtained in Paper I, mostly because the Equatorial and Northern Milky Way had been previously more surveyed for infrared clusters than their southern counterpart (Paper I). Several reasons may contribute to these low rates: (i) cluster outside the search box owing to projection effects between molecular cloud and champagne flow; (ii) extreme absorption in molecular cloud or in the line-of sight; (iii) HII region ionized by isolated star or stars; (iv) reflection nebula illuminated by single star.

We illustrate in Fig. 1 a prominent infrared cluster in an optical nebula: Object 43 in Sh2-157. We show in Fig. 2 a Ks image of Lagoon’s Nebula Hourglass (Woodward et al. 1990). With the 2MASS’s resolution an embedded cluster starts to show up. The western part of the Hourglass is particularly resolved into stars. We illustrate in Fig. 3 a prominent infrared cluster located in a radio nebula: Object 165 in G351.694-1.165. In Fig. 4 we show Object 139 in the radio nebula W51B=G49.0-0.3, part of the large star-forming complex W51.

Object classes are infrared cluster (IRC), stellar group (IRGr), cluster candidate (IRCC), and open cluster (IROC). Images illustrating these different classes were given in Paper I. IRCs are in general populous and at least partially resolved. IRCCs are probably clusters, but are essentially unresolved, and require higher resolution and deeper images for a definitive diagnostic. IRGrs are less dense than IRCs (Bica et al. 2003), some are rather compact but little populated. IROCs have similar appearence to optical open clusters and relatively large angular size ($``$2 or more). In Table 1 there occur 45 IRC, 37 IRGr, 14 IRCC and 7 IROC objects, while in Table 2 16 IRC, 18 IRGr and 30 IRCC objects. The large fraction of cluster candidates among radio nebulae certainly reflects higher absorption and/or larger distance effects.

Distances are mostly based on kinematical estimates for the nebulae (Downes et al. 1980), but include as well averages with estimates from individual stars, when available (e.g. Georgelin et al. 1973). The near/far distance (R) ambiguity has been solved by Downes et al. (1980) for several nebulae, else we indicate both Rn and Rf. The provided distances in Tables 1 and 2 should be compared to those from the infrared stellar content in future studies.

Some infrared clusters, stellar groups and candidates were found to be related to nebulae which have been classified as planetary nebulae. The present results from inspections of J, H and Ks images indicate or confirm (e.g. Acker 1992) that K3-50, Sh2-128, BFS32=PK149-1.1, IC2120=PK169-0.1, Sh2-267=PK196-1.1 and Sh2-271=PK197-2.1 are not planetary nebulae.

We included in Table 1 new embedded clusters and stellar groups related to optical reflection nebulae. This type of relation has been discussed in Dutra & Bica (2001). These objects appear to be less massive clusters or stellar groups where no ionizing star was formed. The objects in Soares & Bica (2002) are of this type or close to its limit towards ionizing stars. The present objects that are related to van den Berghs (1966) and van den Bergh & Herbsts (1975) reflection nebulae are more probably of this type.

## 4 Discussion

For the present sample (Tables 1 and 2) there occur 42 clusters which are members of pairs, triplets, quadruplets or quintuplet. The quintuplet occurs in W51. That number corresponds to a fraction of 25%, confirming the properties of the two previous samples (Bica et al. 2003 and Paper I). In the present sample multiplicity occurs more often among objects coming from the radio sample, which amount to 24 objects. As discussed in our two previous papers (Bica et al. 2003 and Paper I) multiplicity must play a significant role in the early dynamical evolution of star clusters.

The present results confirm that W51 is a prominent star forming complex in the Milky Way (Goldader & Wynn-Wiliams 1994 and references therein), or that some depth effects occur since this is the eastern tangent point of the Sagittarius-Carina Arm. Table 2 shows that 18 objects are related to W51: 3 IRCs, 2 IRGrs and 13 IRCCs.

Fig. 5 shows the angular distributions of the present samples (Tables 1 and 2). Objects from the radio sample are mainly located between $`350^{}<\mathrm{}<360^{}`$ and $`0^{}<\mathrm{}<60^{}`$ corresponding to internal arms and where absorption in the Galaxy shows a pronounced increase (Dutra & Bica 2000b). Objects coming from the optical sample are more evenly distributed across the surveyed region, including directions of the Local, Perseus and Outer Arms. Both samples have objects in directions of the Sagittarius-Carina Arm, but more probably objects related to optical nebulae belong to it.

Fig. 6 shows the distance histograms for the objects (Tables 1 and 2). In cases of distance ambiguity we assumed their near distance as a lower limit for the histogram analysis. The optical sample has a pronounced peak at 2 kpc, but has important contributions up to 4 kpc. The histogram of the radio sample covers a wide distance range. The pronounced peak at 7.5 kpc corresponds to the large number of objects in the W51 complex. A secondary peak occurs for $``$9 kpc. Radio objects are also significantly distributed in the range 2-4 kpc.

Fig. 7 shows the linear size histograms for the objects (Tables 1 and 2). Objects with distance ambiguity were excluded. The histogram of objects coming from the optical nebulae sample is remarkably similar to that obtained in Bica et al. (2003) and its counterpart of Paper I, skewed with a peak at about 1 pc. The histogram of objects from the radio nebulae sample is more evenly distributed, with a peak at about 2 pc, likewise its counterpart in Paper I.

Concerning SNRs, one probable IRGr is in the area of the radio SNR GG5.2-2.6, and one in that of G5.321-0.974 (Table 2), confirming that such relations are a rare phenomenon (Paper I).

### 4.1 Total sample of known objects

Considering the results of the present work, Paper I and the literature objects indicated in Sect. 1, the total sample of known infrared clusters, stellar groups and candidates is now 661.

Fig. 8 shows the angular distribution in galactic coordinates of the total sample. Now the whole Milky Way has been more uniformly surveyed, which was not the case of the literature sample (see Fig. 1 of Bica et al. 2003). The objects towards the central parts are distributed more closely to the plane, suggesting larger distances on the average. The objects at higher latitudes around the anticentre are in the nearby Orion and Taurus complexes.

Fig. 9 shows the distance histogram for the total sample. The distribution peak occurs at 1.5 kpc, showing that a typical IR cluster or stellar group is a relatively close object. Most of the objects are in the range 1-4 kpc, but an important sample also occurs for 5-9 kpc. A few objects exceed 10 kpc.

Fig. 10 shows the linear size histogram for the total sample. The enormous sample that we are dealing with shows that embedded clusters are typically small, less than 2 parsecs in size, and hardly exceeding 4 pc. This must reflect the dimensions of the regions in molecular clouds where star formation is efficient enough to create zones of high stellar densities. The present results suggest that the extent of such regions does not vary much from cloud to cloud.

We can also estimate the density increase of objects along the Galactic disk by comparing the samples in Bica et al. (2003) and the present total sample. Considering clusters with $`|b|<`$ 5 the former sample provided 0.53 objects (degree)-1 along Galactic longitude, while the present overall sample yields 1.57 (degree)-1.

The angular distributions and distances indicate that the now known overall sample of embedded clusters and stellar groups arises mostly in external arms, in the near side of internal arms and to a certain extent central parts of the Galaxy. Beyond these regions, especially towards the inner Galaxy, line-of-sight absorption effects must be too strong, even for the near IR domain.

#### 4.1.1 Sensitivity of surveys

It is interesting to compare the spatial distribution of infrared clusters and stellar groups with those of the optical and radio nebulae. A decrease of clusters with distance would favour distance/reddening effects on detectability while other distributions might suggest that many nebulae do not harbour any cluster. We study the available objects in the whole plane, including the present sample, that of Paper I and the previously catalogued clusters (Bica et al. 2003). Distance information is available for 958 optical and 358 radio nebulae. There are 232 clusters or groups related to optical nebulae and 119 to radio nebulae with distance estimates. The comparison is made in Fig. 11. The blowup for optical objects (upper right panel) suggests a detection decrease with distance for d $`>`$ 2.5 kpc. For the radio sample the distance decrease is clear for d $`>`$ 5 kpc (lower left panel). These results suggest that nebulae with distance information in general harbour a cluster or stellar group and that many remain undetected owing to a reddening/distance horizon effect. However, the total number of nebulae in the catalogues is much larger (Sect. 3) than those with velocity (distance) information, which suggests that many deal with structural details of the nebular complexes, which do not necessarily harbour any cluster.

## 5 Concluding remarks

We searched for embedded star clusters and stellar groups in the directions of 1361 optical and 826 radio nebulae in the Equatorial and Northern Milky Way (in the region 350 $`<\mathrm{}<`$ 360, 0 $`<\mathrm{}<`$ 230) using J, H and Ks images from the 2MASS all-sky release Atlas. A total of 167 new infrared clusters, stellar groups and candidates were found. Together with 179 discoveries from Paper I, the present method provided a total of 346 new objects. This number is larger than that of all previously known infrared clusters, stellar groups and candidates in the literature, which amount to 315 objects.

The physical properties of the present sample are similar to those of its southern counterpart (Paper I), in particular concerning the size distribution of clusters coming from the optical and radio nebulae samples. Multiplicity appears to affect about 25% of the embedded clusters, suggesting that interactions and mergers can affect their early dynamical evolution. Objects from the optical nebulae sample are on the average closer (at 2-4 kpc) than those from the radio nebulae sample.

The present contribution and that of Paper I provide a fundamental new sample for detailed future studies. Resolved brighter objects may be studied with 2MASS photometry itself, but most of the sample requires large telescopes for deep photometry.

Considering the results of the present work, Paper I and the literature objects indicated in Sect. 1, the total sample of known infrared clusters, stellar groups and candidates now amounts to 661 objects. Most are located nearby (1-4 kpc) and they are typically smaller than 2 pc.

Much work is yet to be done with 2MASS, especially in the search of more evolved disk clusters away from nebulae. Systematic visual searches in specific areas and searches using automated methods will certainly provide many new discoveries.

###### Acknowledgements.

This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. We employed data from CDS/Simbad (Strasbourg). We thank the referee Dr. F. Comerón for interesting remarks. We acknowledge support from the Brazilian Institutions CNPq and FAPESP. CMD acknowledges FAPESP for a post-doc fellowship (proc. 00/11864-6).