Mass-to-Light Ratios of 2dF Galaxies

Abstract

We compute M_260, the dynamical mass interior to a radius of 260 kpc/h, for a set of 809 isolated host galaxies in the 100k data release of the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey. The hosts are surrounded by 1556 satellite galaxies, as defined by a set of specific selection criteria. Our mass estimator and host/satellite selection criteria are taken from those used by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) collaboration for an analysis of M_260 for SDSS galaxies and, overall, our results compare well with theirs. For L > 2L* we find M_260/L = (193 +/- 14)h Msun/Lsun, with a tendency for hosts with L < 2L* to have a somewhat higher M/L. We also investigate M/L seperately for bright galaxies with ellipitical, S0, and spiral morphologies. There are 159 hosts in the elliptical/S0 sample, for which we find M_260/L = (271 +/- 26) h Msun/Lsun for galaxies with L > 2L*, and a weak tendency for intrinsically fainter galaxies to have a somewhat higher M/L. In stark contrast to this, we find the line of sight velocity dispersion for the 243 spiral hosts to be independent of the host galaxy luminosity, yielding a value of sigma_v = 189 +/- 19 km/s. Thus for the spiral hosts, M_260/L is proportional to L^{-1.0 +/- 0.2}, and we find M_260/L for a 2L* spiral is of order 200 h Msun/Lsun.