Star Formation Histories of Nearby Elliptical Galaxies: I. Volume Limited Sample

Abstract

This work presents high $S/N$ spectroscopic observations of a representative sample of nearby elliptical galaxies. These observations provide a strong test of models for the formation of elliptical galaxies and their star formation histories. Combining these data with the Gonzalez (1993) data set, a volume limited sample of 45 galaxies has been defined. Results are in agreement with previous studies: the existence of the metallicity hyper-plane and the Z-plane of Trager et al. (2000) is confirmed, and the distribution is clearly due to physical variations in stellar population parameters and not measurement uncertainty. Trends between stellar population parameters and galaxy structural parameters suggest that angular momentum may determine the chemical abundance of a galaxy at a given mass.