Galaxy pairs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey - III. Evidence of induced star formation from optical colours
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We have assembled a large, high-quality catalogue of galaxy colours from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 and have identified 21 347 galaxies in pairs spanning a range of projected separations (rp < 80 h−170 kpc), relative velocities (Δv < 10 000 km s−1, which includes projected pairs that are essential for quality control) and stellar mass ratios (from 1:10 to 10:1). We find that the red fraction of galaxies in pairs is higher than that of a control sample matched in stellar mass and redshift, and demonstrate that this difference is likely due to the fact that galaxy pairs reside in higher density environments than non-paired galaxies. We detect clear signs of interaction-induced star formation within the blue galaxies in pairs, as evidenced by a higher fraction of extremely blue galaxies, along with blueward offsets between the colours of paired versus control galaxies. These signs are strongest in close pairs (rp < 30 h−170 kpc and Δv < 200 km s−1), diminish for more widely separated pairs (rp > 60 h−170 kpc and Δv < 200 km s−1) and disappear for close projected pairs (rp < 30 h−170 kpc and Δv > 3000 km s−1). These effects are also stronger in central (fibre) colours than in global colours and are found primarily in low- to medium-density environments. Conversely, no such trends are seen in red galaxies, apart from a small reddening at small separations, which may result from residual errors with photometry in crowded fields. When interpreted in conjunction with a simple model of induced starbursts, these results are consistent with a scenario in which close pericentre passages trigger induced star formation in the centres of galaxies which are sufficiently gas rich, after which time the galaxies gradually redden as they separate and their starbursts age.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".