AMIGA project: Quantification of the isolation of 950 CIG galaxies

The role of the environment on galaxy evolution is still not fully understood. In order to quantify and set limits on the role of nurture one must identify and study a sample of isolated galaxies. The AMIGA project "Analysis of the Interstellar Medium of Isolated GAlaxies" is doing a multi-wavelength study of a large sample of isolated galaxies in order to examine their interstellar medium and star formation activity. We processed data for 950 galaxies from the Catalogue of Isolated Galaxies (CIG, Karachentseva 1973) and evaluated their isolation using an automated star-galaxy classification procedure (down to M_B ~17.5) on large digitised POSS-I fields surrounding each isolated galaxy (within a projected radius of at least 0.5 Mpc). We defined, compared and discussed various criteria to quantify the degree of isolation for these galaxies: e.g. Karachentseva's revised criterion, local surface density computations, estimation of the external tidal force affecting each isolated galaxy. We found galaxies violating Karachentseva's original criterion, and we defined various subsamples of galaxies according to their degree of isolation. Additionally, we sought for the redshifts of the primary and companion galaxies to access the radial dimension. We also applied our pipeline to triplets, compact groups and clusters and interpret the isolated galaxy population in light of these control samples.
Comment: 4 pages, proceedings of the contributed talk given at the conference "Galaxies in Isolation: Exploring Nature vs. Nurture" held in Granada, May 12-15, 2009