Study of galaxies in the Lynx-Cancer void. IV. Photometric properties

Abstract

We present the results of a photometric study of 85 objects from the updated sample of galaxies residing in the nearby Lynx-Cancer void. We perform our photometry on u, g, r, and i-band images of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We determine model-independent galaxy parameters such as the integrated magnitudes and colors, effective radii and the corresponding surface brightness values, optical radii and Holmberg radii. We analyze the radial surface brightness profiles to determine the central brightness values and scale lengths of the model disks. We analyze the colors of the outer parts of the galaxies and compare them with model evolutionary tracks computed using the PEGASE 2 software package. This allowed us to estimate the time T SF elapsed since the onset of star formation, which turned out to be on the order of the cosmological time T 0 for the overwhelming majority of the galaxies studied. However, for 13 galaxies of the sample the time T SF does not exceed T 0/2 ∼ 7 Gyr, and for 7 of them T SF ≲ 3.5 Gyr. The latter are mostly unevolved objects dominated by low-luminosity galaxies with M B > −13.2. We use the integrated magnitudes and colors to estimate the stellar masses of the galaxies.We estimate the parameter M(H I)/L B and the gas mass fractions for void galaxies with known HI-line fluxes. A small subgroup (about 10%) of the gas-richest void galaxies with M(H I)/L B ≳ 2.5 has gas mass fractions that reach 94–99%. The outer regions of many of these galaxies show atypically blue colors. To test various statistical differences between void galaxies and galaxies from the samples selected using more general criteria, we compare some of the parameters of void galaxies with similar data for the sample of 195 galaxies from the Equatorial Survey (ES) based on a part of the HIPASS blind HI survey. The compared samples have similar properties in the common luminosity interval −18.5<M g < −13.5. The faintest void galaxies differ appreciably from the ES survey galaxies. However, the ES survey also contains about 7% of the so-called “inchoate” galaxies with highM(H I)/L B ratios, most of which are located far from massive neighbors and are probably analogs of void galaxies.