Average Spectra of Massive Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Abstract

We combine Sloan Digital Sky Survey spectra of 22,000 luminous, red, bulge-dominated galaxies to get high signal-to-noise ratio average spectra in the rest-frame optical and ultraviolet (2600-7000 Å). The average spectra of these massive, quiescent galaxies are early type with weak emission lines and with absorption lines indicating an apparent excess of α-elements over solar abundance ratios. We make average spectra of subsamples selected by luminosity, environment, and redshift. The average spectra are remarkable in their similarity. What variations do exist in the average spectra as a function of luminosity and environment are found to form a nearly one-parameter family in spectrum space. We present a high signal-to-noise ratio spectrum of the variation. We measure the properties of the variation with a modified version of the Lick index system and compare to model spectra from stellar population syntheses. The variation may be a combination of age and chemical abundance differences, but the conservative conclusion is that the quality of the data considerably exceeds the current state of the models.