Galaxy And Mass Assembly: red & blue galaxies

Our motivation is that, as we show, the dominant uncertainty in existing measurements stems from how "red" and "blue" galaxies have been selected/defined. Accordingly, we model our data as two naturally overlapping populations, each with their own mass function and colour-mass relation, which enables us characterize the two populations without having to specify a priori which galaxies are "red" and "blue".

Our results then provide the means to derive objective operational definitions for the terms "red" and "blue", which are based on the phenomenology of the colour-mass diagrams. Informed by this descriptive modelling, we show that (1) after accounting for dust, the stellar colours of "blue" galaxies do not depend strongly on mass; (2) the tight, flat "dead sequence" does not extend much below logM_*_~10.5; instead, (3) the stellar colours of "red" galaxies vary rather strongly with mass, such that lower mass "red" galaxies have bluer stellar populations; (4) below logM_*_~9.3, the "red" population dissolves into obscurity, and it becomes problematic to talk about two distinct populations; as a consequence, (5) it is hard to meaningfully constrain the shape, including the existence of an upturn, of the "red" galaxy mass function below logM_*_~9.3.