Description
The construction of catalogues of galaxies and the posterior study of galaxy properties in relation to their environment, have been hampered by the scarce redshift information. The new 3-dimensional (3D) surveys permit to distinguish small, faint, physically bound satellites from a background projected galaxy population, giving a more comprehensive 3D picture of the surroundings. We aim to provide representative samples of isolated galaxies, isolated pairs, and isolated triplets for testing galaxy evolution and secular processes in low density regions of the local Universe, as well as to characterise their local and large-scale environments. We use spectroscopic data from the tenth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-DR10) to automatically and homogeneously compile catalogues of 3,702 isolated galaxies, 1,240 isolated pairs, and 315 isolated triplets in the local Universe (z<=0.080). To quantify the effects of their local and large-scale environments, we compute the projected density and the tidal strength for the brightest galaxy in each sample. We find evidence of isolated pairs and isolated triplets physically bound at projected separation up to d<=450kpc with radial velocity difference {Delta}v<=160km/s, where the effect of the companion typically accounts for more than 98% of the total tidal strength affecting the central galaxy. For galaxies in the catalogues, we provide their positions, redshifts, and degrees of relation with their physical and large-scale environments. The catalogues are publicly available to the scientific community. For isolated galaxies, isolated pairs, and isolated triplets there is no difference in their degree of interaction with the large-scale structure (up to 5Mpc), which may suggest that they have a common origin in their formation and evolution. We find that most of them belong to the outer parts of filaments, walls, and clusters, and generally differ from the void population of galaxies.
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