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Description
Recent work has identified a population of low-redshift E/S0 galaxies that lie on the blue sequence in color versus stellar mass parameter space, where spiral galaxies typically reside. While high-mass blue-sequence E/S0s often resemble young merger or interaction remnants likely to fade to the red sequence, we focus on blue-sequence E/S0s with lower stellar masses (M_*_<a fewx10^10^M_{sun}_), which are characterized by fairly regular morphologies and low-density field environments where fresh gas infall is possible. This population may provide an evolutionary link between early-type galaxies and spirals through disk regrowth. Focusing on atomic gas reservoirs, we present new GBT HI data for 27 E/S0s on both sequences as well as a complete tabulation of archival HI data for other galaxies in the Nearby Field Galaxy Survey. Normalized to stellar mass, the atomic gas masses for 12 of the 14 blue-sequence E/S0s range from 0.1 to >1.0, demonstrating that morphological transformation is possible if the detected gas can be converted into stars. These gas-to-stellar mass ratios are comparable to those of spiral and irregular galaxies and have a similar dependence on stellar mass.
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