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Lenticular Galaxies and Their Environments

It is widely believed that lenticular (S0) galaxies were initially spirals from which the gas has been removed by interactions with hot cluster gas, or by ram-pressure stripping of cool gas from spirals that are orbiting within rich clusters of galaxies. However, problems with this interpretation are that: (1) Some lenticulars, such as NGC 3115, are isolated field galaxies rather than cluster members. (2) The distribution of flattening values of S0 galaxies in clusters, in groups and in the field are statistically indistinguishable. This is surprising because one might have expected most of the progenitors of field S0 galaxies to have been flattened late-type galaxies, whereas lenticulars in clusters are thought to have mostly been derived from bulge-dominated early-type galaxies. (3) It should be hardest for ram-pressure to strip massive luminous galaxies with deep potential wells. However, no statistically significant differences are seen between the luminosity distributions of early-type Shapley-Ames galaxies in clusters, groups and in the field. (4) Finally, both ram-pressure stripping and evaporation by hot intra-cluster gas would be most efficient in rich clusters. However, the small number of available data in the Shapley-Ames sample appears to show no statistically significant differences between the relative frequencies of dust-poor S0_1 and dust-rich S0_3 galaxies in clusters, groups and in the field. It is tentatively concluded that ram-pressure stripping, and heating by intra-cluster gas, may not be the only evolutionary channels that lead to the formation of lenticular galaxies. It is speculated that gas starvation, or gas ejection by active nuclei, may have play a major role in the formation of a significant fraction of all S0 galaxies.