To determine how galaxy groups grow and individual galaxies evolve in the local universe, this project used 19 high-richness, high-mass galaxy groups at z < 0.1 from the Berlind et al. 2006 paper to study the nearby group environment through its optical properties. Using position, g-r color, and r-band absolute magnitude data, the shapes, luminosities, and colors of each member galaxy was mapped in group combination plots and an inter-group color-magnitude diagram of all 477 sample galaxies. These figures show that members of the high-mass group environment trend towards redness where the most luminous members of each galaxy group are found to be red. Both findings are consistent with previous predictions of the group environment’s bias towards red elliptical galaxies. Future work using optical properties and the galaxy sequence will be crucial to identify galaxies in groups undergoing evolutionary change as potential indicators of a changing group environment.

This project strives to study the relationship between the group environment and individual galaxy properties. Group richness is used as a proxy for different environmental conditions and mass to form a sample of 40 low mass (3N<10), 40 medium mass (10N<20), and 40 high mass (20N) groups from the Berlind et al. 2006 volume-limited Mr18 catalog and Tempel et al. 2014 flux-limited catalog. Unique Color-Magnitude-Position and Color-Stellar Mass-Position diagrams are produced for each sample group. I identified dynamically active and inactive groups using the magnitude gap through a crude version of methodology described in Raouf et al. 2019. Project figures are used to analyze how BGG properties, dynamic activity, and group appearance depend on group richness. Analysis focuses on BGGs to understand how one evolutionary mechanism, mergers, is impacted by basic differences in a group’s environment.