Luminous Red Galaxies at Z=0.4-0.5

We report on a study of approx.20,000 luminous red galaxies (LRG's) at z=0.4-0.5 observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. In order to differentiate among them, we measured restframe magnitudes, u (3000-3500 A), b (4200-4800 A), and y (5700-6300 A) from the spectra themselves. The galaxies show a significant range in restframe colors and absolute magnitudes. We binned the spectra according to the restframe u-b color and y-band absolute magnitude in order to increase the S/N. We used 3 approaches to estimate the ages and metal content of these binned spectra: via their spectral energy distributions, from spectral-line indices, and by full spectral fitting. The three methods usually produce discordant results