Linear structural param. of SDSS+UKIDSS+WISE gal. Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Devour B.M.
  2. Bell E.F.
  3. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

Accurate measurements of galaxy structure are prerequisites for quantitative investigation of galaxy properties or evolution. Yet galaxy inclination, through projection and varying dust effects, strongly affects many commonly used metrics of galaxy structure. Here we demonstrate that collapsing a galaxy's light distribution onto its major axis gives a "linear brightness profile" that is unaffected by projection. In analogy to widely used half-light radius and concentrations, we use two metrics to describe this light distribution: x_50_, the linear distance containing half of the galaxy's luminosity, and c_x_=x_90_/x_50_, the ratio between the 90% light distance and the 50% light distance. In order to minimize the effects of dust, we apply this technique to a diverse sample of galaxies with moderately deep and high-resolution K-band imaging from the UKIDSS Large Area Survey. Using simulated galaxy images, we find that while our measurements are primarily limited by the surface brightness in the outer parts of galaxies, most local galaxies have high enough surface brightnesses to result in reliable measurements. When applied to real data, our metrics vary from face-on to edge-on by typically ~5% in c_x_ and ~12% in x_50_, representing factors of several to 10 improvement over existing optical and some infrared catalog measures of galaxy structure. We release a sample of 23804 galaxies with inclination-independent and dust-penetrated observational proxies for stellar mass, specific star formation rate, half-light size, and concentration.

Keywords
  1. Galaxies
  2. Catalogs
  3. Infrared photometry
  4. Optical astronomy
  5. Sloan photometry
  6. Redshifted
  7. Absolute magnitude
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2019ApJS..244....3D
See also HTML
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJS/244/3
IVOA Identifier IVOID
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/244/3
Document Object Identifer DOI
doi:10.26093/cds/vizier.22440003

Access

Web browser access HTML
http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJS/244/3
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJS/244/3
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJS/244/3
IVOA Table Access TAP
http://tapvizier.cds.unistra.fr/TAPVizieR/tap
Run SQL-like queries with TAP-enabled clients (e.g., TOPCAT).
IVOA Cone Search SCS
For use with a cone search client (e.g., TOPCAT).
http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJS/244/3/table2?
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJS/244/3/table2?
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJS/244/3/table2?
IVOA Cone Search SCS
For use with a cone search client (e.g., TOPCAT).
http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJS/244/3/table3?
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJS/244/3/table3?
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJS/244/3/table3?
IVOA Cone Search SCS
For use with a cone search client (e.g., TOPCAT).
http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJS/244/3/table4?
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJS/244/3/table4?
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJS/244/3/table4?

History

2020-02-10T14:03:19Z
Resource record created
2020-02-10T13:12:22Z
Updated
2020-02-10T14:03:19Z
Created

Contact

Name
CDS support team
Postal Address
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
E-Mail
cds-question@unistra.fr