The population of barred galaxies in the local universe - I. Detection and characterisation of bars

By J. Aguerri, J. Méndez-Abreu, E. I. D. A. D. Canarias, Inaf - Padova, U. L. Laguna, D. Astronomia, U. Padova. 2009

207 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Context. Bars are very common in the centre of the disc galaxies, and they drive the evolution of their structure. The state-of-the-art imaging and redshift surveys of galaxies allow us to study the relationships between the properties of the bars and those of their hosts in statistically significant samples. Aims. A volume-limited sample of 2106 disc galaxies was studied to derive the bar fraction, length, and strength as a function of the morphology, size, local galaxy density, light concentration, and colour of the host galaxy. The sample galaxies were selected to not be strongly disturbed/interacting. Methods. The bar and galaxy properties were obtained by analysing the r-band images of the sample galaxies available in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 5. Results. The bars were detected using the ellipse fitting method and Fourier analysis method. They were tested and calibrated with extensive simulations on artificial images. The ellipse fitting method was found to be more efficient in detecting bars in spiral galaxies. The fraction of barred galaxies turned out to be 45%. A bar was found in 29% of the lenticular galaxies, in 55% and 54% of the earlyand late-type spirals, respectively. The bar length (normalised by the galaxy size) of late-type spirals is shorter than in early-type or lenticular ones. A correlation between the bar length and galaxy size was found with longer bars hosted by larger galaxies. The bars of the lenticular galaxies are weaker than those in spirals. Moreover, the unimodal distribution of the bar strength found for all the galaxy types argues against a quick transition between the barred and unbarred statues. There is no difference between the local galaxy density of barred and unbarred galaxies. Besides, neither the length nor strength of the bars are correlated with the local density of the galaxy neighbourhoods. In contrast, a statistical significant difference between the central light concentration and colour of barred and unbarred galaxies was found. Bars are mostly located in less concentrated and bluer galaxies. Conclusions. These results indicate that the properties of bars are strongly related to those of their host galaxies, but do not depend on the local environment.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Ecology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/172efe722f4b401d00062a4ede3ff02f67f4d78a

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Citations in the corpus

AINUR: Atlas of Images of NUclear Rings (2009, background): “…show that the bar distribution is nearly constant with the morph - logical type (Eskridge et al. 2000; Marinova & Jogee 2007), other authors have shown that lenticular galaxies are less likelyto be barred than spiral galaxies (Knapen et al. 2000; Aguerri et al. 2009; Laurikainen et al. 2009).”
CALIFA : a diameter-selected sample for an integral field spectroscopy galaxy survey (2014, background): “Densities of Σ5 < 1 Mpc−2 correspond to very lowdensity environments, 10 Mpc−2 > Σ5 > 1 Mpc−2 correspond to loose groups, and Σ5 > 10 Mpc−2 correspond to compact galaxy groups and clusters (compare Aguerri et al. 2009).”
A CLASSICAL MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF GALAXIES IN THE SPITZER SURVEY OF STELLAR STRUCTURE IN GALAXIES (S4G) (2015, result): “This smaller fraction of bars is also consistent with previous studies (Laurikainen et al. 2009; Aguerri et al. 2009; Buta et al. 2010b), but a more reliable assessment must await the S4G extension.”
Galaxy Zoo: Passive Red Spirals . (2009, methodology): “It is not clear at this point if the difference in these trends is due to the sample selection or the bar identification method (although Aguerri et al. (2009) claim only a 7% difference between their automated bar finder and a visual check of their c© 2010 RAS, MNRAS 000, 1–20 sample).”
Stellar population gradients in galaxy discs from the CALIFA survey - The influence of bars (2014, background): “Bars are very common structures; the most recent optical studies indicate that approximately half of all massive and nearby discs galaxies contain bars (Barazza et al. 2008; Aguerri et al. 2009).”
Galaxy Zoo:bars in disc galaxies (2010, methodology): “There does remain a difference in our overall conclusions with Barazza et al. (2008) and Aguerri et al. (2009) and, in particular, the total bar fraction we find is lower than either of these studies.”
The Tully-Fisher relations of early-type spiral and S0 galaxies (2010, background): “Problems remain with the disk fading picture, however: the bar fractions of spirals and S0s are discrepant (Aguerri et al. 2009; Laurikainen et al. 2009), in a given environment S0s are at least as bright as spirals (Burstein et al. 2005), and the bulge-to-disc ratios of S0s are difficult to…”