The Millennium Galaxy Catalogue: bulge–disc decomposition of 10 095 nearby galaxies

By P. Allen, S. Driver, Alister W. Graham, Ewan Cameron, J. Liske, R. Propris. 2006

183 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We have modelled the light distribution in 10095 galaxies from the Millennium Galaxy Catalogue (MGC), providing publically available structural catalogues for a large, rep- resentative sample of galaxies in the local Universe. Three different models were used: (1) a single Sersic function for the whole galaxy, (2) a bulge-disc decomposition model using a de Vaucouleurs (R 1/4 ) bulge plus exponential disc, (3) a bulge-disc decomposi- tion model using a Sersic (R 1/n ) bulge plus exponential disc. Repeat observations for � 700 galaxies demonstrate that stable measurements can be obtained for object com- ponents with a half-light radius comparable to, or larger than, the seeing half-width at half maximum. We show that with careful quality control, robust measurements can be obtained for large samples such as the MGC. We use the catalogues to show that the galaxy colour bimodality is due to the two-component nature of galaxies (i.e. bulges and discs) and not to two distinct galaxy populations. We conclude that under- standing galaxy evolution demands the routine bulge-disc decomposition of the giant galaxy population at all redshifts.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Ecology

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Citations in the corpus

The black hole mass – spheroid luminosity relation (2007, methodology): “…apparent depletion of stars at the centres of giant galaxies may not have (only) arisen from the scouring action of coalescing SMBHs (see e.g. BoylanKolchin, Ma & Quataeri 2004; Nipoti, Londrillo & Ciotti 2006). exponential-disc decomposition of 10 095 nearby (z ∼ 0.1) galaxies (Allen et al. 2006).”
THE STRUCTURE OF CLASSICAL BULGES AND PSEUDOBULGES: THE LINK BETWEEN PSEUDOBULGES AND SÉRSIC INDEX (2008, background): “We note that distributions of bulge Sérsic indices in volume limited samples have been shown to be bimodal (Allen et al. 2006).”
Quantifying the coexistence of massive black holes and dense nuclear star clusters (2009, background): “Within the field environment, the most common type of galaxies are spiral galaxies (e.g. Allen et al. 2006; Baldry et al. 2006) and many of these are also known to be nucleated (e.g. Carollo et al. 1998; Böker et al. 2002; Balcells et al. 2003).”
The Redshift Evolution of Wet, Dry, and Mixed Galaxy Mergers from Close Galaxy Pairs in the DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey (2008, methodology): “We also supplement our low redshift sample (z< 0.45) using the SSRS2 survey (da Costa et al. 1998), Millennium Galaxy Catalog (hereafter MGC, Liske et al. 2003; Driver et al. 2005; Allen et al. 2006) and CNOC2 Redshift Survey (Yee et al. 2000).”
Image decomposition of barred galaxies and AGN hosts (2007, methodology): “…the second category, one usually finds samples of some hundreds or thousands of galaxies up to z ∼ 1 (e.g., Marleau & Simard 1998; Tasca & White 2005; Allen et al. 2006; Häussler et al. 2007; Huertas-Company et al. 2007, see also Pignatelli, Fasano & Cassata 2006), where fits are done in an…”
Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): survey diagnostics and core data release (2010, methodology): “A comprehensive insight into galaxy formation and evolution therefore demands consideration of the structural components requiring high spatial resolution imaging on ∼1 kpc scales or better (e.g. Allen et al. 2006; Gadotti 2009).”
MegaMorph - multiwavelength measurement of galaxy structure: complete Sersic profile information from modern surveys (2012, result): “Nevertheless, a number of studies (Schade et al. 1997; Lillyet al. 1998; Allen et al. 2006; Simard et al. 2011; Tasca & White 2011; c© 2012 RAS, MNRAS000, 1–41 Kelvin et al. 2012; Lackner & Gunn 2012) have produced catalogues of galaxy profile parameters for large samples, with recent local studies…”
MERGERS IN ΛCDM: UNCERTAINTIES IN THEORETICAL PREDICTIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS OF THE MERGER RATE (2010, background): “5%; see e.g. Carollo et al. 1998; Kormendy & Kennicutt 2004; Allen et al. 2006; Ball et al. 2006; Driver et al. 2007; Gadotti 2009).”
The Millennium Galaxy Catalogue: the B-band attenuation of bulge and disc light and the implied cosmic dust and stellar mass densities (2007, methodology): “3 The fixed cut at B/T < 0.8 is necessary as the post-GIM2D processing of our catalogue (see Allen et al. 2006, fig.”
Physical properties and environments of nearby galaxies (2009, methodology): “Among the larger analyses are those of Allen et al. (2006) and Driver et al. (2007), who fit two-component models in the Millenium Galaxy Catalogue redshift survey, and Gadotti (2009), who fit three-component models in the SDSS.”
MERGERS AND BULGE FORMATION IN ΛCDM: WHICH MERGERS MATTER? (2009, background): “10%; see Allen et al. 2006; Ball et al. 2006; Driver et al. 2007); they do, however, become a large fraction of the bulge population in small bulges in late-type hosts (e.g. Sb/c, corresponding to typicalMgal .”
SUPERDENSE GALAXIES AND THE MASS–SIZE RELATION AT LOW REDSHIFT (2012, methodology): “…size measurements, there are four other independent size estimates for PM2GC galaxies: GIM2D Sersic fits from the Millennium Galaxy Catalogue data (Allen et al. 2006), New York University Value Added Catalogue (NYUVAC) radii (Blanton et al. 2005), GIM2D Sersic fits from Sloan DR7 data (Simard et…”
THE DEPENDENCE OF QUENCHING UPON THE INNER STRUCTURE OF GALAXIES AT 0.5 ⩽ z < 0.8 IN THE DEEP2/AEGIS SURVEY (2012, background): “Driver et al. (2006) and Allen et al. (2006) observed a clear bimodal distribution in both the restframeu− r color andn in the Millennium Galaxy Catalog.”
MODELING THE EXTRAGALACTIC BACKGROUND LIGHT FROM STARS AND DUST (2009, methodology): “Driver et al. (2008) have applied the dust model of Popescu & Tuffs (2009) to a survey of ∼ 105 nearby galaxies from the Millennium Galaxy Catalog (Allen et al. 2006) to determine the wavelengthdependent escape fraction of photons in the local universe.”
The effects of gas on morphological transformation in mergers: implications for bulge and disc demographics (2009, background): “We show the fits to observations in Balcells et al. (2007b), but others are similar (Kochanek et al. 2001; Allen et al. 2006; Driver et al. 2007; Noordermeer & van der Hulst 2007).”
A Cosmological Framework for the Co-Evolution of Quasars, Supermassive Black Holes, and Elliptical Galaxies. I. Galaxy Mergers and Quasar Activity (2007, background): “…estimates of the pseudobulge fraction as a function of, e.g., host galaxymorphological type or bulge Sersic index (Kormendy & Kennicutt 2004; Balcells et al. 2007; Allen et al. 2006; Noordermeer & van der Hulst 2007) and the directly estimated pseudobulge mass functions in Driver et al. (2007).”
Inclination- and dust-corrected galaxy parameters: bulge-to-disc ratios and size–luminosity relations (2008, methodology): “Matching observational data from over 10,000 galaxies (Allen et al. 2006) with radiative transfer measurements from sophisticated, three-dimensional models of disc galaxies with dust (Popescu et al. 2000; Tuffs et al. 2004), Driver et al. (2007) has recently provided a highly useful calibration of…”
A Cosmological Framework for the Co-Evolution of Quasars, Supermassive Black Holes, and Elliptical Galaxies. II. Formation of Red Ellipticals (2007, background): “Observations indicate that pseudobulges constitute only a small fraction of the total mass density in spheroids (P10%; see Allen et al. 2006a; Ball et al. 2006; Driver et al. 2007), becoming a large fraction of the bulge population only in small bulges in late-type hosts (e.g., Sb/c, corresponding…”