A CATALOG OF BULGE+DISK DECOMPOSITIONS AND UPDATED PHOTOMETRY FOR 1.12 MILLION GALAXIES IN THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY

By L. Simard, J. Trevor Mendel, David R. Patton, Sara L. Ellison, A. McConnachie. 2011

500 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We perform two-dimensional, point-spread-function-convolved, bulge+disk decompositions in the g and r bandpasses on a sample of 1,123,718 galaxies from the Legacy area of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release Seven. Four different decomposition procedures are investigated which make improvements to sky background determinations and object deblending over the standard SDSS procedures that lead to more robust structural parameters and integrated galaxy magnitudes and colors, especially in crowded environments. We use a set of science-based quality assurance metrics, namely, the disk luminosity–size relation, the galaxy color–magnitude diagram, and the galaxy central (fiber) colors to show the robustness of our structural parameters. The best procedure utilizes simultaneous, two-bandpass decompositions. Bulge and disk photometric errors remain below 0.1 mag down to bulge and disk magnitudes of g ≃ 19 and r ≃ 18.5. We also use and compare three different galaxy fitting models: a pure Sérsic model, an nb = 4 bulge + disk model, and a Sérsic (free nb) bulge + disk model. The most appropriate model for a given galaxy is determined by the F-test probability. All three catalogs of measured structural parameters, rest-frame magnitudes, and colors are publicly released here. These catalogs should provide an extensive comparison set for a wide range of observational and theoretical studies of galaxies.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d94ef60d6f10d7c96e01cd73c574cb44839681d3

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

In Ecology

Citations in the corpus

The massive end of the luminosity and stellar mass functions: Dependence on the fit to the light profile (2013, methodology): “The PyMorph-based counts are in good agreement with those which use the Simard et al. (2011) single-Sersic reductions, except at luminosities brighter than Mr ∼ −24, where PyMorph tends to be brighter (c.f. Figure 1), so the PyMorph luminosity function shows more high luminosity objects.”
Constraining the galaxy–halo connection over the last 13.3 Gyr: star formation histories, galaxy mergers and structural properties (2017, methodology): “While new algorithms have been developed for obtaining more precise measurements of the sky subtraction and thus to improve the photometry (Blanton et al. 2011; Simard et al. 2011; Meert, Vikram & Bernardi 2015) there is not yet a consensus.”
The SDSS-IV MaNGA Sample: Design, Optimization, and Usage Considerations (2017, result): “A detailed comparison with the Simard et al. (2011) two component GIM2D Sersic fits further showed that the NSA’s single Sersic Re estimates are systematically overestimated for early-type galaxies (or galaxies with high concentrations) by up to 50% at high Sersic-n.”
UniverseMachine: The correlation between galaxy growth and dark matter halo assembly from z = 0−10 (2018, methodology): “…compute the stellar mass offset at constant number density between the cmodel SMF and the average of the SMFs for the three fitting methods in Bernardi et al. (2013) (i.e., Simard et al. 2011 Sérsic, Bernardi et al. 2013 Sérsic, and Bernardi et al. 2013 SérExp) and apply this as a correction (Fig.”
A catalogue of 2D photometric decompositions in the SDSS-DR7 spectroscopic main galaxy sample: preferred models and systematics (2014, methodology): “We would also like to thank Luc Simard for providing sky brightness values for the fits published in their paper (Simard et al. 2011).”
The Morphologies of Massive Galaxies at 1<z<3 in the CANDELS-UDS Field: Compact Bulges, and the Rise and Fall of Massive Disks (2012, methodology): “…correlation between single-Sérsic index and B/T flux ratio delivered by our modelling of these massive galaxies at 1 < z < 3, a relation which has been extensively studied and debated at lower redshifts (e.g. Ravindranath et al. 2006; Cameron et al. 2009; Simard et al. 2011; Lackner & Gunn 2012).”
The Sydney-AAO Multi-object Integral field spectrograph (2011, methodology): “We will use the recent Sersic fits and bulge-disc decomposition carried out by Simard et al. (2011) on the SDSS photometry.”
Stellar Mass—Halo Mass Relation and Star Formation Efficiency in High-Mass Halos (2014, methodology): “The best fit profiles of Simard et al. (2011) are not biased at small radii, but have equally large error at large radii.”
The Evolution of Galaxy Structure Over Cosmic Time (2014, methodology): “…& Djorgovski (1989), Allen et al. (2006), Simard et al. (2011) Recently the fitting of galaxy two dimensional profiles with various forms such as the Sérsic, exponential and de Vaucouleurs profile is done through the GALFIT code by Peng et al. (2002), as well as GIM2D by Simard et al. (2011).”
Galaxy Interactions Trigger Rapid Black Hole Growth: an unprecedented view from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey (2017, background): “…isophotes, while late-type galaxies tend to be more disk-dominated with flatter light-profiles – it has been shown that even simple one or two-dimensional decompositions of the light profiles are capable of separating galaxies by their Hubble-type (e.g., Kormendy et al. 2009; Simard et al. 2011).”
Physical Models of Galaxy Formation in a Cosmological Framework (2014, background): “A few observational studies have carried out decompositions into spheroid and disk contributions (Bluck et al. 2014, Gadotti & Kauffmann 2009, Simard et al. 2011), but there are large uncertainties in these decompositions as well (see e.g. Benson et al. 2007, Tasca & White 2011).”
Bar formation and evolution in disc galaxies with gas and a triaxial halo: morphology, bar strength and halo properties (2012, background): “…by guest on 30 July 2018 2007; Marinova et al. 2009; Buta et al. 2010; Gadotti 2011; Hoyle et al. 2011; Laurikainen et al. 2011; Masters et al. 2011; Simard et al. 2011; Beirão et al. 2012; Martı́nez-Garcı́a 2012; Pérez, Aguerri & Méndez-Abreu 2012; Wang et al. 2012).”
Galaxy pairs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey – V. Tracing changes in star formation rate and metallicity out to separations of 80 kpc (2012, methodology): “In order to prevent the issues with Sloan photometry detailed in Simard et al. (2011) from affecting the mass estimates, the masses used here have been recalculated from the MPA catalogue2, using their inferred mass to light ratios (M/L).”
GALEX–SDSS–WISE LEGACY CATALOG (GSWLC): STAR FORMATION RATES, STELLAR MASSES, AND DUST ATTENUATIONS OF 700,000 LOW-REDSHIFT GALAXIES (2016, background): “Simard et al. (2011); Meert et al. (2016) have derived magnitudes that were designed to better capture the total light in each band.”
A fundamental problem in our understanding of low-mass galaxy evolution (2012, methodology): “Colours in the Mendel et al. sample are based on the updated photometry of Simard et al. (2011), while stellar masses are derived in the same way as for the MPA data (see above), but with updated photometry, resulting in slightly higher masses.”
Bulge mass is king: the dominant role of the bulge in determining the fraction of passive galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2014, methodology): “From the literature and our simulation results we also expect this to be more common in higher B/T systems (e.g. Simard et al. 2011).”
MegaMorph - multiwavelength measurement of galaxy structure: complete Sersic profile information from modern surveys (2012, methodology): “This approach has been used to measure bulge and disk colours for over a million SDSS galaxies (Simard et al. 2011).”
Galaxy pairs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey – VI. The orbital extent of enhanced star formation in interacting galaxies (2013, methodology): “We note that the photometry of Simard et al. (2011) has been shown to provide a significantimprovement over the standard SDSS pipeline, especially for galaxies in crowded systems such as close pairs (Patton et al. 2011).”