Unveiling the Milky Way: A New Technique for Determining the Optical Color and Luminosity of our Galaxy

Abstract

We demonstrate a new statistical method of determining the global photometric properties of the Milky Way (MW) to an unprecedented degree of accuracy, allowing our Galaxy to be compared directly to objects measured in extragalactic surveys. Capitalizing on the high-quality imaging and spectroscopy dataset from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), we exploit the inherent dependence of galaxies' luminosities and colors on their total stellar mass, ${\mathrm{M}}_{\star }$, and star formation rate (SFR), ${\dot{\mathrm{M}}}_{\star }$, by selecting a sample of $Milky$ $Way$ $analog$ $galaxies$ designed to reproduce the best Galactic ${\mathrm{M}}_{\star }$ and ${\dot{\mathrm{M}}}_{\star }$ measurements, including all measurement uncertainties. Making the Copernican assumption that the MW is not extraordinary amongst galaxies of similar stellar mass and SFR, we then analyze the photometric properties of this matched sample, constraining the characteristics of our Galaxy without suffering interference from interstellar dust. We explore a variety of potential systematic errors that could affect this method, and find that they are subdominant to random uncertainties. We present both SDSS $ugriz$ absolute magnitudes and colors in both rest-frame $z$=0 and $z$=0.1 passbands for the MW, which are in agreement with previous estimates but can have up to $\sim$3$\times$ lower errors. We find the MW to have absolute magnitude ${}^0{M}_r-5\log h=-21.00_{-0.37}^{+0.38}$ and integrated color ${}^0(g-r)=0.682_{-0.056}^{+0.066}$, indicating that it may belong to the green-valley region in color-magnitude space and ranking it amongst the brightest and reddest of spiral galaxies. We also present new estimates of global stellar mass-to-light ratios for our Galaxy. This work will help relate our in-depth understanding of the Galaxy to studies of more distant objects.

20 pages, 9 figures, 5 tables of Milky Way photometric properties

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Cited by in corpus (48)

• The Galaxy in Context: Structural, Kinematic and Integrated Properties
• The Thirteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the SDSS-IV Survey MApping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory
• The SAGA Survey: I. Satellite Galaxy Populations Around Eight Milky Way Analogs
• ASASSN-15lh: A Highly Super-Luminous Supernova
• Galactic Dark Matter Halos and Globular Cluster Populations. III: Extension to Extreme Environments
• When the Milky Way turned off the lights: APOGEE provides evidence of star formation quenching in our Galaxy
• Synthetic Gaia surveys from the FIRE cosmological simulations of Milky Way-mass galaxies
• The Nature of Massive Transition Galaxies in CANDELS, GAMA, and Cosmological Simulations
• The abundance of satellites around Milky Way- and M31-like galaxies with the TNG50 simulation: a matter of diversity
• Modeling the Connection Between Subhalos and Satellites in Milky Way-like Systems
• The ALMA view of GMCs in NGC 300: Physical Properties and Scaling Relations at 10 pc Resolution
• Luminous Red Novae: population models and future prospects
• The Surface Density Profile of the Galactic Disk from the Terminal Velocity Curve
• Pressure balance in the multiphase ISM of cosmologically simulated disk galaxies
• Bar effect on gas-phase abundance gradients. I. Data sample and chemical abundances
• A comparative study of satellite galaxies in Milky Way-like galaxies from HSC, DECaLS and SDSS
• The impact of cosmic rays on dynamical balance and disk-halo interaction in Lstar disk galaxies
• Does the Milky Way Obey Spiral Galaxy Scaling Relations?
• Milky Way Analogues in MaNGA: Multi-Parameter Homogeneity and Comparison to the Milky Way
• Predictably Missing Satellites: Subhalo Abundance in Milky Way-like Halos
• Are the Milky Way and Andromeda unusual? A comparison with Milky Way and Andromeda Analogs
• Sizing Up the Milky Way: A Bayesian Mixture Model Meta-Analysis of Photometric Scale Length Measurements
• The Sheet of Giants: Unusual Properties of the Milky Way's Immediate Neighbourhood
• Hot WHIM counterparts of FUV OVI absorbers: Evidence in the line-of-sight towards quasar 3C 273
• SDSS IV MaNGA: Bar pattern speed in Milky Way Analogue galaxies
• Supernovae and their host galaxies - V. The vertical distribution of supernovae in disc galaxies
• Stellar Population Synthesis with Distinct Kinematics: Multi-Age Asymmetric Drift in SDSS-IV MaNGA Galaxies
• The structure of the Milky Way based on unWISE 3.4$\mu$m integrated photometry
• The Widespread Presence of Nanometer-size Dust Grains in the Interstellar Medium of Galaxies
• The Galactic neutron star population I - an extragalactic view of the Milky Way and the implications for fast radio bursts
• The QuaStar Survey: Detecting Hidden Low-Velocity Gas in the Milky Way's Circumgalactic Medium
• The Effect of Bars on the Ionized ISM: Optical Emission Lines from Milky Way Analogs
• Revealing strong bias in common measures of galaxy properties using new inclination-independent structures
• Searching for Milky Way twins: Radial abundance distribution as a strict criterion
• Constraining the Milky Way's Ultraviolet to Infrared SED with Gaussian Process Regression
• Updated constraints on WIMP dark matter annihilation by radio observations of M31
• The HERBAL model: A hierarchical errors-in-variables Bayesian lognormal hurdle model for galactic globular cluster populations
• Globular Cluster Counts around 700 Nearby Galaxies
• A Galactic Self-Portrait: Density Structure and Integrated Properties of the Milky Way Disk
• One of Everything: The Breakthrough Listen Exotica Catalog
• Dust SEDs in Milky Way-like galaxies in the IllustrisTNG simulations based on the evolution of grain size distribution
• Galactic Traversability: A New Concept for Extragalactic SETI
• Multiplicity Statistics of Stars in the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy: Comparison to the Milky Way
• NGC 3521 as the Milky Way near twin: spectral energy distribution from UV to radio decameter ranges
• Empirically-Driven Multiwavelength K-corrections At Low Redshift
• The Exploration of Local VolumE Satellites (ELVES) Survey: A Nearly Volume-Limited Sample of Nearby Dwarf Satellite Systems
• SF-R You Sure? The Conflicting Role of Star Formation Rates in Constraining the Evolution of Milky Way Analogues in Cosmological Simulations
• The vertical structure of the stellar disk in NGC 551