The Dragonfly Nearby Galaxies Survey. I. Substantial variation in the diffuse stellar halos around spiral galaxies

Abstract

Galaxies are thought to grow through accretion; as less massive galaxies are disrupted and merge over time, their debris results in diffuse, clumpy stellar halos enveloping the central galaxy. Here we present a study of the variation in the stellar halos of galaxies, using data from the Dragonfly Nearby Galaxies Survey (DNGS). The survey consists of wide field, deep (${\mu }_g>31$ mag arcsec${}^{-2}$) optical imaging of nearby galaxies using the Dragonfly Telephoto Array. Our sample includes eight spiral galaxies with stellar masses similar to that of the Milky Way, inclinations of $16-90$ degrees and distances between $7-18$ Mpc. We construct stellar mass surface density profiles from the observed $g$-band surface brightness in combination with the $g-r$ color as a function of radius, and compute the halo fractions from the excess stellar mass (relative to a disk$+$bulge fit) beyond $5$ half-mass radii. We find a mean halo fraction of $0.009\pm 0.005$ and a large RMS scatter of $1.01_{-0.26}^{+0.9}$ dex. The peak-to-peak scatter is a factor of $>100$ -- while some galaxies feature strongly structured halos resembling that of M31, three of the eight have halos that are completely undetected in our data. We conclude that spiral galaxies as a class exhibit a rich variety in stellar halo properties, implying that their assembly histories have been highly non-uniform. We find no convincing evidence for an environmental or stellar mass dependence of the halo fraction in the sample.

Resubmitted to ApJ after addressing comments from the referee

References in corpus (23)

• K-corrections and filter transformations in the ultraviolet, optical, and near infrared
• HyperLEDA. III. The catalogue of extragalactic distances
• Two Stellar Components in the Halo of the Milky Way
• The accretion origin of the Milky Way's stellar halo
• The Haunted Halos of Andromeda and Triangulum: A panorama of galaxy formation in action
• Tracing Galaxy Formation with Stellar Halos II: Relating Substructure in Phase- and Abundance-Space to Accretion Histories
• The Atlas3D project -- XXIX. The new look of early-type galaxies and surrounding fields disclosed by extremely deep optical images
• The structure of galactic disks: Studying late-type spiral galaxies using SDSS
• The Dual Origin of Stellar Halos
• Thin, thick and dark discs in LCDM
• The Galaxy and its stellar halo: insights on their formation from a hybrid cosmological approach
• Color Profiles of Spiral Galaxies: Clues on Outer-Disk Formation Scenarios
• Building Late-Type Spiral Galaxies by In-Situ and Ex-Situ Star Formation
• Halo Mass and Assembly History Exposed in the Faint Outskirts: the Stellar and Dark Matter Haloes of Illustris Galaxies
• Global Properties of M31's Stellar Halo from the SPLASH Survey. I. Surface Brightness Profile
• The influence of diffuse scattered light I. The PSF and its role to observations of the edge-on galaxy NGC 5907
• The Nature and Origin of Substructure in the Outskirts of M31. I. Surveying the Stellar Content with HST/ACS
• On the formation of extended galactic disks by tidally disrupted dwarf galaxies
• The stellar halo and outer disk of M33
• A unified picture of breaks and truncations in spiral galaxies from SDSS and S^{4}G imaging
• The Structure and Stellar Content of the Outer Disks of Galaxies: A New View from the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey
• Identifying Contributions to the Stellar Halo from Accreted, Kicked-Out, and In Situ Populations
• Point spread function tails and the measurements of diffuse stellar halo light around edge-on disc galaxies

Cited by in corpus (40)

• The total stellar halo mass of the Milky Way
• Diverse Stellar Haloes in Nearby Milky Way-Mass Disc Galaxies
• Anomalies in Physical Cosmology
• The Fornax Deep Survey with VST. VIII. Connecting the accretion history with the cluster density
• A Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distance of $22.1\pm 1.2$ Mpc to the Dark Matter Deficient Galaxy NGC1052-DF2 from 40 Orbits of Hubble Space Telescope Imaging
• Galaxies grow their bulges and black holes in diverse ways
• Introducing the LBT Imaging of Galactic Halos and Tidal Structures (LIGHTS) survey. A preview of the low surface brightness Universe to be unveiled by LSST
• A missing outskirts problem? Comparisons between stellar halos in the Dragonfly Nearby Galaxies Survey and the TNG100 simulation
• Formation of the Large Nearby Galaxies
• On the Orbital Decay of Globular Clusters in NGC1052-DF2: Testing a Baryon-Only Mass Model
• The Fornax3D project: discovery of ancient massive merger events in the Fornax cluster galaxies NGC 1380 and NGC 1427
• NGC 5746: formation history of a massive disc-dominated galaxy
• The central spheroids of Milky Way mass-sized galaxies
• Euclid: Early Release Observations -- Deep anatomy of nearby galaxies
• ProFuse: Physical Multi-Band Structural Decomposition of Galaxies and the Mass-Size-Age Plane
• Stellar halos from The Dragonfly Edge-on Galaxies Survey
• VEGAS: a VST Early-type GAlaxy Survey. IV. NGC 1533, IC 2038 and IC 2039: an interacting triplet in the Dorado group
• Extragalactic Background Light: Inventory of light throughout the cosmic history
• Measuring Dark Matter in Galaxies: The Mass Fraction Within 5 Effective Radii
• Introducing the Condor Array Telescope. 1. Motivation, Configuration, and Performance
• The Origin of Stars in the Inner 500 Parsecs in TNG50 Galaxies
• The Extended Disk Galaxy Exploration Science Survey: Description and Surface Brightness Profile Properties
• The Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury XX: The Disk of M31 is Thick
• Bulgeless disks, dark galaxies, inverted color gradients, and other expected phenomena at higher z. The chromatic surface brightness modulation (CMOD) effect
• Saying Hallo to M94's Stellar Halo: Investigating the Accretion History of the Largest Pseudobulge Host in the Local Universe
• A Recipe for Unbiased Background Modeling in Deep Wide-Field Astronomical Images
• Stellar tidal streams around nearby spiral galaxies with deep imaging from amateur telescopes
• Simulations of the accreted stellar halos of low-mass field galaxies
• IllustrisTNG in the HSC-SSP: No Shortage of Thin Disk Galaxies in TNG50
• First resolved stellar halo kinematics of a MW-mass galaxy outside the Local Group: A flat counter-rotating halo in NGC 4945
• Uncovering the truth about M101, NGC 3938, and their significant others through radiative transfer
• The weak connection between the stellar haloes and merger histories of Milky Way-mass galaxies
• Accreted stars and stellar haloes of simulated galaxies in TNG50
• A disk and no signatures of tidal distortion in the galaxy "lacking" dark matter NGC 1052-DF2
• COUGS-DESI: A Catalog of Unusual Galaxies with Polar Structures in the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys
• Revisiting the structure of galactic disks with deep imaging
• Numerical effects on the stripping of dark matter and stars in IllustrisTNG galaxy groups and clusters
• Characterizing the outer disk of eXtended-UV galaxies in the optical domain with deep surveys
• H$\alpha$ emission in the outskirts of galaxies at z=0.4
• Stellar halos of bright central galaxies II: Scaling relations, colors and metallicity evolution with redshift