The Way We Measure: Comparison of Methods to Derive Radial Surface Brightness Profiles

Abstract

The breaks and truncations in the luminosity profile of face-on spiral galaxies offer valuable insights in their formation history. The traditional method of deriving the surface photometry profile for face-on galaxies is to use elliptical averaging. In this paper, we explore the question whether elliptical averaging is the best way to do this. We apply two additional surface photometry methods, one new: principle axis summation, and one old that has become seldom used: equivalent profiles. These are compared to elliptically averaged profiles using a set of 29 face-on galaxies. We find that the equivalent profiles match extremely well with elliptically averaged profiles, confirming the validity of using elliptical averaging. The principle axis summation offers a better comparison to edge-on galaxies.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication by Monthly Notices of the R.A.S. A hi-res version is available at http://www.astro.rug.nl/~vdkruit/Petersetal-VI.pdf

References in corpus (22)

• The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The Formation of Galactic Disks
• The Second Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Astrometry.net: Blind astrometric calibration of arbitrary astronomical images
• Star formation thresholds and galaxy edges: why and where
• Dark Halo and Disk Galaxy Scaling Laws in Hierarchical Universes
• The structure of galactic disks: Studying late-type spiral galaxies using SDSS
• Galaxy Disks
• Anti-Truncation of Disks in Early-Type Barred Galaxies
• The Outer Disks of Early-Type Galaxies. I. Surface-Brightness Profiles of Barred Galaxies
• Color Profiles of Spiral Galaxies: Clues on Outer-Disk Formation Scenarios
• The impact of bars on disk breaks as probed by S4G imaging
• Radial Profiles of Star Formation in the Far Outer Regions of Galaxy Disks
• Breaks in thin and thick discs of edge-on galaxies imaged in the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G)
• The Outer Disks of Early-Type Galaxies. II. Surface-Brightness Profiles of Unbarred Galaxies and Trends with Hubble Type
• Morphology and environment of galaxies with disc breaks in the S4G and NIRS0S
• A unified picture of breaks and truncations in spiral galaxies from SDSS and S^{4}G imaging
• Surface Brightness Profiles of Dwarf Galaxies: I. Profiles and Statistics
• Thick Disks of Lenticular Galaxies
• On the 3 dimensional structure of edge-on disk galaxies
• Radial truncations in stellar discs in galaxies
• Surface Brightness Profiles of Dwarf Galaxies: II. Color Trends and Mass Profiles

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Radial distribution of dust, stars, gas, and star-formation rate in DustPedia face-on galaxies
• The Application of the Montage Image Mosaic Engine To The Visualization Of Astronomical Images
• Stellar Disc Truncations and Extended Haloes in Face-on Spiral Galaxies
• LIGHTS. A robust technique to identify galaxy edges