An Optimal Strategy for Accurate Bulge-to-disk Decomposition of Disk Galaxies

Abstract

The development of two-dimensional (2D) bulge-to-disk decomposition techniques has shown their advantages over traditional one-dimensional (1D) techniques, especially for galaxies with non-axisymmetric features. However, the full potential of 2D techniques has yet to be fully exploited. Secondary morphological features in nearby disk galaxies, such as bars, lenses, rings, disk breaks, and spiral arms, are seldom accounted for in 2D image decompositions, even though some image-fitting codes, such as GALFIT, are capable of handling them. We present detailed, 2D multi-model and multi-component decomposition of high-quality $R$-band images of a representative sample of nearby disk galaxies selected from the Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey, using the latest version of GALFIT. The sample consists of five barred and five unbarred galaxies, spanning Hubble types from S0 to Sc. Traditional 1D decomposition is also presented for comparison. In detailed case studies of the 10 galaxies, we successfully model the secondary morphological features. Through a comparison of best-fit parameters obtained from different input surface brightness models, we identify morphological features that significantly impact bulge measurements. We show that nuclear and inner lenses/rings and disk breaks must be properly taken into account to obtain accurate bulge parameters, whereas outer lenses/rings and spiral arms have a negligible effect. We provide an optimal strategy to measure bulge parameters of typical disk galaxies, as well as prescriptions to estimate realistic uncertainties of them, which will benefit subsequent decomposition of a larger galaxy sample.

arXiv comment30 pages, 14 figures, published in ApJ; minor typos corrected

References in corpus (70)

• Coevolution (Or Not) of Supermassive Black Holes and Host Galaxies
• Detailed Structural Decomposition of Galaxy Images
• Detailed Decomposition of Galaxy Images. II. Beyond Axisymmetric Models
• Secular Evolution and the Formation of Pseudobulges in Disk Galaxies
• Structure and Formation of Elliptical and Spheroidal Galaxies
• A concise reference to (projected) Sersic R^{1/n} quantities, including Concentration, Profile Slopes, Petrosian indices, and Kron Magnitudes
• The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey. VI. Isophotal Analysis and the Structure of Early-Type Galaxies
• Structural Properties of Pseudo-Bulges, Classical Bulges and Elliptical Galaxies: an SDSS Perspective
• The Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S^4G)
• Efficient Multi-Gaussian Expansion of galaxies
• Dynamics of Barred Galaxies
• Morphology, photometry and kinematics of N-body bars. I Three models with different halo central concentrations
• The DEEP Groth Strip Survey II. Hubble Space Telescope Structural Parameters of Galaxies in the Groth Strip
• Secular Evolution in Disk Galaxies
• The structure of galactic disks: Studying late-type spiral galaxies using SDSS
• The Structure of Classical Bulges And Pseudobulges: The Link Between Pseudobulges And Sersic Index
• Shapelets: I. A Method for Image Analysis
• A Classical Morphological Analysis of Galaxies in the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G)
• Bulgeless Giant Galaxies Challenge our Picture of Galaxy Formation by Hierarchical Clustering
• GEMS: Galaxy fitting catalogues and testing parametric galaxy fitting codes
• Bulge n and B/T in High Mass Galaxies: Constraints on the Origin of Bulges in Hierarchical Models
• Imfit: A Fast, Flexible New Program for Astronomical Image Fitting
• Multicomponent Decompositions for a Sample of S0 galaxies
• The Millennium Galaxy Catalogue: Bulge/Disc Decomposition of 10095 Nearby Galaxies
• Anti-Truncation of Disks in Early-Type Barred Galaxies
• The Outer Disks of Early-Type Galaxies. I. Surface-Brightness Profiles of Barred Galaxies
• Near-IR and Optical Morphology of Spiral Galaxies
• BUDDA: A New Two-Dimensional Bulge/Disk Decomposition Code for Detailed Structural Analysis of Galaxies
• Bulges Of Nearby Galaxies With Spitzer: Scaling Relations in Pseudobulges and Classical Bulges
• A catalogue of 2D photometric decompositions in the SDSS-DR7 spectroscopic main galaxy sample: preferred models and systematics
• Galactic Bulges
• Image Decomposition of Barred Galaxies and AGN Hosts
• Shapelets: II. A Method for Weak Lensing Measurements
• The Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey. I. Overview and Atlas of Optical Images
• Photometric scaling relations of lenticular and spiral galaxies
• Near-IR Atlas of S0-Sa galaxies (NIRS0S)
• Bar-induced perturbation strengths of the galaxies in the Ohio State University Bright Galaxy Survey (OSUBGS) I
• Composite Bulges: The Coexistence of Classical Bulges and Disky Pseudobulges in S0 and Spiral Galaxies
• The Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey. III. The Three-Component Structure of Nearby Elliptical Galaxies
• Peanuts at an Angle: Detecting and Measuring the Three-Dimensional Structure of Bars in Moderately Inclined Galaxies
• Milky Way mass galaxies with X-shaped bulges are not rare in the local Universe
• The Near-infrared S0 Survey III: Morphology of 15 Southern Early-type Disk Galaxies
• Bars, ovals and lenses in early-type disk galaxies: probes of galaxy evolution
• The Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey. II. Isophotal Analysis
• On the nature of the barlens component in barred galaxies: what do boxy/peanut bulges look like when viewed face-on?
• Bulge growth through disk instabilities in high-redshift galaxies
• Simulations of single and two-component galaxy decompositions for spectroscopically selected galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Supermassive black holes and their host spheroids I. Disassembling galaxies
• Statistics of the structure components in S0s: implications for bar induced secular evolution
• Bulges Of Nearby Galaxies With Spitzer: The Growth Of Pseudobulges In Disk Galaxies And Its Connection To Outer Disks
• The growth of disks and bulges during hierarchical galaxy formation. I: fast evolution vs secular processes
• Unveiling the Structure of Barred Galaxies at 3.6 $\mu \mathrm{m}$ with the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S${}^4$G): I. Disk Breaks
• Quantifying the (X/Peanut)-Shaped Structure in Edge-on Disc Galaxies: Length, Strength, and Nested Peanuts
• Uncertainties in Spiral Galaxy Projection Parameters
• Outer-disk reddening and gas-phase metallicities: The CALIFA connection
• Photometric Decomposition of Barred Galaxies
• A Catalogue of Two-Dimensional Photometric Decompositions in the SDSS-DR7 Spectroscopic Main Galaxy Sample: Extension to g- and i-Bands
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Understanding the wavelength dependence of galaxy structure with bulge-disc decompositions
• Detection of a Pseudobulge Hidden Inside the "Box-Shaped Bulge" of NGC 4565
• Evidence of Bar-induced Secular Evolution in the Inner Regions of Stellar Discs in Galaxies: What Shapes Disc Galaxies?
• NGC 4608 and NGC 5701: Barred Galaxies without Disks?
• The Demographics of galactic bulges in the SDSS database
• How Robust Are the Size Measurements of High-redshift Compact Galaxies?
• Survival of pure disk galaxies over the last 8 billion years
• The Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey. IV. A Method to Determine the Average Mass Ratio of Mergers That Built Massive Elliptical Galaxies
• A Novel Approach to Constrain the Mass Ratio of Minor Mergers in Elliptical Galaxies: Application to NGC 4889, the Brightest Cluster Galaxy in Coma
• Beyond Sérsic + exponential disc morphologies in the Coma Cluster
• Two Pseudobulges in the "Boxy Bulge" Galaxy NGC 5746
• On the limits of measuring the bulge and disk properties of local and high-redshift massive galaxies
• Detection of Prominent Stellar Disks in the Progenitors of Present-day Massive Elliptical Galaxies

Cited by in corpus (43)

• What Causes The Formation of Disks and End of Bursty Star Formation?
• Angular Momentum and Galaxy Formation Revisited: Scaling Relations for Disks and Bulges
• Evolutionary Paths of Active Galactic Nuclei and Their Host Galaxies
• xGASS: HI fueling of star formation in disk-dominated galaxies
• Stellar Photometric Structures of the Host Galaxies of Nearby Type 1 Active Galactic Nuclei
• On the Connection Between Spiral Arm Pitch Angle and Galaxy Properties
• KYDISC: Galaxy Morphology, Quenching, and Mergers in the Cluster Environment
• The Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey. VIII. Demographics of Bulges along the Hubble Sequence
• Reverberation mapping of narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy I Zwicky 1: black hole mass
• The Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey. IX. Classification of Bulge Types and Statistical Properties of Pseudo Bulges
• The Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey. VII. Constraints on the Origin of S0 Galaxies from Their Photometric Structure
• Structural and photometric properties of barred galaxies from the Auriga cosmological simulations
• When models fail: an introduction to posterior predictive checks and model misspecification in gravitational-wave astronomy
• The Evolutionary Pathways of Disk-, Bulge-, and Halo-dominated Galaxies
• xGASS: The Impact of Photometric Bulges on the Scatter of HI Scaling Relations
• The Diverse Morphology, Stellar Population, and Black Hole Scaling Relations of the Host Galaxies of Nearby Quasars
• The Role of Major Mergers and Nuclear Star Formation in Nearby Obscured Quasars
• The Close AGN Reference Survey (CARS): Comparative analysis of the structural properties of star-forming and non-star-forming galaxy bars
• VIS3COS: II. Nature and nurture in galaxy structure and morphology
• The Star-forming Main Sequence of the Host Galaxies of Low-redshift Quasars
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Bulge-disk decomposition of KiDS data in the nearby universe
• Composite Bulges -- II. Classical Bulges and Nuclear Discs in Barred Galaxies: The Contrasting Cases of NGC 4608 and NGC 4643
• The Correlation between Black Hole Mass and Stellar Mass for Classical Bulges and the Cores of Ellipticals
• Do AGN triggering mechanisms vary with radio power? I.Optical morphologies of radio-intermediate HERGs
• Suppressed or enhanced central star formation rates in late-type barred galaxies
• Galaxy Zoo Builder: Morphological Dependence of Spiral Galaxy Pitch Angle
• An Elusive Population of Massive Disk Galaxies Hosting Double-lobed Radio-loud AGNs
• Mass and Environment as Drivers of Galaxy Evolution. IV. On the Quenching of Massive Central Disk Galaxies in The Local Universe
• Galaxies decomposition with spiral arms -- II: A multiwavelength case study of M 51
• Galaxy Structural Analysis with the Curvature of the Brightness Profile
• Panchromatic Photometry of Low-redshift, Massive Galaxies Selected from SDSS Stripe 82
• The Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey. X. Bulges in Stellar Mass-based Scaling Relations
• Multiwavelength Bulge-Disk Decomposition for the Galaxy M81 (NGC 3031). I. Morphology
• Less Wound and More Asymmetric: JWST Confirms the Evolution of Spiral Structure in Galaxies at $z\lesssim 3$
• 2D Surface Brightness Modelling of Large 2MASS Galaxies I: Photometry and Structural Parameters
• The clustering of galaxies with pseudo bulge and classical bulge in the local Universe
• Predicting bulge to total luminosity ratio of galaxies using deep learning
• On the scaling relations of bulges and early-type galaxies
• LeMMINGs. V. Nuclear activity and bulge properties: a detailed multi-component decomposition of $e$-MERLIN Palomar galaxies with $HST$
• The catalogue of virtual early-type galaxies from IllustrisTNG: validation and real observation consistency
• Influence of Barlens on the Bulge Parameters in the 2D Image Decomposition
• Cross-checking SMBH mass estimates in NGC 6958 -- I: Stellar dynamics from adaptive optics-assisted MUSE observations
• COSMOS-Web: Galaxy Size and Surface Brightness Evolution at Rest-Frame 1.22 $\mu$m Since $z=3$