Image Decomposition of Barred Galaxies and AGN Hosts
Dimitri Alexei Gadotti (Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics)

TL;DR
This study performs multi-component decomposition of galaxy images to analyze the structural properties of barred galaxies and AGN hosts, highlighting the importance of including bars and AGN in models for accurate measurements.
Contribution
It introduces a comprehensive method using BUDDA v2.1 for detailed galaxy decomposition, emphasizing the impact of bars and AGN on structural parameter estimation.
Findings
Neglecting bars can double the bulge-to-total luminosity ratio.
Reliable structural parameters can be obtained up to ~1.5 Kpc resolution.
Ignoring AGN light has minimal effect at low resolution.
Abstract
I present the results of multi-component decomposition of V and R broadband images of a sample of 17 nearby galaxies, most of them hosting bars and active galactic nuclei. I use BUDDA v2.1 to produce the fits, allowing to include bars and AGN in the models. A comparison with previous results from the literature shows a fairly good agreement. It is found that the axial ratio of bars, as measured from ellipse fits, can be severely underestimated if the galaxy axisymmetric component is relatively luminous. Thus, reliable bar axial ratios can only be determined by taking into account the contributions of bulge and disc to the light distribution in the galaxy image. Through a number of tests, I show that neglecting bars when modelling barred galaxies can result in a overestimation of the bulge-to-total luminosity ratio of a factor of two. Similar effects result when bright, type 1 AGN are…
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