Edge-on disk galaxies in the SDSS DR6: Fractions of bulgeless and other disk galaxies

TL;DR

This study analyzes a large sample of edge-on disk galaxies from SDSS DR6 to determine the fractions of bulgeless and other disk galaxy types, highlighting the prevalence of simple disks in the local universe.

Contribution

It provides a robust estimate of the fraction of bulgeless disk galaxies using automated classification on a large, homogeneous sample, and compares these fractions with other catalogs.

Findings

15% of the sample are pure bulgeless disk galaxies

The fraction of bulgeless disks agrees with other galaxy catalogs

The prevalence of simple disks challenges galaxy formation models

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine the fractions of different spiral galaxy types, especially bulgeless disks, from a complete and homogeneous sample of 15127 edge-on disk galaxies extracted from the sixth data release from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The sample is divided in broad morphological classes and sub types consisting of galaxies with bulges, intermediate types and galaxies which appear bulgeless. A small fraction of disky irregulars is also detected. The morphological separation is based on automated classification criteria which resemble the bulge sizes and the flatness of the disks. Each of these broad classes contains about 1/3 of the total sample. Using strict criteria for selecting pure bulgeless galaxies leads to a fraction of 15% of simple disk galaxies. We compare this fraction to other galaxy catalogs and find an excellent agreement of the observed frequency of bulgeless galaxies. Although the fraction of simple disk galaxies in this study does not represent a cosmic fraction of bulgeless galaxies, it shows that the relative abundance of pure disks is comparable to other studies and offers a profound value of the frequency of simple disks in the local Universe. This fraction of simple disks emphasizes the challenge for formation and evolution models of disk galaxies since these models are hard pressed to explain the observed frequency of these objects.