A public catalogue of stellar masses, star formation and metallicity histories and dust content from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey using VESPA

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive catalogue of galaxy properties derived from SDSS data using the VESPA algorithm, including stellar masses, star formation histories, metallicity, and dust content, accessible publicly.

Contribution

The study applies the VESPA algorithm to SDSS data to produce a detailed, publicly available galaxy property catalogue with robust results across different models.

Findings

Red galaxies are older and less dusty.

Galaxies are best described by 1-3 populations.

Dust values correlate with Balmer decrements.

Abstract

We applied the VESPA algorithm to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey final data release of the Main Galaxies and Luminous Red Galaxies samples. The result is a catalogue of stellar masses, detailed star formation and metallicity histories and dust content of nearly 800,000 galaxies. We make the catalogue public via a T-SQL database, which is described in detail in this paper. We present the results using a range of stellar population and dust models, and will continue to update the catalogue as new and improved models are made public. The data and documentation are currently online, and can be found at http://www-wfau.roe.ac.uk/vespa/. We also present a brief exploration of the catalogue, and show that the quantities derived are robust: luminous red galaxies can be described by one to three populations, whereas a main galaxy sample galaxy needs on average two to five; red galaxies are older and less dusty; the dust values we recover are well correlated with measured Balmer decrements and star formation rates are also in agreement with previous measurements.