A Survey of 286 Virgo Cluster Galaxies at Optical griz and Near-IR H-band: Surface Brightness Profiles and Bulge-Disk Decompositions

TL;DR

This survey provides detailed optical and near-infrared surface brightness profiles and bulge-disk decompositions for 286 Virgo cluster galaxies, enabling comprehensive analysis of galaxy structures across the Hubble sequence.

Contribution

It offers a homogeneous analysis of multi-band surface brightness profiles and bulge-disk decompositions for a large, morphologically diverse galaxy sample in the Virgo cluster, including new data and consistent methodology.

Findings

Virgo spiral bulges have Sersic index n ~ 1

Elliptical galaxies often have both spheroid and disk components

No galaxy spheroid requires Sersic index n > 3

Abstract

We present griz and H-band surface brightness profiles and bulge-disk decompositions for a morphologically-broad sample of 286 Virgo cluster galaxies. The H-band data come from a variety of sources including our survey of 171 galaxies at the UH 2.2-m, CFHT and UKIRT telescopes, and another 115 galaxies from the Two-Micron All-Sky Survey and GOLDMine archives. The optical data for all 286 Virgo galaxies were extracted from Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) images. The H-band and SDSS griz data were analyzed in a homogeneous manner using our own software, yielding a consistent set of deep, multi-band surface brightness profiles for each galaxy. Average surface brightness profiles per morphological bin were created in order to characterize the variety of galaxy light profiles across the Hubble sequence. The 1D bulge-disk decomposition parameters, as well as non-parametric galaxy measures, such as effective radius, effective surface brightness and light concentration, are presented for all 286 galaxies in each of the five optical/near-infrared wavebands. The profile decompositions account for bulge and disk components, spiral arms, nucleus and atmospheric blurring. The Virgo spiral galaxy bulges typically have a Sersic index n ~ 1, while elliptical galaxies prefer n ~ 2. No galaxy spheroid requires n > 3. The light profiles for 70% of the Virgo elliptical galaxies reveal the presence of both a spheroid and disk component. A more in-depth discussion of the structural parameter trends can be found in McDonald et al (2009b). The data provided here should serve as a base for studies of galaxy structure and stellar populations in the cluster environment. The galaxy light profiles and bulge-disk decomposition results are available at the Centre de Donnees astronomiques de Strasbourg (CDS; http://cds.u-strasbg.fr) and the author's own website (http://www.astro.queensu.ca/virgo).