The Advanced Camera for Surveys General Catalog: Structural Parameters for Approximately Half a Million Galaxies

TL;DR

The ACS-GC catalog compiles structural, photometric, and redshift data for nearly half a million galaxies from multiple Hubble surveys to facilitate studies of galaxy evolution over cosmic time.

Contribution

This work provides the first large, unified catalog combining structural parameters, photometry, and redshifts for about 470,000 galaxies from multiple major Hubble surveys.

Findings

Includes ~470,000 sources with structural and redshift data.

Provides a comprehensive, publicly available galaxy database.

Facilitates large-scale statistical studies of galaxy evolution.

Abstract

We present the Advanced Camera for Surveys General Catalog (ACS-GC), a photometric and morphological database using publicly available data obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. The goal of the ACS-GC database is to provide a large statistical sample of galaxies with reliable structural and distance measurements to probe the evolution of galaxies over a wide range of look-back times. The ACS-GC includes approximately 470,000 astronomical sources (stars + galaxies) derived from the AEGIS, COSMOS, GEMS, and GOODS surveys. Galapagos was used to construct photometric (SExtractor) and morphological (Galfit) catalogs. The analysis assumes a single S\'ersic model for each object to derive quantitative structural parameters. We include publicly available redshifts from the DEEP2, COMBO-17, TKRS, PEARS, ACES, CFHTLS,and zCOSMOS surveys to supply redshifts (spectroscopic and photometric) for a considerable fraction (~74%) of the imaging sample. The ACS-GC includes color postage stamps, Galfit residual images, and photometry, structural parameters, and redshifts combined into a single catalog.