An accurate new method of calculating absolute magnitudes and K-corrections applied to the Sloan filter set

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simple, accurate method for calculating galaxy absolute magnitudes and K-corrections using a quadratic function of observed color, validated with SDSS data and extensive galaxy templates.

Contribution

A novel, simplified approach for computing K-corrections based on a quadratic function of observed color, utilizing a new set of galaxy template SEDs.

Findings

K-corrections closely match existing methods with minimal differences

The method yields more consistent rest-frame color evolution across redshifts

Reliable error estimates for magnitude calculations are provided

Abstract

We describe an accurate new method for determining absolute magnitudes, and hence also K-corrections, which is simpler than most previous methods, being based on a quadratic function of just one suitably chosen observed color. The method relies on the extensive and accurate new set of 129 empirical galaxy template SEDs from Brown et al. (2014). A key advantage of our method is that we can reliably estimate random errors in computed absolute magnitudes due to galaxy diversity, photometric error and redshift error. We derive K-corrections for the five Sloan Digital Sky Survey filters and provide parameter tables for use by the astronomical community. Using the New York Value-Added Galaxy Catalog we compare our K-corrections with those from kcorrect. Our K-corrections produce absolute magnitudes that are generally in good agreement with kcorrect. Absolute g, r, i, z-band magnitudes differ by less than 0.02 mag, and those in the u-band by ~0.04 mag. The evolution of rest-frame colors as a function of redshift is better behaved using our method, with relatively few galaxies being assigned anomalously red colors and a tight red sequence being observed across the whole 0.0 < z < 0.5 redshift range.