Catalog of Visually Classified Galaxies in the Local ($z\sim0.01$) Universe

TL;DR

This paper presents a detailed visual classification of 5840 local galaxies from SDSS, creating a comprehensive morphology catalog that distinguishes various galaxy types and features, including dwarf subtypes and structural differences.

Contribution

It provides a new, detailed morphology catalog of local galaxies with refined classifications, including dwarf galaxy subtypes and features, based on SDSS data.

Findings

Elliptical and lenticular galaxies are a small fraction of local galaxies.

Spiral and irregular galaxies dominate the local galaxy population.

Dwarf ellipticals with blue cores are a significant subset of dwarf galaxies.

Abstract

The morphological types of 5840 galaxies were classified by a visual inspection of color images using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 7 (DR7) to produce a morphology catalog of a representative sample of local galaxies with $z<0.01$. The sample galaxies are almost complete for galaxies brighter than $r_{pet}=17.77$. Our classification system is basically the same as that of the Third Reference Catalog of Bright Galaxies with some simplification for giant galaxies. On the other hand, we distinguish fine features of dwarf elliptical-like galaxies to classify 5 subtypes: dwarf ellipticals (dE), blue-cored dwarf ellipticals (dE$_{bc}$), dwarf spheroidals (dSph), blue dwarf ellipticals (dE$_{blue}$), and dwarf lenticulars (dS0). In addition, we denote the presence of nucleation in dE, dSph, and dS0. Elliptical galaxies and lenticular galaxies contribute only $\sim1.5\%$ and $\sim4.9\%$ of the local galaxies, respectively, whereas spirals and irregulars contribute $\sim32.1\%$ and $\sim42.8\%$, respectively. The dE$_{blue}$ galaxies, which are recently found populations of galaxies, contribute a significant fraction to the dwarf galaxies. There seems to be structural difference between dSph and dE galaxies. The dSph galaxies are fainter and bluer with shallower surface brightness gradient than dE galaxies. They also have lower fraction of galaxies with small axis ratios ($b/a \lesssim 0.4$) than dE galaxies. The mean projected distance to the nearest neighbor galaxy is $\sim260$kpc. About $1\%$ of local galaxies have no neighbors with comparable luminosity within a projected distance of 2Mpc.