The MATLAS survey of faint outskirts of bright galaxies

TL;DR

The MATLAS survey provides extremely deep images of 177 nearby massive galaxies, revealing faint tidal features, star-forming regions, and dust clouds, which help study galaxy formation and evolution.

Contribution

This study presents a large dataset of deep images of bright galaxies, uncovering faint structures and features not visible in shallower surveys, advancing understanding of galaxy interactions and history.

Findings

Detection of diverse faint tidal features

Identification of faint star-forming regions in quenched galaxies

Observation of faint dust clouds in the Milky Way

Abstract

Deep imaging, that is imaging capable of capturing very low surface brightness extended objects, is a quickly growing field of extragalactic astronomy. Not only can new types of faint objects be discovered, but deep images of bright galaxies are very valuable, too, since they reveal faint signs of past galaxy collisions, the tidal features. Such "archeological" record can be exploited for investigating how galaxies formed. In the MATLAS survey, we obtained extremely deep images of 177 nearby massive elliptical and lenticular galaxies using the 3.5m Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. In our contribution, we will present the various types of objects and features seen in our images, for example tidal features, faint star-forming regions in otherwise quenched galaxies, or faint dust clouds in our own Galaxy. Finally, we will introduce the deep-imaging efforts at the Milankovi\'c Telescope.