BUDDI-MaNGA I: A statistical sample of cleanly decomposed bulge and disc spectra

TL;DR

This paper introduces the BUDDI-MaNGA project, which extracts and analyzes clean bulge and disc spectra from galaxy data to study their star-formation histories and galaxy evolution.

Contribution

It provides the largest sample of decomposed bulge and disc spectra from IFU data, enabling detailed studies of galaxy formation and evolution.

Findings

Largest sample of bulge and disc spectra from IFU data

Reliable spectral decomposition methods validated

Foundation for future galaxy evolution studies

Abstract

Many galaxies display clear bulges and discs, and understanding how these components form is a vital step towards understanding how the galaxy has evolved into what we see today. The BUDDI-MaNGA project aims to study galaxy evolution and morphological transformations through the star-formation histories of the bulges and discs. We have applied our BUDDI software to galaxies from the MaNGA Survey in the SDSS DR15 in order to isolate their bulge and disc spectra, from which we derived their stellar populations. To date, this work provides the largest sample of clean bulge and disc spectra extracted from IFU datacubes using the galaxies light profile information, and will form the basis for a series of papers aiming to answer open questions on how galaxies have formed and evolved, and the role of their individual structures. This paper presents an introduction to the project, including an overview of these fits, a characterisation of the sample, and a series of tests on the fits to ensure reliability.