A catalog of bulge, disk, and total stellar mass estimates for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

J. Trevor Mendel, Luc Simard, Michael Palmer, Sara L. Ellison, David R. Patton

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

215 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We present a catalog of bulge, disk, and total stellar mass estimates for 660,000 galaxies in the Legacy area of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data (SDSS) Release 7. These masses are based on a homogeneous catalog of g- and r-band photometry described by Simard et al., which we extend here with bulge+disk and Sérsic profile photometric decompositions in the SDSS u, i, and z bands. We discuss the methodology used to derive stellar masses from these data via fitting to broadband spectral energy distributions (SEDs), and show that the typical statistical uncertainty on total, bulge, and disk stellar mass is 0.15 dex. Despite relatively small formal uncertainties, we argue that SED modeling assumptions, including the choice of synthesis model, extinction law, initial mass function, and details of stellar evolution likely contribute an additional 60% systematic uncertainty in any mass estimate based on broadband SED fitting. We discuss several approaches for identifying genuine bulge+disk systems based on both their statistical likelihood and an analysis of their one-dimensional surface-brightness profiles, and include these metrics in the catalogs. Estimates of the total, bulge and disk stellar masses for both normal and dust-free models and their uncertainties are made publicly available here.

Original languageEnglish
Article number3
JournalAstrophysical Journal, Supplement Series
Volume210
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2014
Externally publishedYes

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'A catalog of bulge, disk, and total stellar mass estimates for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this