Creating Updated, Scientifically-Calibrated Mosaic Images for the Rc3 Catalogue
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Draft version June 11, 2018 Preprint typeset using LATEX style emulateapj v. 01/23/15 CREATING UPDATED, SCIENTIFICALLY-CALIBRATED MOSAIC IMAGES FOR THE RC3 CATALOGUE Jung Lin Lee1, Robert J. Brunner2,3,4,5, Draft version June 11, 2018 ABSTRACT The Third Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies (RC3) is a reasonably complete listing of 23,011 nearby, large, bright galaxies. By using the final imaging data release from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we generate scientifically-calibrated FITS mosaics by using the montage program for all SDSS imaging bands for all RC3 galaxies that lie within the survey footprint. We further combine the SDSS g, r, and i band FITS mosaics for these galaxies to create color-composite images by using the STIFF program. We generalized this software framework to make FITS mosaics and color-composite images for an arbitrary catalog and imaging data set. Due to positional inaccuracies inherent in the RC3 catalog, we employ a recursive algorithm in our mosaicking pipeline that first determines the correct location for each galaxy, and subsequently applies the mosaicking procedure. As an additional test of this new software pipeline and to obtain mosaic images of a larger sample of RC3 galaxies, we also applied this pipeline to photographic data taken by the Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey with BJ , RF , and IN plates. We publicly release all generated data, accessible via a web search form, and the software pipeline to enable others to make galaxy mosaics by using other catalogs or surveys. Subject headings: techniques: image processing { astronomical databases: catalogs { astrometry 1. INTRODUCTION have used this sample as the basis for making image mo- Astronomers have a long history of cataloguing ob- saics for a large sample of galaxies. jects for subsequent study, for example the Messier cata- The first such effort was made by Hogg & Blanton log (Messier 1781) and the New General Catalog (NGC; (2006), who made color-composite images of selected Dreyer 1888) have provided valuable guidance to help as- RC3 galaxies by using the SDSS g, r, and i band im- tronomers study objects with similar properties. Today, ages from the sixth SDSS data release. A subsequent we have entered the era of big data where large surveys effort by Baillard et al. (2011), dedicated to the study of such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS; York et al. galaxy morphology, generated a set of 4,458 FITS and 2000) have uniformly surveyed large fractions of the en- color images by using the SDSS DR4 data. This latter tire sky, providing detailed photometric and astrometric effort employed a visual inspection to remove artifacts and galaxies with missing data. Finally, a separate ef- information for millions of sources. However, the soft- 6 ware pipelines that process these valuable data are opti- fort, known as the NASA-Sloan Atlas , has been under- mized for the more numerous small sources. As a result, taken to construct and analyze a complete set of galax- large, nearby, and bright galaxies are essentially treated ies within approximately 200 Megaparsecs (Blanton et al. as contaminants. Yet these galaxies remain incredibly 2011), which is the approximate redshift limit of the RC3 important: providing detailed insight into the dynam- catalog. ics of galaxies and serving as a low redshift sample with Despite the diverse set of studies that incorporates which we can compare higher redshift galaxies against for the RC3 catalog mentioned earlier, there is no dedicated better understanding of the evolution of these galaxies. study that uniformly mosaic all of the RC3 sources with One of the more popular catalogs of nearby galaxies is updated astrometry. As the SDSS project has published the Third Reference Catalog of Bright Galaxies (RC3; de their last imaging data release (DR10; Ahn et al. 2014), Vaucouleurs et al. 1991), which contains 23,011 galaxies which includes the final photometric and astrometric cal- with an apparent diameter greater than one arcminute ibrations, we have decided to revamp these previous ef- forts to make scientifically-calibrated image mosaics and arXiv:1512.01204v1 [astro-ph.IM] 3 Dec 2015 at the D25 isophotal level, with a total B-band magni- tudes brighter than 15:5, and with a redshift not in ex- updated positional coordinates for all RC3 galaxies that cess of 15,000 km/s. The overall catalog is supplemented lie within the SDSS DR10 footprint. by selected galaxies that may only meet one or two of Using a source update algorithm, we can recursively these conditions as well as some nearby compact galax- identify and mosaic the central RC3 galaxy and, in com- ies. Given the efficacy of this catalog, previous authors plement, use the mosaic outputs to find large extended RC3 sources. We further generalize this software frame- 1 Department of Astronomy, University of California Berkeley, work for use on any arbitrary user-defined catalog using Berkeley, CA 94720; [email protected] imaging data from any scientifically-calibrated sky sur- 2 Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL vey . This new pipeline is also applied to digitized phot- 61801; [email protected] graphic plate data from Second Palomar Observatory 3 Department of Statistics, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL 61820 USA Sky Survey (POSS-II; Reid et al. 1991). The complete 4 National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Urbana, sky coverage of the POSS-II survey enables us to gener- IL 61801 USA 5 Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, Ur- bana, IL 61801 USA 6 http://www.nsatlas.org 2 ate updated coordinate positions for all the RC3 galaxies this task date back to the original Harvard Survey of Ex- with inaccurate catalog coordinates. Our pipeline can be ternal Galaxies (Shapley & Ames 1932), which contained easily applied to existing data such as the Two Micron 1,249 objects brighter than 13th magnitude. Many of All Sky Survey (2MASS; Skrutskie et al. 2006), or to fu- these galaxies were subsequently included in the Univer- ture surveys such as the Dark Energy Survey (DES; The sity of Texas, Monographs in Astronomy, which were pre- Dark Energy Survey Collaboration 2005) or the Large decessors to the RC3 catalog. The actual RC3 Catalog Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST; Ivezic et al. 2008). is an update to the Original and Second Reference Cata- The scientifically calibrated FITS image mosaics gener- log of Bright Galaxies (de Vaucouleurs et al. 1976). The ated by the pipeline for a specific galaxy catalog can be original RC3 galaxy catalog compiled by de Vaucouleurs used both for individual source studies, as well as en- et al. (1995), contains a complete listing of 23,011 galax- semble studies of source populations. In addition, these ies with D25 apparent major isophotal diameter greater mosaics can be combined with calibrated mosaic images than one arcminute and with a total B-band magnitude at different wavelengths into new, multi-band color im- greater than 15.5th magnitude. ages by using mosaic images from other surveys. This An update of the RC3 catalog was published a few can be especially beneficial when a survey has only one years after the original RC3 catalog by Corwin et al. or two bands, such as the POSS-I (Minkowski & Abell (1994). In this project, we use the RC3 catalogue infor- 1963a) or GALEX (Martin et al. 2005), as long as the mation available through the VizieR Service7as our start- image sizes are adjusted to match. ing conditions, which contains the updated RC3 data The SDSS and POSS-II mosaic images that we have published in 1994. As the imaging data used to update generated and publicly released may be useful for com- these galaxies came from various different imaging pro- missioning and data processing of the next-generation grams, the final, updated catalog is heterogeneous with a surveys such as the DES and LSST. The updated RC3 non-uniform distribution of updated galaxies. The RC3 coordinates indicate regions of the sky that may be af- data from NASA Extragalactic Database (NED) were fected by these large galaxies, and the FITS mosaic im- last updated from the 1993 version 3.9b of the RC3 cat- ages can be used to model-fit the galaxy's shape and alog. Until 2011, it was incrementally updated with new, light distribution. Alternatively, this same information published observations and subsequently maintained by can be used to place spectroscopic fibers on RC3 catalog Harold G. Corwin8. However, only the few RC3 sources sources. that happen to overlap with other newer source catalogs In Section 2, we introduce the RC3 catalog and the are updated. 9 In this project, we uniformly update the SDSS and POSS-II data that we use to generate mosaic coordinate positions of all RC3 sources that lie in the images. Section 3 introduces our software pipeline and catalog. the relevant algorithmic details that enable us to obtain Since the RC3 catalog is a reasonably complete rep- improved astrometric precision for the catalog galaxies. resentation of large, bright nearby galaxies in the extra- We discuss the pipeline performance and evaluate the galactic sky, it remains a popular catalog. Selected galax- science-quality for the pipeline results for the SDSS and ies or complete subsets have been used in astrophysical POSS-II data in Section 4, before concluding the paper studies of quasars and X-ray sources (e.g., Walton et al. and discussing the overall project in Section 5. 2011), and for galaxy morphology and clustering stud- 2. DATA ies (e.g., Best et al. 1996; Knapen et al. 2000). The RC3 catalog also serves as a basis for statistical studies in To construct large, calibrated image mosaics, we need cosmology, for example within the New York University- a catalog of galaxies and an image data set.