Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 107: 945-958, 1995 October Galaxy Colors in Various Photometric Band Systems M. Fukugita1 Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 Electronic mail:
[email protected] K. Shimasaku2 Princeton University Observatory, Princeton, New Jersey 08544 Electronic mail:
[email protected] T. ICHIKAWA Kiso Observatory, University of Tokyo, Kiso-gun, Nagano 397-01, Japan Electronic mail:
[email protected] Received 1995 March 10; accepted 1995 June 14 ABSTRACT. A study is made of stellar and galaxy colors using a spectrophotometric synthesis technique. We show that use of good color response functions and a modem determination of the spectroscopic energy distribution for a Lyr gives synthetic stellar colors in a good agreement with photometric observations to about 0.05 mag. The synthetic method then is applied to study galaxy colors using the spectrophotometric atlas of Kennicutt (1992, ApJS, 79, 255), and a comparison is made with observed galaxy colors. The Κ correction is calculated and compared with that of Coleman, Wu, and Weedman (1980, ApJS, 43, 393). We then study colors of galaxies in various photometric band systems and obtain color transformation laws, which enable us to find offsets among different systems. We include 48 photometric bands in our study. 1. INTRODUCTION in addition to a good sample of galaxy SED over a wide range of wavelength. Continual efforts to obtain the SED of Colors of galaxies provide us with valuable information Vega (Oke and Schild 1970; Hayes and Latham 1975; Oke concerning their present-day composition of stars, and ac- and Gunn 1983; Kurucz 1979; Hayes 1985, hereafter re- cordingly it gives us hints about the formation and evolution ferred to as H85; Castelli and Kurucz 1994, hereafter re- of galaxies.