A new era in galaxy edge characterisation with ultra-deep imaging

Golini, Giulia; Trujillo, Ignacio; Zaritsky, Dennis; Donnerstein, Richard; Akhlaghi, Mohammad; Chamba, Nushkia; D'onofrio, Mauro; Eskandarlou, Sepideh; Hosseini-ShahiSavandi, S. Zahra; Infante-Sainz, Raul; Martin, Garreth; Montes, Mireia; Román, Javier; Sedighi, Nafise; Sharbaf, Zahra; Raji, Samane
Bibliographical reference

EAS2024

Advertised on:
7
2024
Number of authors
16
IAC number of authors
7
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
For the first time, the LIGHTS survey is routinely imaging galaxies at a depth and spatial resolution comparable to what LSST will produce in 10 years (i.e. ~31 mag/arcsec^2). This opens up the possibility of probing the edge of galaxies with a precision that we have not been able to achieve in the past. While we have been limited to one-dimensional analysis of galaxy borders (by ellipse averaging), we can now explore what the edges of the galaxies look like in 2D. This is fundamental, as the analysis of any possible deviation from disk symmetry in the star formation boundary of the galaxy opens up a direct view on the effect of the environment on galaxy growth. In this new paper, we present a set of new tools to address the above scientific questions, including: a) accurate removal of the effect of the Point Spread Function (PSF) by the galaxy itself using Wiener deconvolution; b) Laplacian operator for automatic and accurate edge detection of galaxies in 2D; c) reproducibility of low surface brightness features using different data sets. These techniques will be of paramount importance for future ultra-deep surveys such as LSST, Euclid, and Roman.