Bibcode
Laine, S.; Knapen, J. H.; Muñoz-Mateos, Juan-Carlos; Kim, Taehyun; Comerón, Sébastien; Martig, Marie; Holwerda, Benne W.; Athanassoula, E.; Bosma, Albert; Johansson, Peter H.; Erroz-Ferrer, S.; Gadotti, Dimitri A.; de Paz, Armando Gil; Hinz, Joannah; Laine, Jarkko; Laurikainen, Eija; Menéndez-Delmestre, Karín; Mizusawa, Trisha; Regan, Michael W.; Salo, Heikki; Sheth, Kartik; Seibert, Mark; Buta, Ronald J.; Cisternas, M.; Elmegreen, Bruce G.; Elmegreen, Debra M.; Ho, Luis C.; Madore, Barry F.; Zaritsky, Dennis
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 444, Issue 4, p.3015-3039
Advertised on:
11
2014
Citations
15
Refereed citations
15
Description
We present a catalogue and images of visually detected features, such as
asymmetries, extensions, warps, shells, tidal tails, polar rings, and
obvious signs of mergers or interactions, in the faint outer regions (at
and outside of R25) of nearby galaxies. This catalogue can be
used in future quantitative studies that examine galaxy evolution due to
internal and external factors. We are able to reliably detect outer
region features down to a brightness level of 0.03 MJy sr-1
pixel-1 at 3.6 μm in the Spitzer Survey of Stellar
Structure in Galaxies (S4G). We also tabulate companion
galaxies. We find asymmetries in the outer isophotes in 22 ± 1
per cent of the sample. The asymmetry fraction does not correlate with
galaxy classification as an interacting galaxy or merger remnant, or
with the presence of companions. We also compare the detected features
to similar features in galaxies taken from cosmological zoom
re-simulations. The simulated images have a higher fraction (33 per
cent) of outer disc asymmetries, which may be due to selection effects
and an uncertain star formation threshold in the models. The asymmetries
may have either an internal (e.g. lopsidedness due to dark halo
asymmetry) or external origin.
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