Crowded Field Galaxy Photometry: Precision Colors in the CLASH Clusters
- 9 October 2017
- journal article
- Published by American Astronomical Society in The Astrophysical Journal
- Vol. 848 (1), 37
- https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aa8ad5
Abstract
We present a new method for photometering objects in galaxy clusters. We introduce a mode-filtering technique for removing spatially variable backgrounds, improving both detection and photometric accuracy (roughly halving the scatter in the red sequence compared to previous catalogs of the same clusters). This method is based on robustly determining the distribution of background pixel values and should provide comparable improvement in photometric analysis of any crowded fields. We produce new multiwavelength catalogs for the 25 CLASH cluster fields in all 16 bandpasses from the UV through the near-IR, as well as rest-frame magnitudes. A comparison with spectroscopic values from the literature finds a decrease in the redshift deviation from previously released CLASH photometry. This improvement in redshift precision, in combination with a detection scheme designed to maximize purity, yields a substantial upgrade in cluster member identification over the previous CLASH galaxy catalog. We construct luminosity functions for each cluster, reliably reaching depths of at least 4.5 mag below M* in every case, and deeper still in several clusters. We measure M* , α, and their redshift evolution, assuming the cluster populations are coeval, and find little to no evolution of , and M* values consistent with passive evolution. We present a catalog of galaxy photometry, photometric and spectroscopic redshifts, and rest-frame photometry for the full fields of view of all 25 CLASH clusters. Not only will our new photometric catalogs enable new studies of the properties of CLASH clusters, but mode-filtering techniques, such as those presented here, should greatly enhance the data quality of future photometric surveys of crowded fields.This publication has 147 references indexed in Scilit:
- PRIMUS: CONSTRAINTS ON STAR FORMATION QUENCHING AND GALAXY MERGING, AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE STELLAR MASS FUNCTION FROMz= 0-1The Astrophysical Journal, 2013
- CLASH: DISCOVERY OF A BRIGHT z ≃ 6.2 DWARF GALAXY QUADRUPLY LENSED BY MACS J0329.6-0211The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2012
- THE GEMINI CLUSTER ASTROPHYSICS SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY (GCLASS): THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENT AND SELF-REGULATION IN GALAXY EVOLUTION ATz∼ 1The Astrophysical Journal, 2012
- CANDELS: THE COSMIC ASSEMBLY NEAR-INFRARED DEEP EXTRAGALACTIC LEGACY SURVEY—THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE OBSERVATIONS, IMAGING DATA PRODUCTS, AND MOSAICSThe Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 2011
- How special are brightest group and cluster galaxies?Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2007
- Correlations of Richness and Global Properties in Galaxy ClustersThe Astrophysical Journal, 2003
- MACS: A Quest for the Most Massive Galaxy Clusters in the UniverseThe Astrophysical Journal, 2001
- Morphological studies of the galaxy populations in distant 'Butcher-Oemler' clusters with HST. 1: AC 114 AT Z = 0.31 and Abell 370 at Z = 0.37The Astrophysical Journal, 1994
- The morphology of distant cluster galaxies. 1: HST observations of CL 0939+4713The Astrophysical Journal, 1994
- Two-dimensional aperture photometry - Signal-to-noise ratio of point-source observations and optimal data-extraction techniquesPublications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 1989