Chemistry and Physics Faculty Articles

Title

Edge-On Disk Galaxies in the SDSS DR6: Fractions of Bulgeless and Other Disk Galaxies

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-2-2009

Publication Title

Astronomische Nachrichten

Keywords

Galaxies: fundamental parameters, Galaxies: irregular, Galaxies: spiral, Galaxies: statistics, Galaxies: structure

ISSN

0004-6337

Volume

330

Issue/No.

1

First Page

100

Last Page

106

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine the fractions of different spiral galaxy types, especially bulgeless disks, from a complete and homogeneous sample of 15 127 edge-on disk galaxies extracted from the sixth data release from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The sample is divided in broad morphological classes and sub types consisting of galaxies with bulges, intermediate types and galaxies which appear bulgeless. A small fraction of disky irregulars is also detected. The morphological separation is based on automated classification criteria which resemble the bulge sizes and the flatness of the disks. Each of these broad classes contains about 1/3 of the total sample. Using strict criteria for selecting pure bulgeless galaxies leads to a fraction of 15% of simple disk galaxies. We compare this fraction to other galaxy catalogs and find an excellent agreement of the observed frequency of bulgeless galaxies. Although the fraction of simple disk galaxies in this study does not represent a “cosmic” fraction of bulgeless galaxies, it shows that the relative abundance of pure disks is comparable to other studies and offers a profound value of the frequency of simple disks in the local Universe. This fraction of simple disks emphasizes the challenge for formation and evolution models of disk galaxies since these models are hard pressed to explain the observed frequency of these objects

Comments

©2009 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

Additional Comments

English version of journal title: Astronomical Notes

(© 2009 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

DOI

10.1002/asna.200811132

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Peer Reviewed

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