The Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey. I. Overview and Atlas of Optical Images

Abstract

The Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey (CGS) is a long-term program to investigate the photometric and spectroscopic properties of a statistically complete sample of 605 bright (B T < 12.9 mag), southern (δ < 0• ) galaxies using the facilities at Las Campanas Observatory. This paper, the first in a series, outlines the scientific motivation of CGS, defines the sample, and describes the technical aspects of the optical broadband (BVRI) imaging component of the survey, including details of the observing program, data reduction procedures, and calibration strategy. The overall quality of the images is quite high, in terms of resolution (median seeing ∼1 ), field of view (8. 9 × 8. 9), and depth (median limiting surface brightness ∼27.5, 26.9, 26.4, and 25.3 mag arcsec −2 in the B, V, R, and I bands, respectively). We prepare a digital image atlas showing several different renditions of the data, including three-color composites, star-cleaned images, stacked images to enhance faint features, structure maps to highlight small-scale features, and color index maps suitable for studying the spatial variation of stellar content and dust. In anticipation of upcoming science analyses, we tabulate an extensive set of global properties for the galaxy sample. These include optical isophotal and photometric parameters derived from CGS itself, as well as published information on multiwavelength (ultraviolet, U-band, near-infrared, far-infrared) photometry, internal kinematics (central stellar velocity dispersions, disk rotational velocities), environment (distance to nearest neighbor, tidal parameter, group, or cluster membership), and H i content. The digital images and science-level data products will be made publicly accessible to the community.

THE LOCAL BLACK HOLE MASS FUNCTION DERIVED FROM THE MBH–P AND THE MBH–n RELATIONS

“…While Blanton et al (2003) derived the luminosity function of z ≈ 0.1 galaxies from Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) by using the Sérsic parameters from a 1-D radial surface brightness profile, Bernardi et al (2013) derived it by using the 2-D fits to the whole galaxy image. The overall CGS sample has a luminosity function that agrees quite well with that of Blanton et al (2003) (Ho et al 2011). However, our galaxy sample has a luminosity function that implies that it was observed in an overdense volume (see red data points in Figure 2).…”

“…Complete volume-limited samples were computed for limiting luminosity distances in increments of 0.001 Mpc. Bernardi et al (2013)(green dashed line), and CGS(black stars) (Ho et al 2011). Our LF implies an overdense region for our volume-limited sample, therefore we renormalized our LF by adding −0.25 in the y-axis.…”

“…DATA AND SAMPLE SELECTION Davis et al (2014) based their selection criterion on the Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey (CGS) (Ho et al 2011); it is an almost complete sample of 605 nearby galaxies in the southern hemisphere. Using the spiral galaxies in this parent sample plus Milky Way, they defined a volume-limited sample which consists of spiral galaxies within a luminosity (redshift-independent) distance of 25.4 Mpc and a limiting absolute B-band magnitude of M B = −19.12.…”

“…The luminosity function is determined as φ(M B ) = ∂N/∂M B , where N is the number of galaxies in our sample in terms of the absolute B-band magnitude and dividing it by the comoving volume of the volume-limited sample. This is illustrated in Figure 2, which shows the comparison with the luminosity functions for the overall CGS sample (Ho et al 2011) and the much larger sample of Blanton et al (2003) and Bernardi et al (2013). The luminosity functions of Blanton et al (2003) and Bernardi et al (2013) have been shifted by B − r = 0.67 mag, the average color of an Sbc spiral (Fukugita et al 1995), which is roughly the median Hubble type of both CGS and our volumelimited sample, and also transformed to H 0 = 67.77 km s −1 Mpc −1 .…”

Galaxy Rotation Curves in the Context of LambdaCDM Cosmology

“…With new imaging surveys of nearby galaxies providing exquisite data quality and extremely good signal-to-noise ratio in the central regions of galaxies, it is likely that in the next decade these studies will be extended to bulge-dominated galaxies. One such survey is the Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey (CGS; Ho et al, 2011) which consists of deep BVRIK s imaging of the 605 brightest southern hemisphere galaxies and will also include integral field spectroscopy of every galaxy in the southern hemisphere with a B band magnitude B T ≤ 12.9. To complement these observational studies, simulations of the effects of supernova feedback (similar to those of Governato) on the halos of bulge-dominated galaxies are necessary.…”