J/ApJ/832/90 Merging galaxies with tidal tails in COSMOS to z=1 (Wen+, 2016)
Merging galaxies with tidal tails in COSMOS to z = 1.
Wen Z.Z., Zheng X.Z.
<Astrophys. J., 832, 90-90 (2016)>
=2016ApJ...832...90W 2016ApJ...832...90W (SIMBAD/NED BibCode)
ADC_Keywords: Galaxies, photometry ; Photometry, HST ; Redshifts ;
Photometry, infrared
Keywords: galaxies: active; galaxies: evolution; galaxies: interactions;
galaxies: structure; techniques: image processing
Abstract:
Tidal tails are created in major mergers involving disk galaxies. It
remains to be explored how the tidal tails trace the assembly history
of massive galaxies. We identify a sample of 461 merging galaxies with
long tidal tails, from 35076 galaxies mass-complete at
M*≥109.5M☉ and 0.2≤z≤1, based on Hubble Space Telescope/ACS
F814W imaging data and public catalogs of the COSMOS field. The long
tails refer to those with length equal to or greater than the diameter
of their host galaxies. The mergers with tidal tails are selected
using our novel AO-DO technique for strong asymmetric features,
along with visual examination. Our results show that the fraction of
tidal-tailed mergers evolves mildly with redshift, as
~(1+z)2.0±0.4, and becomes relatively higher in less-massive
galaxies, out to z=1. With a timescale of 0.5Gyr for the tidal-tailed
mergers, we obtain that the occurrence rate of such mergers follows
0.01±0.007(1+z)2.3±1.4Gyr-1, and corresponds to ∼0.3 events
since z=1, as well as roughly one-third of the total budget of major
mergers from the literature. For disk-involved major mergers, nearly
half of them have undergone a phase with long tidal tails.
Description:
Our study utilizes the public data and catalogs from multi-band deep
surveys of the COSMOS field. The UltraVISTA survey (McCracken+ 2012,
J/A+A/544/A156) provides ultra-deep near-IR imaging observations of
this field in the Y,J,H, and Ks-band, as well as a narrow band
(NB118).
The HST/ACS I-band imaging data are publicly available, allowing us to
measure morphologies in the rest-frame optical for galaxies at z≤1.
The HST/ACS I-band images reach a 5σ depth of 27.2 magnitude for
point sources.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
table1.dat 73 461 Catalog of merging galaxies with tidal tails
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See also:
B/hst : HST Archived Exposures Catalog (STScI, 2007)
VII/246 : GOODS Morphological Catalog (Bundy+, 2005)
VI/76 : Simulation Atlas of Tidal Features in Galaxies (Howard+ 1993)
J/ApJ/805/99 : Star cluster ages in tidal tails of 3 gal. (Mulia+, 2015)
J/AJ/148/137 : Merging galaxies in COSMOS to z∼1 (Lackner+, 2014)
J/ApJS/206/8 : COSMOS/UltraVISTA Ks-selected catalogs v4.1 (Muzzin+, 2013)
J/MNRAS/428/1460 : Massive early-type galaxies (Buitrago+, 2013)
J/A+A/556/A55 : Multi-color photom. of star-forming galaxies (Ilbert+, 2013)
J/A+A/544/A156 : UltraVISTA Catalogue Release DR1 (McCracken+, 2012)
J/ApJ/706/1364 : SINS survey of high-redshift gal. (Forster Schreiber+, 2009)
J/ApJ/697/1369 : GOODS Ks-selected multiwavelength compilations (Bundy+, 2009)
J/ApJS/184/218 : The zCOSMOS 10k-bright spectroscopic sample (Lilly+, 2009)
J/ApJ/663/734 : Interacting Galaxies in GEMS and GOODS (Elmegreen+, 2007)
J/AJ/130/2647 : Tidal features of 126 nearby red galaxies (van Dokkum+, 2005)
J/AJ/128/163 : Galaxy morphological classification (Lotz+, 2004)
J/ApJS/147/1 : Classification of nearby galaxies (Conselice+, 2003)
Byte-by-byte Description of file: table1.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 6 I6 --- ID [218/262523] UltraVISTA identifier from
Muzzin+, 2013, J/ApJS/206/8;
<[MMS2013] NNNNNN> in Simbad
8- 9 I2 h RAh [9/10] Hour of Right Ascension (J2000)
11- 12 I2 min RAm Minute of Right Ascension (J2000)
14- 19 F6.3 s RAs Second of Right Ascension (J2000)
21 A1 --- DE- [+] Sign of Declination (J2000)
22- 23 I2 deg DEd [1/2] Degree of Declination (J2000)
25- 26 I2 arcmin DEm Arcminute of Declination (J2000)
28- 32 F5.2 arcsec DEs Arcsecond of Declination (J2000)
34- 37 F4.2 --- z [0.2/1] Redshift
39- 43 F5.2 [Msun] logM [9.5/11.5] Log stellar mass
45- 48 F4.1 mag Imag [16.9/24] The HST/ACS F814W band AB magnitude
50- 53 F4.1 mag Ksmag [15.8/22.4] The Ks band AB magnitude
55- 58 F4.2 mag U-V [0.3/2.2] Rest frame U-V color index
60- 63 F4.2 mag V-J [0.1/1.8] Rest frame V-J color index
65- 68 F4.2 --- Do [0.2/6.4] Centroid deviation parameter (1)
70- 73 F4.2 --- Ao [0.5/1.8] Outer asymmetry parameter (2)
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Note (1): The outer centroid deviation DO is calculated using the
equation (2):
DO=((xO-xI)2+(yO-yI)2)0.5/Re,
where (xI, yI) and (xO, yO) refer to the positions of
flux-weighted centroids of the inner half-light region (IHR) and
the outer half-light region (OHR) in a galaxy image,
respectively. See section 3.1 for further details.
Note (2): The outer asymmetry AO measures the asymmetry of the outer
half-light region (OHR), whereas the outer centroid deviation DO,
measures the deviation (or offset) between the flux-weighted centroids
of the inner half-light region (IHR) and the OHR.
The definition of AO is revised as in Equation (1):
AO=(Σ|I0-I180|-δ2)/(Σ|I0|-δ1)
where δ1=f1*Σ|B0|, f1=Nflux<1σ/Nall,
δ2=f2*Σ|B0-B180|, and
f2=N|flux|<(2σ)0.5/N'all. Here, I0 refers to the
light distribution of the OHR of a galaxy image and I180 represents
the 180°-rotated version of I0.
See section 3 for further explanations.
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History:
From electronic version of the journal
(End) Prepared by [AAS], Emmanuelle Perret [CDS] 20-Feb-2017