The spitzer survey of stellar structure in galaxies (S^4G): stelar masses, sizes, and radial profiles for 2352 nearby galaxies

Abstract

© 2015. The American Astronomical Society. Artículo firmado por 28 autores. The authors are grateful to the entire S4G team for their collective effort in this project. We also thank the staff at IRSA, and in particular Justin Howell, for implementing the online access to our data. We acknowledge useful suggestions from an anonymous referee, which helped to improve the scientific content of this paper. We thank Rebecca Lange for sharing the contour data of the GAMA mass–size relation. J.C.M.M. acknowledges the receipt of an ESO Fellowship. This work was also co-funded by NASA JPL/Spitzer grant RSA 1374189 provided for the S(^4)G project. J.C.M.M., K.S., and T.K. also acknowledge support from the NRAO. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. We also acknowledge financial support from the DAGAL network from the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Unions Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013/under REA grant agreement number PITN-GA-2011-289313. E.A. and A.B. also acknowledge financial support from the CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales-France). J.H.K. and A.G.d.P. acknowledge financial support from the Spanish MINECO under grants number AYA2013-41243-P and AYA2012-30717, respectively.The Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies is a volume, magnitude, and size-limited survey of 2352 nearby galaxies with deep imaging at 3.6 and 4.5 μm. In this paper, we describe our surface photometry pipeline and showcase the associated data products that we have released to the community. We also identify the physical mechanisms leading to different levels of central stellar mass concentration for galaxies with the same total stellar mass. Finally, we derive the local stellar mass-size relation at 3.6 μm for galaxies of different morphologies. Our radial profiles reach stellar mass surface densities below ∼1 M_⨀ pc^-2. Given the negligible impact of dust and the almost constant mass-to-light ratio at these wavelengths, these profiles constitute an accurate inventory of the radial distribution of stellar mass in nearby galaxies. From these profiles we have also derived global properties such as asymptotic magnitudes (and the corresponding stellar masses), isophotal sizes and shapes, and concentration indices. These and other data products from our various pipelines (science-ready mosaics, object masks, 2D image decompositions, and stellar mass maps)can be publicly accessed at IRSA (http://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/data/SPITZER/S4G/).Unión Europea. FP7Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO), EspañaSpitzer Space Telescope - Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL - California Institute of Technology - NASA)National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) UECNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales-France)European Southern Observatory (ESO)National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), EE.UU.Depto. de Física de la Tierra y AstrofísicaFac. de Ciencias FísicasTRUEpu