Published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Volume 217, Issue 2, article id. 32, 46 pp. (2015).
https://arxiv.org/abs/1501.00454


A CLASSICAL MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF GALAXIES IN THE SPITZER SURVEY OF STELLAR STRUCTURE IN GALAXIES (S4G)

Ronald J. Buta 1, Kartik Sheth 2, E. Athanassoula 3, A. Bosma 3, Johan H. Knapen 4,5, Eija Laurikainen 6,7, Heikki Salo 6, Debra Elmegreen 8, Luis C. Ho 9,10,11, Dennis Zaritsky 12, Helene Courtois 13,14, Joannah L. Hinz 12, Juan-Carlos Muñoz-Mateos 2,15, Taehyun Kim 2,15,16, Michael W. Regan 17, Dimitri A. Gadotti 15, Armando Gil de Paz 18, Jarkko Laine 6, Karín Menéndez-Delmestre 19, Sébastien Comerón 6,7, Santiago Erroz Ferrer 4,5, Mark Seibert 20, Trisha Mizusawa 2,21, Benne Holwerda 22, Barry F. Madore 20

1 Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Alabama, Box 870324, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0324
2 National Radio Astronomy Observatory / NAASC, 520 Edgemont Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903
3 Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, LAM (Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille) UMR 7326, 13388, Marseille, France
4 Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, 38206 La Laguna, Spain
5 Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Vía Láctea s/n 38205 La Laguna, Spain
6 Division of Astronomy, Department of Physical Sciences, University of Oulu, Oulu, FIN-90014, Finland
7 Finnish Centre of Astronomy with ESO (FINCA), University of Turku, Vaisalantie 20, FI-21500, Piikio, Finland 8 Vassar College, Deparment of Physics & Astronomy, Poughkeepsie, NY 12604 9 Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
10 Department of Astronomy, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
11 The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, 813 Santa Barbara Street, Pasadena, CA 91101, USA
12 Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, 933 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson, Arizona 85721
13 Université Lyon 1, CNRS/IN2P3, Institut de Physique Nucléaire, Lyon, France
14 Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 26822
15 European Southern Observatory, Casilla 19001, Santiago 19, Chile
16 Astronomy Program, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-742, Korea
17 Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218
18 Departamento de Astrofisica, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain
19 University of Rio de Janeiro, Observatório de Valongo, Ladeira Pedro Antonio, 43, CEP 20080-090, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
20 The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, 813 Santa Barbara Street, Pasadena, CA 91101
21 Department of Physics and Space Sciences, Florida Institute of Technology, 150 W. University Boulevard, Melbourne, FL 32901
22 University of Leiden, Sterrenwacht Leiden, Niels Bohrweg 2, NL-2333 CA Leiden, The Netherlands


Abstract: The Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G) is the largest available database of deep, homogeneous middle-infrared (mid-IR) images of galaxies of all types. The survey, which includes 2352 nearby galaxies, reveals galaxy morphology only minimally affected by interstellar extinction. This paper presents an atlas and classifications of S4G galaxies in the Comprehensive de Vaucouleurs revised Hubble-Sandage (CVRHS) system. The CVRHS system follows the precepts of classical de Vaucouleurs (1959) morphology, modified to include recognition of other features such as inner, outer, and nuclear lenses, nuclear rings, bars, and disks, spheroidal galaxies, X patterns and box/peanut structures, OLR subclass outer rings and pseudorings, bar ansae and barlenses, parallel sequence late-types, thick disks, and embedded disks in 3D early-type systems. We show that our CVRHS classifications are internally consistent, and that nearly half of the S4G sample consists of extreme late-type systems (mostly bulgeless, pure disk galaxies) in the range Scd-Im. The most common family classification for mid-IR types S0/a to Sc is SA while that for types Scd to Sm is SB. The bars in these two type domains are very different in mid-IR structure and morphology. This paper examines the bar, ring, and type classification fractions in the sample, and also includes several montages of images highlighting the various kinds of “stellar structures” seen in mid-IR galaxy morphology.

The paper is in pdf format.