S. dos Anjos

BUDDA: A New Two-dimensional Bulge/Disk Decomposition Code for Detailed Structural Analysis of Galaxies*

We present BUDDA (Bulge/Disk Decomposition Analysis), a new code devoted to perform a two-dimensional bulge/disk decomposition directly from the images of galaxies. The bulge component is fitted with a generalized Sersic profile, whereas disks have an exponential profile. No other components are included. Bars and other substructures, like lenses, rings, inner bars, and inner disks, are studied with the residual images obtained through the subtraction of bulges and disks from the original images. This means that a detailed structural analysis of galaxies may be performed with a small number of parameters, and substructures may be directly studied with no a priori assumptions. As has been already shown by several studies, two-dimensional fitting is much more reliable than one-dimensional profile fitting. Moreover, our code has been thoroughly tested with artificial data, and we demonstrate it to be an accurate tool for determining structural parameters of galaxies. We also show that our code is useful in various kinds of studies, including galaxies of, e.g., different morphological types, and inclinations, which also may be observed at different spatial resolutions. Thus, the code has a broader range of potential applications than most of the previous codes, which are developed to tackle specific problems. To illustrate its usefulness, we present the results obtained with a sample of 51 mostly early-type galaxies (but covering the whole Hubble sequence). These results show some of the applications in which the code may be used: the determination of parameters for fundamental plane and structural studies, quantitative morphological classification of galaxies, and the identification and study of hidden substructures. We have determined the structural parameters of the galaxies in our sample and found many examples of hidden inner disks in ellipticals, secondary bars, nuclear rings and dust lanes in lenticulars and spirals, and also wrong morphological classification cases. We now make BUDDA generally available to the astronomical community.

Detection of Galaxies with Gaia

Aims. Besides its major objective tuned to detecting the stellar galactic population, the Gaia mission experiment will also observe a large number of galaxies. In this work we intend to evaluate the number and the characteristics of the galaxies that will e ectively pass the on-board selection algorithm of Gaia. Methods. The detection of objects in Gaia will be performed in a section of the focal plane known as the Sky Mapper. Considering the Video Processing Algorithm criterion of detection and the known light profiles of disc and bulges galaxies, we assess the number and the type of extra-galactic objects that will be observed by Gaia. Results. We show that the stellar disc population of galaxies will be very di cult to observe. In contrast, the spheroidal component of elliptical galaxies and bulges having higher central surface brightness and steeper brightness profile will be easier to detect. We estimate that most of the 20 000 elliptical population of nearby galaxies inside the local region up to 170 Mpc are in a state to be observed by Gaia. A similar number of bulges could also be observed, although the low luminosity bulges should escape detection. About two thirds of the more distant objects up to 600 Mpc could also be detected, increasing the total sample to half a million objects including ellipticals and bulges. The angular size of the detected objects will never exceed 4.72 arcsec, which is the size of the largest transmitted windows. Conclusions. A heterogeneous population of elliptical galaxies and bulges will be observable by Gaia. This nearby Universe sample of galaxies should constitute a very rich and interesting sample for studying their structural properties and their distribution.