Reaching for the Edge I: probing the outskirts of massive galaxies with HSC, DECaLS, SDSS, and Dragonfly
Abstract
The outer light (stellar haloes) of massive galaxies has recently emerged as a possible low scatter tracer of dark matter halo mass. To test the robustness of outer light measurements across different data sets, we compare the 1D azimuthally averaged surface brightness profiles of massive galaxies using four independent data sets: the Hyper Suprime-Cam survey (HSC), the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS), the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), and the Dragonfly Wide Field Survey (Dragonfly). We test the sky subtraction and proposed corrections for HSC and DECaLS. For galaxies at z < 0.05, Dragonfly has the best control of systematics, reaching surface brightness levels of μr ≈ 30 mag arcsec−2. At 0.19 < z < 0.50, HSC can reliably recover individual surface brightness profiles to μr ≈ 28.5 mag arcsec−2 (R = 100–150 kpc in semimajor axis). In a statistical sense, DECaLS agrees with HSC to R > 200 kpc. DECaLS and HSC measurements of the stellar mass contained within 100 kpc agree within 0.05 dex. Finally, we use weak lensing to show that measurements of outer light with DECaLS at 0.19 < z < 0.50 show a similar promise as HSC as a low scatter proxy of halo mass. The tests and results from this paper represent an important step forward for accurate measurements of the outer light of massive galaxies and demonstrate that outer light measurements from DECam imaging will be a promising method for finding galaxy clusters.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Jul 29, 2022
- Source ID
- 10.1093/mnras/stac2121
Entities
People
- Alexie Leauthaud-Harnett
- Deborah Lokhorst
- Erin Kado-Fong
- Felipe Ardila
- Jenny E. Greene
- Jiaxuan Li
- John Moustakas
- Paul Price
- Robert Lupton
- Roberto Abraham
- Shany Danieli
- Song Huang
Organizations
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- American Museum of Natural History
- Argonne National Laboratory
- California Institute of Technology
- Case Western Reserve University
- China Scholarship Council
- Chinese Academy of Sciences
- David and Lucile Packard Foundation
- Division of Astronomical Sciences
- Drexel University
- ETH Zurich
- Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos
- Foundation for Ichthyosis and Related Skin Types
- Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro
- German Research Foundation
- High Energy Accelerator Research Organization
- Higher Education Funding Council for England
- Huntington Society of Canada
- Institute for Advanced Study
- Japan Science and Technology Agency
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory
- Johns Hopkins University
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
- Max Planck Society
- Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
- Ministry of Finance of the People's Republic of China
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
- National Center for Supercomputing Applications
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- National Science Foundation
- New Mexico State University
- Office of Science
- Ohio State University
- Princeton University
- SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
- Science and Technology Facilities Council
- Siena College
- Space Telescope Science Institute
- Spanish National Research Council
- Stanford University
- Texas A&M University
- United States Department of Energy
- United States Naval Observatory
- University College London
- University of Arizona
- University of Basel
- University of California, Santa Cruz
- University of Cambridge
- University of Chicago
- University of Edinburgh
- University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign
- University of Michigan
- University of Nottingham
- University of Pennsylvania
- University of Pittsburgh
- University of Portsmouth
- University of Sussex
- University of Tokyo
- University of Toronto
- University of Washington
- Yale University