An Adaptive Homomorphic Aperture Photometry Algorithm for Merging Galaxies
Abstract
We present a novel automatic adaptive aperture photometry algorithm for measuring the total magnitudes of merging galaxies with irregular shapes. First, we use a morphological pattern recognition routine for identifying the shape of an irregular source in a background-subtracted image. Then, we extend the shape of the source by using the Dilation image operation to obtain an aperture that is quasi-homomorphic to the shape of the irregular source. The magnitude measured from the homomorphic aperture would thus have minimal contamination from the nearby background. As a test of our algorithm, we applied our technique to the merging galaxies observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT). Our results suggest that the adaptive homomorphic aperture algorithm can be very useful for investigating extended sources with irregular shapes and sources in crowded regions.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1603.07087,
title = {An Adaptive Homomorphic Aperture Photometry Algorithm for Merging Galaxies},
author = {Jen-Chao Huang and Chorng-Yuan Hwang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1603.07087},
year = {2017}
}