We present global structural parameter measurements of 109,533 unique, H_F160W-selected objects from the CANDELS multi-cycle treasury program. Sersic model fits for these objects are produced with GALFIT in all available near-infrared filters (H_F160W, J_F125W and, for a subset, Y_F105W). The parameters of the best-fitting Sersic models (total magnitude, half-light radius, Sersic index, axis ratio, and position angle) are made public, along with newly constructed point spread functions for each field and filter. Random uncertainties in the measured parameters are estimated for each individual object based on a comparison between multiple, independent measurements of the same set of objects. To quantify systematic uncertainties we create a mosaic with simulated galaxy images with a realistic distribution of input parameters and then process and analyze the mosaic in an identical manner as the real data. We find that accurate and precise measurements -- to 10% or better -- of all structural parameters can typically be obtained for galaxies with H_F160W < 23, with comparable fidelity for basic size and shape measurements for galaxies to H_F160W ~ 24.5.
@article{arxiv.1211.6954,
title = {Structural Parameters of Galaxies in CANDELS},
author = {A. van der Wel and E. F. Bell and B. Haussler and E. J. McGrath and Yu-Yen Chang and Yicheng Guo and D. H. McIntosh and H. -W. Rix and M. Barden and E. Cheung and S. M. Faber and H. C. Ferguson and A. Galametz and N. A. Grogin and W. Hartley and J. S. Kartaltepe and D. D. Kocevski and A. M. Koekemoer and J. Lotz and M. Mozena and M. A. Peth and Chien Y. Peng},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1211.6954},
year = {2013}
}
Comments
public data release of structural parameters from CANDELS WFC3 data: http://www.mpia-hd.mpg.de/homes/vdwel/candels.html