Catalogue of the morphological features in the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S⁴G)^⋆

¹ Astronomy and Space Physics, 90014 University of Oulu, Finland
e-mail: martin.herreraendoqui@oulu.fi
² Finnish Centre of Astronomy with ESO (FINCA), University of Turku, Väisäläntie 20, 21500 Piikkiö, Finland

Received: 6 March 2015
Accepted: 22 June 2015

Abstract

Context. A catalogue of the features for the complete Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S⁴G), including 2352 nearby galaxies, is presented. The measurements are made using 3.6 μm images, largely tracing the old stellar population; at this wavelength the effects of dust are also minimal. The measured features are the sizes, ellipticities, and orientations of bars, rings, ringlenses, and lenses. Measured in a similar manner are also barlenses (lens-like structures embedded in the bars), which are not lenses in the usual sense, being rather the more face-on counterparts of the boxy/peanut structures in the edge-on view. In addition, pitch angles of spiral arm segments are measured for those galaxies where they can be reliably traced. More than one pitch angle may appear for a single galaxy. All measurements are made in a human-supervised manner so that attention is paid to each galaxy.

Aims. We create a catalogue of morphological features in the complete S⁴G.

Methods. We used isophotal analysis, unsharp masking, and fitting ellipses to measured structures.

Results. We find that the sizes of the inner rings and lenses normalized to barlength correlate with the galaxy mass: the normalized sizes increase toward the less massive galaxies; it has been suggested that this is related to the larger dark matter content in the bar region in these systems. Bars in the low mass galaxies are also less concentrated, likely to be connected to the mass cut-off in the appearance of the nuclear rings and lenses. We also show observational evidence that barlenses indeed form part of the bar, and that a large fraction of the inner lenses in the non-barred galaxies could be former barlenses in which the thin outer bar component has dissolved.