| Issue |
A&A
Volume 682, February 2024
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | A153 | |
| Number of page(s) | 11 | |
| Section | Catalogs and data | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202347921 | |
| Published online | 16 February 2024 | |
Enlightening the Universe behind the Milky Way bulge
I. Target selection of VVV bulge galaxies★
1
Gabinete de Astronomía Extragaláctica, CONICET, Departamento de Geofísica y Astronomía, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de San Juan,
Av. Ignacio de la Roza 590 (O), J5402DCS,
Rivadavia,
San Juan,
Argentina
e-mail: fduplancic@unsj-cuim.edu.ar
2
Instituto de Astrofísica, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Universidad Andres Bello,
Av. Fernandez Concha 700,
Las Condes,
Santiago,
Chile
3
Vatican Observatory,
00120
Vatican City State,
Italy
4
Instituto de Investigación Multidisciplinar en Ciencia y Tecnología, Universidad de La Serena,
Raúl Bitrán 1305,
La Serena,
Chile
5
Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA),
Av. Juan Cisternas 1500,
La Serena,
Chile
6
Grupo de Astrofísica Extragaláctica-IANIGLA, CONICET, Universidad Nacional de Cuyo (UNCuyo),
Gobierno de Mendoza, Parque Gral San Martín, CC 330,
CP 5500,
Mendoza,
Argentina
7
Instituto de Astronomía Teórica y Experimental (IATE-CONICET),
Laprida 854, X5000BGR,
Córdoba,
Argentina
8
Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (OAC-UNC),
Laprida 854, X5000BGR,
Córdoba,
Argentina
9
Departamento de Geofísica y Astronomía, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de San Juan,
Av. Ignacio de la Roza 590 (O), J5402DCS,
Rivadavia,
San Juan,
Argentina
Received:
8
September
2023
Accepted:
12
October
2023
Context. The location of the Solar System complicates the detection extragalactic sources beyond the Milky Way plane. The optical observations are hampered in the so-called zone of avoidance (ZOA), where stellar crowding and Galactic absorption are severe. Observations at longer wavelengths are needed in order to discover new background galaxies and complete the census in the ZOA.
Aims. The goal of this work is to identify galaxies behind the Milky Way bulge using near-infrared (NIR) data from the VISTA Variables in Vía Láctea (VVV) survey.
Methods. To this end, we made use of different VISTA Science Archive (VSA) tools in order to extract relevant information from more than 32 billion catalogued sources in the VVV bulge region. We find that initial photometric restriction on sources from the VSA vvvSource table combined with restrictions on star–galaxy separation parameters obtained from Source Extractor is a successful strategy for achieving acceptable levels of contamination (60%) and high completeness (75%) in the construction of a galaxy target sample. To remove contaminating Galactic sources from the initial target sample, our methodology also incorporates a visual inspection of false-colour RGB images, a crucial quality control carried out following a specifically defined procedure.
Results. Under this methodology, we find 14 480 galaxy candidates in the VVV bulge region, making this sample the largest catalogue to date in the ZOA. Moreover, these new sources provide a fresh picture of the Universe hidden behind the curtain of stars, dust, and gas in the unexplored Milky Way bulge region.
Conclusions. The results from this work further demonstrate the potential of the VVV/VVVX survey to find and study a large number of galaxies and extragalactic structures obscured by the Milky Way, expanding our knowledge of the Universe in this challenging and impressive region of the sky.
Key words: Galaxy: bulge / galaxies: photometry / galaxies: statistics / infrared: galaxies
The catalogue is available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr (130.79.120.5) or via https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/682/A153
© The Authors 2024
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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