The Advanced Camera for Surveys General Catalog: Structural Parameters for Approximately Half a Million Galaxies
Koekemoer, Anton M.; Conselice, Christopher J.; Weiner, Benjamin; Davis, Marc; Scoville, Nick; Faber, S. M.; Willmer, Christopher N. A.; Kirkpatrick, J. Davy; Griffith, Roger L.; Lotz, Jennifer M.; Stern, Daniel; Koo, David C.; Newman, Jeffrey A.; Barden, Marco; Comerford, Julia M.; Sheth, Kartik; Cooper, Michael C.; Moustakas, Leonidas A.; Capak, Peter L.; Shopbell, Patrick; Noeske, Kai G.
United States, Austria, United Kingdom
Abstract
We present the Advanced Camera for Surveys General Catalog (ACS-GC), a photometric and morphological database using publicly available data obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. The goal of the ACS-GC database is to provide a large statistical sample of galaxies with reliable structural and distance measurements to probe the evolution of galaxies over a wide range of look-back times. The ACS-GC includes approximately 470,000 astronomical sources (stars + galaxies) derived from the AEGIS, COSMOS, GEMS, and GOODS surveys. GALAPAGOS was used to construct photometric (SEXTRACTOR) and morphological (GALFIT) catalogs. The analysis assumes a single Sérsic model for each object to derive quantitative structural parameters. We include publicly available redshifts from the DEEP2, COMBO-17, TKRS, PEARS, ACES, CFHTLS, and zCOSMOS surveys to supply redshifts (spectroscopic and photometric) for a considerable fraction (~74%) of the imaging sample. The ACS-GC includes color postage stamps, GALFIT residual images, and photometry, structural parameters, and redshifts combined into a single catalog.