Searching for extragalactic sources in the VISTA variables in the VÍa láctea survey

Laura D. Baravalle, M. Victoria Alonso, José Luis Nilo Castellón, Juan Carlos Beamín, Dante Minniti

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

We search for extragalactic sources in the VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea survey that are hidden by the Galaxy. Herein, we describe our photometric procedure to find and characterize extragalactic objects using a combination of SExtractor and PSFEx. It was applied in two tiles of the survey: d010 and d115, without previous extragalactic IR detections, in order to obtain photometric parameters of the detected sources. The adopted criteria to define extragalactic candidates include CLASS-STAR < 0.3; 1.0 < R1 2 < 5.0 arcsec; 2.1 < C < 5; and F > 0.002 and the colors: 0.5 < (J-Ks) < 2.0 mag; 0.0 < (J-H) < 1.0 mag; 0.0 < (H-Ks) < 2.0 mag and (J-H) + 0.9 (H-Ks) > 0.44 mag. We detected 345 and 185 extragalactic candidates in the d010 and d115 tiles, respectively. All of them were visually inspected and confirmed to be galaxies. In general, they are small and more circular objects, due to the near-IR sensitivity to select more compact objects with higher surface brightness. The procedure will be used to identify extragalactic objects in other tiles of the VVV disk, which will allow us to study the distribution of galaxies and filaments hidden by the Milky Way.

Original languageEnglish
Article number155
JournalAstronomical Journal
Volume155
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2018

Keywords

  • Catalogs
  • Galaxies: Fundamental Parameters
  • Galaxies: Photometry
  • Surveys

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Searching for extragalactic sources in the VISTA variables in the VÍa láctea survey'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this