University of Sussex
Browse
MNRAS-2009-Smith-868-82.pdf (5.67 MB)

Luminosity and surface brightness distribution of K-band galaxies from the UKIDSS Large Area Survey

Download (5.67 MB)
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 00:56 authored by Anthony J Smith, Jonathan LovedayJonathan Loveday, Nicholas J G Cross
We present luminosity and surface-brightness distributions of 40 111 galaxies with K-band photometry from the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) Large Area Survey (LAS), Data Release 3 and optical photometry from Data Release 5 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Various features and limitations of the new UKIDSS data are examined, such as a problem affecting Petrosian magnitudes of extended sources. Selection limits in K- and r-band magnitude, K-band surface brightness and K-band radius are included explicitly in the 1/Vmax estimate of the space density and luminosity function. The bivariate brightness distribution in K-band absolute magnitude and surface brightness is presented and found to display a clear luminosity¿surface brightness correlation that flattens at high luminosity and broadens at low luminosity, consistent with similar analyses at optical wavelengths. Best-fitting Schechter function parameters for the K-band luminosity function are found to be M*- 5 log h=-23.19 ± 0.04, a=-0.81 ± 0.04 and f*= (0.0166 ± 0.0008) h3 Mpc-3, although the Schechter function provides a poor fit to the data at high and low luminosity, while the luminosity density in the K band is found to be j= (6.305 ± 0.067) × 108 L¿ h Mpc-3. However, we caution that there are various known sources of incompleteness and uncertainty in our results. Using mass-to-light ratios determined from the optical colours, we estimate the stellar mass function, finding good agreement with previous results. Possible improvements are discussed that could be implemented when extending this analysis to the full LAS

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

ISSN

1745-3925

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell

Issue

2

Volume

397

Page range

868-882

Department affiliated with

  • Physics and Astronomy Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2016-03-22

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2016-11-10

Usage metrics

    University of Sussex (Publications)

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC