Mapping the stellar age of the Milky Way bulge with the VVV. II. Deep JKs catalog release based on PSF photometry

Surot, F.; Valenti, E.; Hidalgo, S. L.; Zoccali, M.; Gonzalez, O. A.; Sökmen, E.; Minniti, D.; Rejkuba, M.; Lucas, P. W.
Bibliographical reference

Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 629, id.A1, 14 pp.

Advertised on:
9
2019
Number of authors
9
IAC number of authors
2
Citations
24
Refereed citations
22
Description
Context. The bulge represents the best compromise between old and massive Galactic components, and as such its study is a valuable opportunity to understand how the bulk of the Milky Way formed and evolved. In addition, being the only bulge in which we can individually resolve stars in all evolutionary sequences, the properties of its stellar content provide crucial insights into the formation of bulges. Aims: We are providing a detailed and comprehensive census of the Milky Way bulge stellar populations by producing deep and accurate photometric catalogs of the inner ˜300 deg2 of the Galaxy. Methods: We performed DAOPHOT/ALLFRAME point spread function (PSF) fitting photometry of multi-epochs J and Ks images provided by the VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) survey to obtain deep photometric catalogs. Artificial star experiments have been conducted on all images to properly assess the completeness and the accuracy of the photometric measurements. Results: We present a photometric database containing nearly 600 million stars across the bulge area surveyed by the VVV. Through the comparison of derived color-magnitude diagrams of selected fields representative of different levels of extinction and crowding, we show the quality, completeness and depth of the new catalogs. With the exception of the fields located along the plane, this new photometry samples stars down to ˜1-2 mag below the old main sequence turnoff with unprecedented accuracy. To demonstrate the tremendous potential inherent to this new dataset, we give a few examples of possible applications, including (i) star count studies through the dataset completeness map; (ii) surface brightness map; and (iii) cross-correlation with Gaia DR2. Conclusions: The database presented here represents an invaluable collection for the whole community, and we encourage its exploitation. The photometric catalogs including completeness information are publicly available through the ESO Science Archive as part of the MW-BULGE-PSPHOT release. Full Table A.1 is available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (ftp://130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/qcat?J/A+A/629/A1Based on observations made with the VISTA telescope at the La Silla Paranal Observatory, under the ESO programme ID 179.B-2002.
Related projects
NGC 2808 Globular Cluster
Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies
The general aim of the project is to research the structure, evolutionary history and formation of galaxies through the study of their resolved stellar populations, both from photometry and spectroscopy. The group research concentrates in the most nearby objects, namely the Local Group galaxies including the Milky Way and M33 under the hypothesis
Martín
López Corredoira