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.
Referencia bibliográfica

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

Fecha de publicación:
9
2019
Número de autores
9
Número de autores del IAC
2
Número de citas
24
Número de citas referidas
22
Descripción
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.
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