Abstract
We present a novel automatic adaptive aperture photometry algorithm for measuring the total magnitudes of merging galaxies with irregular shapes. First, we use a morphological pattern recognition routine for identifying the shape of an irregular source in a background-subtracted image. Then, we extend the shape of the source by using the Dilation image operation to obtain an aperture that is quasi-homomorphic to the shape of the irregular source. The magnitude measured from the homomorphic aperture would thus have minimal contamination from the nearby background. As a test of our algorithm, we applied our technique to the merging galaxies observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. Our results suggest that the adaptive homomorphic aperture algorithm can be very useful for investigating extended sources with irregular shapes and sources in crowded regions.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Article number | 034001 |
Journal | Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific |
Volume | 129 |
Issue number | 973 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1 Mar 2017 |
Keywords
- Techniques: image processing
- Techniques: photometric