A CATALOG OF BULGE, DISK, AND TOTAL STELLAR MASS ESTIMATES FOR THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY

Abstract

We present a catalog of bulge, disk, and total stellar mass estimates for\n~660,000 galaxies in the Legacy area of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data\nRelease 7. These masses are based on a homogeneous catalog of g- and r-band\nphotometry described by Simard et al. (2011), which we extend here with\nbulge+disk and Sersic profile photometric decompositions in the SDSS u, i, and\nz bands. We discuss the methodology used to derive stellar masses from these\ndata via fitting to broadband spectral energy distributions (SEDs), and show\nthat the typical statistical uncertainty on total, bulge, and disk stellar mass\nis ~0.15 dex. Despite relatively small formal uncertainties, we argue that SED\nmodeling assumptions, including the choice of synthesis model, extinction law,\ninitial mass function, and details of stellar evolution likely contribute an\nadditional 60% systematic uncertainty in any mass estimate based on broadband\nSED fitting. We discuss several approaches for identifying genuine bulge+disk\nsystems based on both their statistical likelihood and an analysis of their\none-dimensional surface-brightness profiles, and include these metrics in the\ncatalogs. Estimates of the total, bulge and disk stellar masses for both normal\nand dust-free models and their uncertainties are made publicly available here.\n