Galaxies decomposition with spiral arms – II. A multiwavelength case study of M 51

Abstract

ABSTRACT Spiral structure can contribute significantly to a galaxy’s luminosity. However, only rarely are proper photometric models of spiral arms used in decompositions. As we show in the previous work, including the spirals as a separate component in a photometric model of a galaxy would both allow to obtain their structural parameters, and reduce the systematic errors in estimating the parameters of other components. Doing so in different wavebands, one can explore how their properties vary with the wavelength. In this paper, second in this series, we perform decomposition of M 51 in 17 bands, from the far-ultraviolet (UV) to far-infrared, using imaging from the DustPedia project. We use the same 2D photometric model of spiral structure where each arm is modelled independently. The complex and asymmetric spiral structure in M 51 is reproduced relatively well with our model. We analyse the differences between models with and without spiral arms, and investigate how the fit parameters change with wavelength. In particular, we find that the spiral arms demonstrate the largest width in the optical, whereas their contribution to the galaxy luminosity is most significant in the UV. The disc central intensity drops by a factor of 1.25–3 and its exponential scale changes by 5–10 per cent when spiral arms are included, depending on wavelength. Taking into account the full light distribution across the arms, we do not observe the signs of a long-lived density wave in the spiral pattern of M 51 as a whole.