Paper detail

Creating updated, scientifically-calibrated mosaic images for the RC3 catalogue

The Third Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies (RC3) is a reasonably complete listing of 23,011 nearby, large, bright galaxies. By using the final imaging data release from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we generate scientifically-calibrated FITS mosaics by using the montage program for all SDSS imaging bands for all RC3 galaxies that lie within the survey footprint. We further combine the SDSS g, r, and i band FITS mosaics for these galaxies to create color-composite images by using the STIFF program. We generalized this software framework to make FITS mosaics and color-composite images for an arbitrary catalog and imaging data set. Due to positional inaccuracies inherent in the RC3 catalog, we employ a recursive algorithm in our mosaicking pipeline that first determines the correct location for each galaxy, and subsequently applies the mosaicking procedure. As an additional test of this new software pipeline and to obtain mosaic images of a larger sample of RC3 galaxies, we also applied this pipeline to photographic data taken by the Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey with $B_J$, $R_F$, and $I_N$ plates. We publicly release all generated data, accessible via a web search form, and the software pipeline to enable others to make galaxy mosaics by using other catalogs or surveys.