http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.4832
The Andromeda Optical and Infrared Disk Survey has mapped M31 in $u^* g^\prime r^\prime i^\prime J K_s$ wavelengths out to R=40 kpc using the MegaCam and WIRCam wide-field cameras on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. Our survey is uniquely designed to simultaneously resolve stars while also carefully reproducing the surface brightness of M31, allowing us to study M31’s global structure in the context of both resolved stellar populations and spectral energy distributions. We use the Elixir-LSB method to calibrate the optical $u^* g^\prime r^\prime i^\prime$ images by building real-time maps of the sky background with sky-target nodding. These maps are stable to $\mu_g \lesssim 28.5$ mag arcsec$^{-2}$ and reveal warps in the outer M31 disk in surface brightness. The equivalent WIRCam mapping in the near-infrared uses a combination of sky-target nodding and image-to-image sky offset optimization to produce stable surface brightnesses. This study enables a detailed analysis of the systematics of spectral energy distribution fitting with near-infrared bands where asymptotic giant branch stars impose a significant, but ill-constrained, contribution to the near-infrared light of a galaxy. Here we present panchromatic surface brightness maps and initial results from our near-infrared resolved stellar catalog.
Date added: Mon, 21 Oct 13