Photometric identification of objects from Galaxy Evolution Explorer Survey and Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Abstract

We have used Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) and Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) observations to extract seven band photometric magnitudes for over 80 000 objects in the vicinity of the North Galactic Pole. Although these had been identified as stars by the SDSS pipeline, we found through fitting with model spectral energy distributions that most were, in fact, of extragalactic origin. Only about 9 per cent of these objects turned out to be main-sequence stars and about 11 per cent were white dwarfs and red giants collectively, while galaxies and quasars contributed to the remaining 80 per cent of the data. We have classified these objects into different spectral types (for the stars) and into different galactic types (for the galaxies). As part of our fitting procedure, we derive the distance and extinction to each object and the photometric redshift towards galaxies and quasars. This method easily allows for the addition of any number of observations to cover a more diverse range of wavelengths, as well as the addition of any number of model templates. The primary objective of this work is to eventually derive a three-dimensional extinction map of the Milky Way Galaxy.