The MATLAS survey of faint outskirts of bright galaxies

Bilek & Duc, 2020: Outskirts of galaxies with MATLAS

Deep imaging, that is imaging capable of capturing very low surface brightness extended objects, is a quickly growing field of extragalactic astronomy. Not only can new types of faint objects be discovered, but deep images of bright galaxies are very valuable, too, since they reveal faint signs of past galaxy collisions, the tidal features. Such “archeological” record can be exploited for investigating how galaxies formed. In the MATLAS survey, we obtained extremely deep images of 177 nearby massive elliptical and lenticular galaxies using the 3.5m Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.

In our contribution, we will present the various types of objects and features seen in our images, for example tidal features, faint star-forming regions in otherwise quenched galaxies, or faint dust clouds in our own Galaxy. Finally, we will introduce the deep-imaging efforts at the Milankovi´c Telescope.

Bilek & Duc, 2020, proceedings of the XIX-th Serbian Astronomical Conference