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Deconstructing A Galaxy: Colour Distributions Of Point Sources In Messier 83, A. K. Kiar, P. Barmby, A. Hidalgo

Physics and Astronomy Publications

What do we see when we look at a nearby, well-resolved galaxy? Thousands of individual sources are detected in multiband imaging observations of even a fraction of a nearby galaxy, and characterizing those sources is a complex process. This work analyses a ten-band photometric catalogue of nearly 70 000 point sources in a 7.3 square arcmin region of the nearby spiral galaxy Messier 83, made as part of the Early Release Science programme with the Hubble Space Telescope'sWide Field Camera 3. Colour distributions were measured for both broad-band and broad-and-narrow-band colours; colours made from broad-bands with large wavelength differences generally …