arXiv subjects

Reynier Peletier

Publications and source records attributed to Reynier Peletier.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

AlFoCS + F3D II: unexpectedly low gas-to-dust ratios in the Fornax galaxy cluster

We combine observations from ALMA, ATCA, MUSE, andHerschel to study gas-to-dust ratios in 15 Fornax cluster galaxies detected in the FIR/sub-mm by Herschel and observed by ALMA as part of the ALMA Fornax Cluster Survey (AlFoCS). The sample spans a stellar mass range of 8.3 $\leq$ log (M$_*$ / M$_\odot$) $\leq$ 11.16, and a variety of morphological types. We use gas-phase metallicities derived from MUSE observations (from the Fornax3D survey) to study these ratios as a function of metallicity, and to study dust-to-metal ratios, in a sub-sample of nine galaxies. We find that gas-to-dust ratios in Fornax galaxies are systematically lower than those in field galaxies at fixed stellar mass/metallicity. This implies that a relatively large fraction of the metals in these Fornax systems is locked up in dust, which is possibly due to altered chemical evolution as a result of the dense environment. The low ratios are not only driven by HI deficiencies, but H$_2$-to-dust ratios are also significantly decreased. This is different in the Virgo cluster, where low gas-to-dust ratios inside the virial radius are driven by low HI-to-dust ratios, while H$_2$-to-dust ratios are increased. Resolved observations of NGC1436 show a radial increase in H$_2$-to-dust ratio, and show that low ratios are present throughout the disc. We propose various explanations for the low H$_2$-to-dust ratios in the Fornax cluster, including the more efficient stripping of H$_2$ compared to dust, more efficient enrichment of dust in the star formation process, and altered ISM physics in the cluster environment.

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arXiv2020

Optimising and comparing source extraction tools using objective segmentation quality criteria

With the growth of the scale, depth, and resolution of astronomical imaging surveys, there is an increased need for highly accurate automated detection and extraction of astronomical sources from images. This also means there is a need for objective quality criteria, and automated methods to optimise parameter settings for these software tools. We present a comparison of several tools which have been developed to perform this task: namely SExtractor, ProFound, NoiseChisel, and MTObjects. In particular, we focus on evaluating performance in situations which present challenges for detection -- for example, faint and diffuse galaxies; extended structures, such as streams; and objects close to bright sources. Furthermore, we develop an automated method to optimise the parameters for the above tools. We present four different objective segmentation quality measures, based on precision, recall, and a new measure for the correctly identified area of sources. Bayesian optimisation is used to find optimal parameter settings for each of the four tools on simulated data, for which a ground truth is known. After training, the tools are tested on similar simulated data, to provide a performance baseline. We then qualitatively assess tool performance on real astronomical images from two different surveys. We determine that when area is disregarded, all four tools are capable of broadly similar levels of detection completeness, while only NoiseChisel and MTObjects are capable of locating the faint outskirts of objects. MTObjects produces the highest scores on all tests on all four quality measures, whilst SExtractor obtains the highest speeds. No tool has sufficient speed and accuracy to be well-suited to large-scale automated segmentation in its current form.

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arXiv2020

Disc galaxy resolved in HI absorption against the radio lobe of 3C 433: Case study for future surveys

The neutral atomic gas content of galaxies is usually studied in the HI 21cm emission line of hydrogen. However, at higher redshifts, we need very deep integrations to detect HI emission. The HI absorption does not suffer from this dependence on distance as long as there is a bright enough background radio source. However, resolved HI absorption studies of galaxies are rare. We report one such rare study of resolved HI absorption against the radio galaxy 3C 433 at $z = 0.101$ with the VLA. The resolved kinematics of the absorber, located against the southern lobe of the 3C 433, shows that it has regular kinematics with an HI mass $\lesssim 3.4 \times 10^{8} M_{\odot}$ for T$_{spin} =$ 100K. Our deep optical continuum and H$α$ observations from the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC) show that the absorber is a faint disc galaxy in the same environment as 3C 433 with a stellar mass $\sim 10^{10} M_{\odot}$ and a star-formation rate of 0.15 $M_{\odot}~yr^{-1}$ or less. For its HI mass, HI column density, stellar mass, and star-formation rate, this galaxy lies well below the main sequence of star-forming galaxies. Its HI mass is lower than the galaxies studied in HI emission at $z \sim 0.1$. Our GTC imaging reveals interesting alignments between H$α$ and radio emission in the HI companion and in the host galaxy of the AGN as well as in the circumgalactic medium in between. This suggests that the shock ionization of gas by the propagating radio source may happen across tens of kpc. Our work supports the potential of studying the HI content in galaxies via absorption in the case of a fortuitous alignment with an extended radio continuum. This allows us to trace galaxies with low HI masses which would otherwise be missed by deep HI emission surveys. In conjunction with the deep all-sky optical surveys, the blind HI surveys with the SKA pathfinders will be able to detect many such systems.

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arXiv2020

The Fornax Deep Survey with VST. IX. The catalog of sources in the FDS area, with an example study for globular clusters and background galaxies

This paper continues the series of the Fornax Deep Survey (FDS). Following the previous studies dedicated to extended Fornax cluster members, we present the catalogs of compact stellar systems in the Fornax cluster as well as extended background sources and point-like sources. We derive ugri photometry of ~1.7 million sources over the $\sim$21 sq. degree area of FDS centered on NGC1399. For a wider area, of $\sim$27 sq. degs extending in the direction of NGC1316, we provide gri data for ~3.1 million sources. To improve the morphological characterization of sources we generate multi-band image stacks by coadding the best seeing gri-band single exposures with a cut at FWHM<=0.9 arcsec. We use the multi-band stacks as detection frames. The identification of compact sources is obtained from a combination of photometric and morphometric selection criteria taking as reference the properties of sources with well-defined classification from the literature. We present a preliminary analysis of globular cluster (GC) distributions in the Fornax area. The study confirms and extends further previous results. We observe the inter-galactic population of GCs, a population of mainly blue GCs centered on NGC1399, extends over $\sim$0.9Mpc, with an ellipticity $\sim$0.65. Several sub-structures extend over $\sim$0.5Mpc along various directions. Two of these structures do not cross any bright galaxy; one of them appears to be connected to NGC1404, a bright galaxy close to the cluster core and particularly poor of GCs. Using the gri catalogs we analyze the GC distribution over the extended FDS area, and do not find any obvious GC sub-structure bridging the two brightest cluster galaxies, NGC1316 and NGC1399. Although NGC1316 is twice brighter of NGC1399 in optical bands we estimate a factor of 3-4 richer GC population around NGC1399 compared to NGC1316, out to galactocentric distances of 40 arcmin

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arXiv2020

The Fornax Deep Survey data release 1

We present the first data release of the Fornax Deep Survey (FDS), an imaging survey using using the wide-field imager OmegaCAM mounted on the VST in the SDSS u', g', r', and i'-bands covering the Fornax Galaxy Cluster and the infalling Fornax A Group. FDS is a joint project between NOVA (previously called FOCUS - PI: R. F. Peletier) and INAF (as part of VEGAS - PIs: M. Capaccioli and E. Iodice). With exposure times of about 9 hours over an area of ~28 square degrees, this survey is a legacy dataset for studies of members of the Fornax Galaxy Cluster and the infalling Fornax A Group down to a surface brightness limit of ~28 mag/arcsec^2 (1-sigma surface brightness over a 1 arcsecond^2 area) and opens a new parameter regime to investigate the role of the cluster environment in shaping the properties of its galaxy population. After the Virgo cluster,Fornax is the second nearest galaxy cluster to us, and with its different mass and evolutionary state, it provides a valuable comparison that makes it possible to understand the various evolutionary effects on galaxies and galaxy clusters. Details about the survey can be found in A. Venhola, R. F. Peletier, E. Laurikainen et al., 2018, A&A 620, 165. In this release, 181 Gb of (compressed) fits files reduced using the system are present. Catalogues with the complete sample of sources including dwarf galaxies part of the cluster, globular clusters, and background galaxies will be provided in forthcoming releases. The data products are available via the ESO Science Portal at https://archive.eso.org/scienceportal/home?publ_date=2020-08-26

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arXiv2020

On the accretion of a new group of galaxies onto Virgo: I. Internal kinematics of nine in-falling dEs

Galaxy environment has been shown to play an important role in transforming late-type, star-forming galaxies to quiescent spheroids. This transformation is expected to be more severe for low-mass galaxies (M < $10^{10}$ $M_\odot$) in dense galaxy groups and clusters, mostly due to the influence of their past host halos (also known as pre-processing) and their present-day environments. For the first time, in this study, we investigate a sample of nine early-type dwarf galaxies (dEs) that were accreted as a likely bound group onto the Virgo galaxy cluster about 2-3 Gyr ago. Considering this special condition, these nine dEs may provide a test bed for distinguishing between the influence of the Virgo galaxy cluster and the effects of the previous host halo on their current properties. Specifically, we use VLT/MUSE integral-field unit spectra to derive their kinematics and specific angular momentum ($λ_{R}$) profiles. We observe a spread in the $λ_{R}$ profiles of our sample dEs, finding that the $λ_{R}$ profiles of half of them are as high as those of low-mass field galaxies. The remaining dEs exhibit $λ_{R}$ profiles as low as those of Virgo dEs that were likely accreted longer ago. Moreover, we detect nebular emission in one dE with a gas velocity offset suggesting ongoing gas stripping in Virgo. We suggest that the low-$λ_{R}$ dEs in our sample were processed by their previous host halo, prior to their infall to Virgo, and that the high-$λ_{R}$ dEs may be experiencing ram pressure stripping in Virgo.

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arXiv2020

AlFoCS + Fornax3D: resolved star formation in the Fornax cluster with ALMA and MUSE

We combine data from ALMA and MUSE to study the resolved (~300 pc scale) star formation relation (star formation rate vs. molecular gas surface density) in cluster galaxies. Our sample consists of 9 Fornax cluster galaxies, including spirals, ellipticals, and dwarfs, covering a stellar mass range of ~10^8.8 - 10^11 M_Sun. CO(1-0) and extinction corrected Halpha were used as tracers for the molecular gas mass and star formation rate, respectively. We compare our results with Kennicutt (1998) and Bigiel et al. (2008). Furthermore, we create depletion time maps to reveal small-scale variations in individual galaxies. We explore these further in FCC290, using the 'uncertainty principle for star formation' (Kruijssen & Longmore, 2014a) to estimate molecular cloud lifetimes, which we find to be short (<10 Myr) in this galaxy. Galaxy-averaged depletion times are compared with other parameters such as stellar mass and cluster-centric distance. We find that the star formation relation in the Fornax cluster is close to those from Kennicutt (1998) and Bigiel et al. (2008}), but overlaps mostly with the shortest depletion times predicted by Bigiel et al. (2008). This slight decrease in depletion time is mostly driven by dwarf galaxies with disturbed molecular gas reservoirs close to the virial radius. In FCC90, a dwarf galaxy with a molecular gas tail, we find that depletion times are a factor >~10 higher in its tail than in its stellar body.

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arXiv2019

Leavers and remainers: Galaxies split by group-exit

The disruption of substructure in galaxy clusters likely plays an important role in shaping the cluster population as a significant fraction of cluster galaxies today have spent time in a previous host system, and thus may have been pre-processed. Once inside the cluster, group galaxies face the combined environmental effects from group and cluster - so called 'post-processing'. We investigate these concepts, by tracking the evolution of satellites and their hosts after entering the cluster and find that tidal forces during their first pericentric passage are very efficient at breaking up groups, preferentially removing satellites at larger distances from their hosts. 92.2% of satellites whose host has passed pericentre will leave their host by $z=0$, typically no later than half a Gyr after pericentric passage. We find satellites leave with high velocities, and quickly separate to large distances from their hosts, making their identification within the cluster population challenging. Those few satellites ($\sim$7.8%) that remain bound to their hosts after a pericentric passage are typically found close to their host centres. This implies that substructure seen in clusters today is very likely on first infall into the cluster, and yet to pass pericentre. This is even more likely if the substructure is extended, with satellites beyond R$_{200}$ of their host. We find the cluster dominates the tidal mass loss and destruction of satellites, and is responsible for rapidly halting the accretion of new satellites onto hosts once they reach 0.6-0.8 R$_{200}$ radii from the cluster.

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arXiv2019

Astroinformatics based search for globular clusters in the Fornax Deep Survey

In the last years, Astroinformatics has become a well defined paradigm for many fields of Astronomy. In this work we demonstrate the potential of a multidisciplinary approach to identify globular clusters (GCs) in the Fornax cluster of galaxies taking advantage of multi-band photometry produced by the VLT Survey Telescope using automatic self-adaptive methodologies. The data analyzed in this work consist of deep, multi-band, partially overlapping images centered on the core of the Fornax cluster. In this work we use a Neural-Gas model, a pure clustering machine learning methodology, to approach the GC detection, while a novel feature selection method ($Φ$LAB) is exploited to perform the parameter space analysis and optimization. We demonstrate that the use of an Astroinformatics based methodology is able to provide GC samples that are comparable, in terms of purity and completeness with those obtained using single band HST data (Brescia et al. 2012) and two approaches based respectively on a morpho-photometric (Cantiello et al. 2018b) and a PCA analysis (D'Abrusco et al. 2015) using the same data discussed in this work.

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arXiv2019

Intra-cluster GC-LMXB in the Fornax galaxy cluster

The formation of Low mass X-ray binaries (LMXB) is favored within dense stellar systems such as Globular Clusters (GCs). The connection between LMXB and Globular Clusters has been extensively studied in the literature, but these studies have always been restricted to the innermost regions of galaxies. We present a study of LMXB in GCs within the central 1.5 deg^2 of the Fornax cluster with the aim of confirming the existence of a population of LMXB in intra-cluster GCs and understand if their properties are related to the host GCs, to the environment or/and to different formation channels.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2019

A spectroscopic census of the Fornax cluster and beyond: preparing for next generation surveys

The Fornax cluster is the nearest, large cluster in the southern sky, and is currently experiencing active assembly of mass. It is thus the target of a number of ongoing observing campaigns at optical, near-infrared and radio wavelengths, using state-of-the-art facilities in the Southern hemisphere. Spectroscopic redshifts are essential not only for determining cluster membership, but also kinematics within the cluster and identifying substructures. We present a compilation of all available major spectroscopic campaigns undertaken within the Fornax region, including new and previously unpublished spectroscopy. This provides not only a comprehensive census of Fornax cluster membership as a resource for the many ongoing studies of this dynamic system, but also probes the large scale structure in the background volume.

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arXiv2019

Stellar atmospheric parameters for 754 spectra from the X-shooter Spectral Library

The X-shooter Spectral Library (XSL) is an empirical stellar library at medium spectral resolution covering the wavelength range from 3000 Åto 24 800 Å. This library aims to provide a benchmark for stellar population studies. In this work, we present a uniform set of stellar atmospheric parameters, effective temperatures, surface gravities, and iron abundances for 754 spectra of 616 XSL stars. We used the full-spectrum fitting package ULySS with the empirical MILES library as reference to fit the ultraviolet-blue (UVB) and visible (VIS) spectra. We tested the internal consistency and we compared our results with compilations from the literature. The stars cover a range of effective temperature 2900 < Teff < 38 000 K, surface gravity 0 < log g < 5.7, and iron abundance -2.5 < [Fe/H] < +1.0, with a couple of stars extending down to [Fe/H] = -3.9. The precisions of the measurements for the G- and K-type stars are 0.9%, 0.14, and 0.06 in Teff, log g, and [Fe/H], respectively. For the cool giants with log g < 1, the precisions are 2.1%, 0.21, and 0.22, and for the other cool stars these values are 1%, 0.14, and 0.10. For the hotter stars (Teff > 6500 K), these values are 2.6%, 0.20, and 0.10 for the three parameters.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2019

The Fornax Deep Survey (FDS) with VST. VI. Optical properties of the dwarf galaxies in the Fornax cluster

The Fornax Deep Survey Dwarf galaxy Catalog (FDSDC) includes 564 dwarf galaxies in the Fornax cluster and the in-falling Fornax A subgroup. We use the FDSDC galaxies for statistical analysis of the structural and stellar population differences in the range of galactic environments within the Fornax cluster. We present the standard scaling relations for the dwarfs and analyze trends as a function of cluster-centric radius. We find a different behavior for the bright dwarfs (-18.5 mag < M$_r$ < -16 mag) as compared to the fainter ones (M$_r$ > -16 mag): While considering galaxies in the same magnitude-bins, we find that, while for fainter dwarfs the g'-r' color is redder for lower surface brightness objects (as expected from fading stellar populations), for brighter dwarfs the color is redder for the higher surface brightness and higher Sérsic n objects. The trend of the bright dwarfs might be explained by those galaxies being affected by harassment and by slower quenching of star formation in their inner parts. As the fraction of early-type dwarfs with respect to late-types increases toward the central parts of the cluster, the color-surface brightness trends are also manifested in the cluster-centric trends, confirming that it is indeed the environment that changes the galaxies. We also estimate the strengths of the ram-pressure stripping, tidal disruption, and harassment in the Fornax cluster, and find that our observations are consistent with the theoretically expected ranges of galaxy properties where each of those mechanisms dominate. We furthermore find that the luminosity function, color-magnitude relation, and axis-ratio distribution of the dwarfs in the center of the Fornax cluster are similar to those in the center of the Virgo cluster.

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arXiv2019

Optical/NIR stellar absorption and emission-line indices from luminous infrared galaxies

We analyze a set of optical-to-near-infrared long-slit nuclear spectra of 16 infrared-luminous spiral galaxies. All of the studied sources present H$_2$ emission, which reflects the star-forming nature of our sample, and they clearly display H I emission lines in the optical. Their continua contain many strong stellar absorption lines, with the most common features due to Ca I, Ca II, Fe I, Na I, Mg I, in addition to prominent absorption bands of TiO, VO, ZrO, CN and CO. We report a homogeneous set of equivalent width (EW) measurements for 45 indices, from optical to NIR species for the 16 star-forming galaxies as well as for 19 early type galaxies where we collected the data from the literature. This selected set of emission and absorption-feature measurements can be used to test predictions of the forthcoming generations of stellar population models. We find correlations among the different absorption features and propose here correlations between optical and NIR indices, as well as among different NIR indices, and compare them with model predictions. While for the optical absorption features the models consistently agree with the observations,the NIR indices are much harder to interpret. For early-type spirals the measurements agree roughly with the models, while for star-forming objects they fail to predict the strengths of these indices.

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arXiv2019

The structural properties of classical bulges and discs from z~2

We study the rest-frame optical mass-size relation of bulges and discs from z~2 to z~0 for a complete sample of massive galaxies in the CANDELS fields using 2 component Sérsic models (Dimauro et a. 2018). Discs and star forming galaxies follow similar mass-size relations. The mass-size relation of bulges is less steep than the one of quiescent galaxies (best fit slope of ~ 0.7 for quiescent galaxies against ~ 0.4 for bulges). We find little dependence of the structural properties of massive bulges and discs with the global morphology of galaxies (disc vs. bulge dominated) and the star formation activity (star-forming vs. quiescent). This result suggests similar bulge formation mechanisms for most massive galaxies and also that the formation of the bulge component does not significantly affect the disc structure. Our findings pose a challenge to models envisioning multiple channels for massive bulge growth, such as disc instabilities and mergers.

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arXiv2019

The evolution of ultra-diffuse galaxies in nearby galaxy clusters from the Kapteyn IAC WEAVE INT Clusters Survey ($\texttt{KIWICS}$)

We study the population of ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs) in a set of eight nearby ($z <$ 0.035) galaxy clusters, from the Kapteyn IAC WEAVE INT Clusters Survey ($\texttt{KIWICS}$). We report the discovery of 442 UDG candidates in our eight field of views, with 247 of these galaxies lying at projected distances < 1 R$_{200}$ from their host cluster. With the aim of testing theories about their formation, we study the scaling relations of UDGs comparing with different types of galaxies, finding that in the full parameter space they behave as dwarf galaxies and their colors do not seem to correlate with their effective radii. To investigate the influence of the environment on the evolution of UDGs we analyze their structural properties as functions of the projected clustercentric distance and the mass of their host cluster. We find no systematic trends for the stellar mass nor effective radius as function of the projected distance. However, the fraction of blue UDGs seems to be lower towards the center of clusters, and UDGs in the inner and outer regions of clusters have different Sérsic index and axis ratio distributions. Specifically, the axis ratio distributions of the outer and inner UDGs resemble the axis ratio distributions of, respectively, late-type dwarfs and dwarf ellipticals in the Fornax Cluster suggesting an environmentally-driven evolution and another link between UDGs and dwarf galaxies. In general our results suggest strong similarities between UDGs and smaller dwarf galaxies in their structural parameters and their transformation within clusters.

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arXiv2019

The ALMA Fornax Cluster Survey I: stirring and stripping of the molecular gas in cluster galaxies

We present the first results of the ALMA Fornax Cluster Survey (AlFoCS): a complete ALMA survey of all members of the Fornax galaxy cluster that were detected in HI or in the far infrared with Herschel. The sample consists of a wide variety of galaxy types, ranging from giant ellipticals to spiral galaxies and dwarfs, located in all (projected) areas of the cluster. It spans a mass range of 10^(~8.5 - 11) M_Sun. The CO(1-0) line was targeted as a tracer for the cold molecular gas, along with the associated 3 mm continuum. CO was detected in 15 of the 30 galaxies observed. All 8 detected galaxies with stellar masses below 3x10^9 M_Sun have disturbed molecular gas reservoirs, only 6 galaxies are regular/undisturbed. This implies that Fornax is still a very active environment, having a significant impact on its members. Both detections and non-detections occur at all projected locations in the cluster. Based on visual inspection, and the detection of molecular gas tails in alignment with the direction of the cluster centre, in some cases ram pressure stripping is a possible candidate for disturbing the molecular gas morphologies and kinematics. Derived gas fractions in almost all galaxies are lower than expected for field objects with the same mass, especially for the galaxies with disturbed molecular gas, with differences of sometimes more than an order of magnitude. The detection of these disturbed molecular gas reservoirs reveals the importance of the cluster environment for even the tightly bound molecular gas phase.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2018

The Fornax Deep Survey (FDS) with the VST: IV. A size and magnitude limited catalog of dwarf galaxies in the area of the Fornax cluster

The Fornax Deep Survey (FDS), an imaging survey in the u', g', r', and i'-bands, has a supreme resolution and image depth compared to the previous spatially complete Fornax Cluster Catalog (FCC). Our new data allows us to study the galaxies down to r'-band magnitude m$_{r'}\approx$21 mag (M$_{r'}\approx$-10.5 mag). These data provide an important legacy dataset to study the Fornax cluster. We aim to present the Fornax Deep Survey (FDS) dwarf galaxy catalog, focusing on explaining the data reduction and calibrations, assessing the quality of the data, and describing the methods used for defining the cluster memberships for the catalog objects. As a first step we used the SExtractor fine-tuned for dwarf galaxy detection, to find galaxies from the FDS data, covering a 26 deg$^2$ area of the main cluster, and the area around the Fornax A substructure. We made 2D-decompositions of the identified galaxies using GALFIT. We used color-magnitude, luminosity-radius and luminosity-concentration relations to separate the cluster galaxies from the background galaxies. We then divided the cluster galaxies into early- and late-type galaxies according to their morphology and gave first order morphological classifications. Our final catalog includes 14,095 galaxies. We classify 590 galaxies as being likely Fornax cluster galaxies, of which 564 are dwarfs (M$_{r'}$ > -18.5 mag) consisting our Fornax dwarf catalog. Of the cluster dwarfs we classify 470 as early-types, and 94 as late-type galaxies. Our final catalog reaches its 50% completeness limit at magnitude M$_{r'}$ = -10.5 mag and surface brightness $\barμ_{e,r'}$ = 26 mag arcsec-2, which is approximately three magnitudes deeper than the FCC. Based on previous works and comparison with a spectroscopically confirmed subsample, we estimate that our final Fornax dwarf galaxy catalog has < 10% contamination from the background objects.

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