COSMOS Zurich Catalog: Galaxy Structure & Morphology for 2 Million Galaxies

A 2 square degree equatorial field surveyed by major space and ground-based telescopes provides data on over 2 million galaxies spanning 75% of the age of the universe. The catalog contains structural and morphological measurements from the Zurich Estimator of Structural Type (ZEST) and Single-Sersic GIM2D fits, as presented in two 2007 ApJS publications. This v1.0 catalog is based on the May 2006 release of Alexie Leauthaud's ACS catalog.

Use Cases

• Classifying galaxy structural types based on ZEST morphological parameters.
• Modeling galaxy light profiles using Single-Sersic fit parameters.
• Analyzing galaxy evolution as a function of redshift and large-scale environment.
• Training machine learning models for automated galaxy morphology recognition.

Strengths

• Covers over 2 million galaxies, providing a large sample for statistical analysis.
• Data spans 75% of the age of the universe, enabling evolutionary studies.
• Incorporates imaging from multiple major telescopes (Hubble, Spitzer, Subaru, etc.), offering multi-wavelength data.

Limitations

• ZEST measurements for galaxies with half-light radii < 0.17" are noted as unreliable.
• GIM2D fit quality deteriorates for sources fainter than approximately I_AB=23.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Astronomical survey imaging and subsequent catalog generation from the COSMOS project.

Time Range

Spans 75% of the age of the universe.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 19:52:45.170271; freshness should be verified.

Geography

A 2 square degree equatorial field.