Beyond ellipse(s): accurately modeling the isophotal structure of galaxies with ISOFIT and CMODEL

This work introduces a new fitting formalism for isophotes that enables more accurate modeling of galaxies with non-elliptical shapes, such as disk galaxies viewed edge-on or galaxies with X-shaped/peanut bulges. Within this scheme, the angular parameter that defines quasi-elliptical isophotes is transformed from the commonly used, but inappropriate, polar coordinate to the 'eccentric anomaly.' This provides a superior description of deviations from ellipticity, better capturing the true isophotal shape. Furthermore, this makes it possible to accurately recover both the surface brightness profile, using the correct azimuthally averaged isophote, and the two-dimensional model of any galaxy: the hitherto ubiquitous, but artificial, cross-like features in residual images are completely removed. The formalism has been implemented into the Image Reduction and Analysis Facility tasks Ellipse and Bmodel to create the new tasks 'Isofit,' and 'Cmodel.' The new tools are demonstrated here with application to five galaxies, chosen to be representative case-studies for several areas where this technique makes it possible to gain new scientific insight. Specifically: properly quantifying boxy/disky isophotes via the fourth harmonic order in edge-on galaxies, quantifying X-shaped/peanut bulges, higher-order Fourier moments for modeling bars in disks, and complex isophote shapes. Higher order (n > 4) harmonics now become meaningful and may correlate with structural properties, as boxyness/diskyness is known to do. This work also illustrates how the accurate construction, and subtraction, of a model from a galaxy image facilitates the identification and recovery of over-lapping sources such as globular clusters and the optical counterparts of X-ray sources.