The Broadband Optical Properties of Galaxies with Redshifts 0.02 < z < 0.22

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Abstract
Using photometry and spectroscopy of 183,487 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we present bivariate distributions of pairs of seven galaxy properties: four optical colors, surface brightness, radial profile shape as measured by the Sérsic index, and absolute magnitude. In addition, we present the dependence of local galaxy density (smoothed on 8 h-1 Mpc scales) on all of these properties. Several classic, well-known relations among galaxy properties are evident at extremely high signal-to-noise ratio: the color-color relations of galaxies, the color-magnitude relations, the magnitude-surface brightness relation, and the dependence of density on color and absolute magnitude. We show that most of the i-band luminosity density in the universe is in the absolute magnitude and surface brightness ranges used: -23.5 < M < -17.0 mag and 17 < μ < 24 mag in 1 arcsec2 [the notation zb represents the b band shifted blueward by a factor (1 + z)]. Some of the relationships between parameters, in particular the color-magnitude relations, show stronger correlations for exponential galaxies and concentrated galaxies taken separately than for all galaxies taken together. We provide a simple set of fits of the dependence of galaxy properties on luminosity for these two sets of galaxies and other quantitative details of our results.
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