USmorph: An Updated Framework of Automatic Classification of Galaxy Morphologies and Its Application to Galaxies in the COSMOS Field

Abstract

Morphological classification conveys abundant information on the formation, evolution, and environment of galaxies. In this work, we refine a two-step galaxy morphological classification framework (USmorph), which employs a combination of unsupervised machine-learning and supervised machine-learning techniques, along with a self-consistent and robust data-preprocessing step. The updated method is applied to galaxies with I _mag < 25 at 0.2 < z < 1.2 in the COSMOS field. Based on their Hubble Space Telescope/Advanced Camera for Survey I-band images, we classify them into five distinct morphological types: spherical (SPH, 15,200), early-type disk (17,369), late-type disk (21,143), irregular disk (IRR, 28,965), and unclassified (UNC, 17,129). In addition, we have conducted both parametric and nonparametric morphological measurements. For galaxies with stellar masses exceeding 10⁹ M _☉, a gradual increase in effective radius from SPHs to IRRs is observed, accompanied by a decrease in the Sérsic index. Nonparametric morphologies reveal distinct distributions of galaxies across the Gini−M ₂₀ and C−A parameter spaces for different categories. Moreover, different categories exhibit significant dissimilarity in their G ₂ and Ψ distributions. We find morphology to be strongly correlated with redshift and stellar mass. The consistency of these classification results with expected correlations among multiple parameters underscores the validity and reliability of our classification method, rendering it a valuable tool for future studies.