BUDDA: A new two-dimensional bulge/disk decomposition code for detailed structural analysis of galaxies

We present BUDDA (Bulge/Disk Decomposition Analysis), a new code devoted to perform a two-dimensional bulge/disk decomposition directly from the images of galaxies. The bulge component is fitted with a generalized Sersic profile, whereas disks have an exponential profile. No other components are included. Bars and other substructures, like lenses, rings, inner bars, and inner disks, are studied with the residual images obtained through the subtraction of bulges and disks from the original images. This means that a detailed structural analysis of galaxies may be performed with a small number of parameters, and substructures may be directly studied with no a priori assumptions. As has been already shown by several studies, two-dimensional fitting is much more reliable than one-dimensional profile fitting. Moreover, our code has been thoroughly tested with artificial data, and we demonstrate it to be an accurate tool for determining structural parameters of galaxies. We also show that our code is useful in various kinds of studies, including galaxies of, e. g., different morphological types, and inclinations, which also may be observed at different spatial resolutions. Thus, the code has a broader range of potential applications than most of the previous codes, which are developed to tackle specific problems. To illustrate its usefulness, we present the results obtained with a sample of 51 mostly early-type galaxies ( but covering the whole Hubble sequence). These results show some of the applications in which the code may be used: the determination of parameters for fundamental plane and structural studies, quantitative morphological classification of galaxies, and the identification and study of hidden substructures. We have determined the structural parameters of the galaxies in our sample and found many examples of hidden inner disks in ellipticals, secondary bars, nuclear rings and dust lanes in lenticulars and spirals, and also wrong morphological classification cases. We now make BUDDA generally available to the astronomical community.