What are the limitations of GALFIT?
• Q: What can or can’t GALFIT deal with? A: GALFIT can always fit something, but not all fits are physically meaningful, and what’s meaningful or not is often open to interpretation. Many different kinds of non-axisymmetric galaxies can be fit well, especially using new features or using multiple components. The current real limitations are perturbations in spiral arms, or spiral winding that is not logarithmic or hyperbolic-tangent in radius, e.g. a spiral arm that wind back onto itself. Despite these limitations, most of the time GALFIT will allow one to do much more than the actual science requires. Unlike GIM2D, GALFIT was not initially conceived to do automated batch fitting of galaxies. However, there are ways for GALFIT to do so by writing a “wrapping script.” There are now several wrapping scripts available created by individual groups, e.g. GEMS, that do this efficiently and seamlessly. One of them is available in the GALFIT package. (See GALFIT In Action.) When it comes to
