THE DRAGONFLY NEARBY GALAXIES SURVEY. I. SUBSTANTIAL VARIATION IN THE DIFFUSE STELLAR HALOS AROUND SPIRAL GALAXIES

Galaxies are thought to grow through accretion; as less massive galaxies are disrupted and merge over time, their debris results in diffuse, clumpy stellar halos enveloping the central galaxy. Here we present a study of the variation in the stellar halos of galaxies, using data from the Dragonfly Nearby Galaxies Survey (DNGS). The survey consists of wide field, deep (mu(g) > 31 mag arcsec(-2)) optical imaging of nearby galaxies using the Dragonfly Telephoto Array. Our sample includes eight spiral galaxies with stellar masses similar to that of the Milky Way, inclinations of 16-19 degrees and distances between 7-18 Mpc. We construct stellar mass surface density profiles from the observed g-band surface brightness in combination with the g - r color as a function of radius, and compute the halo fractions from the excess stellar mass (relative to a disk+bulge fit) beyond 5 half-mass radii. We find a mean halo fraction of 0.009 +/- 0.005 and a large rms scatter of 1.01(-0.26)(+0.9) dex. The peak-to-peak scatter of the halo fraction is a factor of > 100-while some galaxies feature strongly structured halos resembling that of M31, three of the eight have halos that are completely undetected in our data. We conclude that spiral galaxies as a class exhibit a rich variety in stellar halo properties, implying that their assembly histories have been highly non-uniform. We find no convincing evidence for an environmental or stellar mass dependence of the halo fraction in the sample.