%0 Journal Article
%A Gil de Paz, Armando
%A Muñoz Mateos, Juan Carlos
%A otros, ...
%T The thick disk in the galaxy NGC 4244 from S^(4)G imaging
%D 2011
%@ 0004-637X
%U https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/44880
%X If thick disks are ubiquitous and a natural product of disk galaxy formation and/or evolution processes, all undisturbed galaxies that have evolved during a significant fraction of a Hubble time should have a thick disk. The late-type spiral galaxy NGC 4244 has been reported as the only nearby edge-on galaxy without a confirmed thick disk. Using data from the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S^(4)G) we have identified signs of two disk components in this galaxy. The asymmetries between the light profiles on both sides of the mid-plane of NGC 4244 can be explained by a combination of the galaxy not being perfectly edge-on and a certain degree of opacity of the thin disk. We argue that the subtlety of the thick disk is a consequence of either a limited secular evolution in NGC 4244, a small fraction of stellar material in the fragments which built the galaxy, or a high amount of gaseous accretion after the formation of the galaxy.
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