Quantitative morphology of galactic cirrus in deep optical imaging

Statistical structural analysis in a multiwavelength perspective

¹ Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, PO Box 9513, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
² Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Toronto, 60 St. George St., Toronto, ON M5S 3H8, Canada
³ David A. Dunlap Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto, 50 St. George St., Toronto, ON M5S 3H4, Canada
⁴ Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3H4, Canada
⁵ Department of Astronomy, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA
⁶ Departamento de Física de la Tierra y Astrofísica, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain
⁷ Dragonfly Focused Research Organization, 150 Washington Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA
⁸ NRC Herzberg Astronomy & Astrophysics Research Centre, 5071 West Saanich Road, Victoria, BC V9E 2E7, Canada

^★ Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Received: 7 July 2025
Accepted: 3 November 2025

Abstract

Imaging of optical Galactic cirrus, the spatially resolved form of diffuse Galactic light, provides important insights into the properties of the diffuse interstellar medium (ISM) in the Milky Way. While previous investigations have focused mainly on the intensity characteristics of optical cirrus, their morphological properties remain largely unexplored. In this study, we employ several complementary statistical approaches – local intensity statistics, angular power spectrum and Δ-variance analysis, and wavelet scattering transform analysis – to characterize the morphology of cirrus in deep optical imaging data. We place our investigation of optical cirrus into a multiwavelength context by comparing the morphology of cirrus seen with the Dragonfly Telephoto Array to that seen with space-based facilities working at longer wavelengths (Herschel 250 μm, WISE 12 μm, and Planck radiance), as well as with structures seen in the DHIGLS HI column density map. Our statistical methods quantify the similarities and the differences of cirrus morphology in all these datasets. The morphology of cirrus at visible wavelengths resembles that of far-infrared cirrus more closely than that of mid-infrared cirrus; on small scales, anisotropies in the cosmic infrared background and systematics may lead to differences. Across all dust tracers, cirrus morphology can be well described by a power spectrum with a common power-law index γ ~ −2.9. We demonstrate quantitatively that optical cirrus exhibits filamentary, coherent structures across a broad range of angular scales. Our results offer promising avenues for linking the analysis of coherent structures in optical cirrus to the underlying physical processes in the ISM that shape them. Furthermore, we demonstrate that these morphological signatures can be leveraged to distinguish and disentangle cirrus from extragalactic light.