A catalog to unite them all: REGALADE, a revised galaxy compilation for the advanced detector era

¹ Institut de Ciències del Cosmos (ICCUB), Universitat de Barcelona (UB), c. Martí i Franquès, 1, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
² Departament de Física Quàntica i Astrofísica (FQA), Universitat de Barcelona (UB), c. Martí i Franquès, 1, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
³ Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC), Edifici RDIT, Campus UPC, 08860 Castelldefels (Barcelona), Spain
⁴ Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP, Radboud University, PO Box 9010, 6500 GL Nijmegen, The Netherlands
⁵ Department of Astronomy, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa
⁶ South African Astronomical Observatory, PO Box 9, Observatory, 7935, South Africa
⁷ The Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa
⁸ Astrophysics sub-Department, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Denys Wilkinson Building, Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3RH, UK
⁹ Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam, PO Box 94249, 1090 GE Amsterdam, The Netherlands
¹⁰ Department of Physics, Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK
¹¹ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte, Salita Moiariello 16, 80131 Naples, Italy
¹² The School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel

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

Received: 18 August 2025
Accepted: 21 November 2025

Abstract

Context. Many applications in transient science, gravitational wave follow-up, and galaxy population studies require all-sky galaxy catalogs with reliable distances, extents, and stellar masses. However, existing catalogs often lack completeness beyond ~100 Mpc, suffer from stellar contamination, or do not provide homogeneous stellar mass estimates and size information.

Aims. Our goal is to build a high-purity, high-completeness, all-sky galaxy catalog out to 2000 Mpc, specifically designed to support time-domain and multi-messenger astrophysics.

Methods. We combined major galaxy catalogs and deep imaging surveys – including the Legacy Surveys, Pan-STARRS, DELVE, and SDSS – and added spectroscopic, photometric, and redshift-independent distances. We cleaned the sample using the Gaia catalog to remove stars and visually inspected all ambiguous cases below 100 Mpc through a classification platform that gathered 27 000 expert votes. Stellar masses were estimated using optical and mid-infrared profile-fit photometry, and we improved the accuracy of photometric distances by combining multiple independent estimates.

Results. The resulting catalog, REGALADE, includes nearly 80 million galaxies with distances under 2000 Mpc. It provides stellar masses for 88% of the sample and ellipse fits for 80%. REGALADE is more than 90% complete for galaxies contributing 50% of the total r-band luminosity out to 360 Mpc. In science tests, it recovers 60% more known supernova hosts, doubles the number of low-luminosity transient hosts, and identifies more reliable hosts for ultraluminous and hyper-luminous X-ray sources.

Conclusions. REGALADE is one of the most complete and reliable all-sky galaxy catalog to date for the nearby Universe, built for real-world applications in transient and multi-messenger astrophysics. The full dataset, visual classifications, and code will be released to support broad community use.