ABSTRACT. We applied the VESPA algorithm to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey final data release of the Main Galaxies and Luminous Red Galaxies samples. The result is a catalog of stellar masses, detailed star formation and metallicity histories and dust content of nearly 800,000 galaxies. We make the catalog public via a T-SQL database, which is described in detail in this paper. We present the results using a range of stellar population and dust models, and will continue to update the catalog as new and improved models are made public. We also present a brief exploration of the catalog, and show that the quantities derived are robust: luminous red galaxies can be described by one to three populations, whereas a main galaxy sample galaxy needs on average two to five; red galaxies are older and less dusty; the dust values we recover are well correlated with measured Balmer decrements and star formation rates are also in agreement with previous measurements. We find that whereas some derived quantities are robust to the choice of modelling, many are still not.

Key words: catalogs; galaxies: evolution; galaxies: formation; galaxies: stellar content; methods: data analysis; surveys

^* The data and documentation are currently online, and can be found at http://www-wfau.roe.ac.uk/vespa/.

Print publication: Issue 1 (2009 November)
Received 2009 April 6, accepted for publication 2009 September 9
Published 2009 October 6