DEComposition Analysis (DECA) is a Python wrapper to perform mass 2D bulge/disk decomposition of galaxy images. It is based on using some popular astrophysical software (IRAF, SExtractor, GALFIT, IMFIT etc.) as well as some standard and specific python modules. DECA allows a researcher to put an image with the galaxy and specify some lines about the image and the object in the input file. There is no need to guess at initial values of parameters because DECA will do it for you. Now one can decompose huge samples of galaxies in automatic mode and get statistically robust information about the structure of investigated galaxies.

DECA is able to do morphological classification of galaxies. It can work with edge-on galaxies and analyze the structure of the disk and bulge, including warps, truncations, ellipse shape of components and the law of surface brightness distribution along the radius. In order to investigate the spiral structure of the galaxy there is a built-in module written by S. Savchenko. This module finds the initial parameters of the spiral structure using the Fourier transform. This initial parameters undergo the process of fitting along with other structural parameters of galaxies.

Decompose galaxies using DECA in your studies!

You can download DECA with documentation and examples from THIS repository on

The new version of DECA with the graphical user friendly interface is comming soon: