LERMA UMR8112

While the effective radius is a robust parameter, its use to
characterise galaxy sizes has provided a counter-intuitive definition of
what the actual extent of a galaxy is. Current deep imaging therefore
offers a unique opportunity to critically review the convention that the
size of a galaxy is its effective radius and rethink how one best
measures the extent of galaxies using a physically motivated parameter.
We introduce a new definition of galaxy size based on the gas density
threshold for star formation in galaxies. Remarkably, our new size
definition not only captures what the human visual system identifies as
the edge of a galaxy, but also dramatically decreases the scatter in the
stellar mass - size plane by a factor of three. Our size parameter
unifies galaxies spanning five orders of magnitude in stellar mass on a
single mass-size relationship. To demonstrate the implications of our
results, we show that ultra-diffuse galaxies have the same sizes as
regular dwarfs when a size indicator that describes the global structure
of galaxies is used. This work may be extended for larger samples of
galaxies using upcoming wide, deep imaging surveys.