A New Extensive Census of Warped Disk Galaxies in Nearby Universe

The galactic warp is almost ubiquitous among disk galaxies and suspected to be an imprint of recent interactions with other galaxies. The detailed evolutionary course, however, is still uncertain due to the lack of observational evidence. To address this issue, we construct a new extensive catalog of 412 conspicuously warped disks at z = 0.01 ~ 0.05, based on SDSS DR7. We classify the warp morphology through a visual inspection from the Zooniverse Project and our new automated scheme for the warp measurement. We find an interesting color difference between S-and U-shaped warps. The U-type warp galaxies exhibits considerable color offset towards blue compared to both the S-type warps and the control sample of un-warped galaxies. The effect is even more pronounced for galaxies (a) with the greater warp amplitude and (b) with lower luminosity. This is the first piece of observational evidence that the S- and U-shaped warps are on different evolutionary phases in terms of not only dynamics but stellar populations as well. We discuss the implications in the context of the warp evolution theory.