Scaling relations of early-type galaxies in the 6dF Galaxy Survey

Over 10,000 early-type galaxies from the 6dF Galaxy Survey (6dFGS) (Jones, D. H. et al. (2009), Jones et al. (2004)) have been used to determine the Fundamental Plane at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. We find that a maximum likelihood fit to an explicit three-dimensional Gaussian model for the distribution of galaxies in size, surface brightness and velocity dispersion can precisely account for selection effects, censoring and observational errors, leading to precise and unbiased parameters for the Fundamental Plane and its intrinsic scatter.