CCD Observations of Abell clusters. IV. Surface photometry of 175 brightest cluster galaxies.
Abstract
The authors present a consistent body of CCD aperture photometry and surface photometry for the brightest galaxies in 175 clusters drawn from the Abell catalog. The data confirm earlier work showing that the dispersion in the aperture luminosities for first-ranked cluster galaxies is ≡0.32 mag, as well as the documented trends of luminosity with Bautz-Morgan class and cluster richness. Fits of Hubble and de Vaucouleurs models to the radial surface-brightness profiles verify the strong relationship between galaxy structure and absolute luminosity. The average core radius for the sample is 2.4 kpc, while the mean effective radius is 32 kpc. The structure parameter alpha, which ranges from 0.3 to 2.0, has a mean value of 0.75 when measured at the 16-kpc radius used as the standard aperture for the magnitudes. Half of these objects are multiple-nucleus systems.
- Publication:
-
The Astronomical Journal
- Pub Date:
- September 1985
- DOI:
- Bibcode:
- 1985AJ.....90.1648H
- Keywords:
-
- Astronomical Photometry;
- Galactic Clusters;
- Luminosity;
- Charge Coupled Devices;
- Cosmology;
- Galactic Nuclei;
- Galactic Structure;
- Hubble Diagram;
- Red Shift;
- Astrophysics