Isophotometry of brightest elliptical galaxies in rich clusters

Thesis/Dissertation · Fri Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1988

OSTI ID:5254117

Porter, A C

This thesis presents ellipse-fitting isophotometry of 175 brightest elliptical galaxies in Abell clusters (BDEs). Galaxy structure is traced to an average major axis of 50 kpc, and sometimes beyond 100 kpc. The data consist not only of major and minor-axis surface brightness profiles, but also of isophote ellipticity, major axis position angle, and centroid position profiles. Almost all BCEs have some local structure that does not show in an azimuthally averaged brightness profile. However, local structure shows no correlation with global parameters such as galaxy luminosity or size. These results echo similar earlier findings for field ellipticals. An analytic method for separating the light distributions of overlapping binary galaxies has been derived and applied to 12 such systems. It is based solely on the assumption that each galaxy in the pair has point-reflection symmetry about its own center. Nonconcentric light is a probe of interactions between the members of the pair.

• Research Organization: California Inst. of Tech., Pasadena, CA (USA)
• OSTI ID: 5254117
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

640100* -- Astrophysics & Cosmology
640105 -- Astrophysics & Cosmology-- Galaxies
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
ANALYTICAL SOLUTION
COMPUTER CALCULATIONS
DATA
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
GALAXY CLUSTERS
INFORMATION
MEASURING INSTRUMENTS
MEASURING METHODS
NUMERICAL DATA
PHOTOMETRY