2002/08/28 by Zhengyi Shao, Z. Shao, S. Maddox +4
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Absolute magnitude #Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing #Apparent magnitude #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Brightest cluster galaxy #Brightness #CCD and CMOS Imaging Sensors #Elliptical galaxy #Fundamental plane (elliptical galaxies) #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Lenticular galaxy #Magnitude (astronomy) #Physics #Stars #Surface brightness #Surface brightness fluctuation #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1046/j.1365-8711.2003.06018.x
published as Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 338 (2003) 72 · 14 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS
arxiv created 2002/08/28 · openalex publication_date 2003/01/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
This paper considers some simple surface brightness (SB) estimates for galaxies in the Automated Plate Measuring machine (APM) catalogue in order to derive homogeneous SB data for a very large sample of faint galaxies. The isophotal magnitude and area are used to estimate the central surface brightness and total magnitude based on the assumption of an exponential SB profile. The SB measurements are corrected for field effects on each UK Schmidt plate and the zero-point of each plate is adjusted to give a uniform sample of SB and total magnitude estimates over the whole survey. Results are obtained for 2.4 million galaxies with blue photographic magnitudes brighter than bJ= 20.5 covering 4300 deg2 in the region of the South Galactic Cap. Almost all galaxies in our sample have central surface brightness in the range 20 to 24 bJ mag arcsec−2. The SB measurements we obtain are compared to previous SB measurements and we find an acceptable level of error of ±0.2 bJ mag arcsec−2. The distribution of SB profiles is considered for different galaxy morphologies for the bright APM galaxies. We find that early-type galaxies have more centrally concentrated profiles.