Studies of the Virgo Cluster. I - Photometry of 109 galaxies near the cluster center to serve as standards

Abstract

Attention is given to the technical aspects of photometric measurements of 109 galaxies near the center of the Virgo Cluster, noting various types of radii and surface brightness for about 50 E and dE galaxies in the sample that range in absolute magnitude from -20 to -12. These data are combined with data from the literature for giant E and dwarf E galaxies in the Local Group to study the systematic properties of E galaxies over a range of one million luminosities. The radial intensity profiles derived are fitted to the manifold of King (1978) models to derive model-dependent central surface brightness, core radii, and cutoff radii.