UBVRI photometry of the Durham-AAT redshift survey

Abstract

Using the PDS microdensitometer at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, we have acquired U, B, V, R and I surface photometry from UK Schmidt photographic plates for all the galaxies with measured redshifts in the Durham-AAT redshift survey. By comparison with CCD photometry we show that such precision photographic photometry of galaxies off IIIa emulsions is capable of an accuracy as good as a few hundredths of a magnitude. We discuss the colour-related properties of these galaxies, and derive luminosity functions in each waveband. We show that when divided by colour, the faint-end slope of the luminosity function of the bluer galaxies is significantly steeper than that for the redder ones.