WFPC2 Images of the Central Regions of Early-Type Galaxies. I. The Data

By Armin Rest, Frank C. van den Bosch, W. Jaffe, H. Tran, Z. Tsvetanov, H. C. Ford, J. Davies, Joanna Schafer. 2001

177 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present high-resolution R-band images of the central regions of 67 early-type galaxies obtained with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) aboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). This homogeneously selected sample roughly doubles the number of early-type galaxies that have now been imaged at HST resolution and complements similar data on the central regions of radio galaxies and the bulges of spiral galaxies. Our sample strikingly confirms the complex morphologies of the central regions of early-type galaxies which have become apparent from previous studies with HST. In particular, we detect dust, either in the form of nuclear disks or with a filamentary distribution, in 43% of all galaxies, in good agreement with previous estimates. In addition, we find evidence for embedded stellar disks in a remarkably large fraction of 51%. In 14 of those galaxies the disklike structures are misaligned with the main galaxy, suggesting that they correspond to stellar bars in S0 galaxies. We analyze the luminosity profiles of the galaxies in our sample and classify galaxies according to their central cusp slope. To a large extent we confirm the results from previous HST surveys in that early-type galaxies reveal a clear dichotomy: the bright ellipticals (MB ≲ -20.5) are generally boxy and have luminosity profiles that break from steep outer power laws to shallow inner cusps (referred to as "core" galaxies). The fainter ellipticals, on the other hand, typically have disky isophotes and luminosity profiles that lack a clear break and have a steep central cusp (referred to as "power-law" galaxies). The advantages and shortcomings of classification schemes utilizing the extrapolated central cusp slope γ are discussed, and it is shown that γ might be an inadequate representation for galaxies whose luminosity profile slope changes smoothly with radius rather than resembling a broken power law. Thus, we introduce a new, alternative parameter and show how this affects the classification. In fact, we find evidence for an "intermediate" class of galaxies that cannot unambiguously be classified as either core or power-law galaxies and that have central cusp slopes and absolute magnitudes intermediate between those of core and power-law galaxies. It is unclear at present, however, whether these galaxies make up a physically distinct class or whether distance and/or resolution effects cause them to lose their distinct core or power-law characteristics.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

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Citations in the corpus

Spatially resolved spectroscopy of early-type galaxies over a range in mass (2007, background): “The galaxy has discy isophotes in the inner regions, but boxy in the outer regions (Peletier et al. 1990), and it has a power-law central luminosity profile (Faber et al. 1997; Rest et al. 2001).”
The Masses of Nuclear Black Holes in Luminous Elliptical Galaxies and Implications for the Space Density of the Most Massive Black Holes (2006, unknown): “…and definition of this sample are presented in detail in Lauer et al. (2007), but briefly, we combine surface photometry presented in Lauer et al. (1995), Faber et al. (1997), Laine et al. (2003), Rest et al. (2001), Ravindranath et al. (2001), Quillen et al. (2000), and Lauer et al. (2005).”
Fundamental Planes and the Barless MBH-σ Relation for Supermassive Black Holes (2008, background): “4b; Sil’chenko 1999); NGC 2778 (weak bar peaks at 5′′; Rest et al. 2001, their Fig.”
HST Photometry of Dwarf Elliptical Galaxies in Coma, and an Explanation for the Alleged Structural Dichotomy between Dwarf and Bright Elliptical Galaxies (2003, background): “…nearby, nucleated galaxies have focused on spiral galaxies (e.g., Phillips et al. 1996; Carollo et al. 1997a; Matthews et al. 1999; Böker et al. 2002; Carollo et al. 2002; Balcells et al. 2003) or luminous elliptical galaxies (e.g., Lauer et al. 1995; Ravindranath et al. 2001; Rest et al. 2001).”
The SAURON project – VIII. OASIS/CFHT integral-field spectroscopy of elliptical and lenticular galaxy centres (2006, background): “From HST imaging studies, a number of early-type galaxies are found to contain point-like nuclei, unresolved evenat HSTresolutions (∼5 pc; e.g. Carollo et al. 1997a; Rest et al. 2001; Laine et al. 2003; Lauer et al. 2005; Côté et al. 2006).”
The SAURON project — II. Sample and early results (2001, background): “At intermediate luminosities, both types of profile occur (Carollo et al. 1997; Rest et al. 2001).”
RADIATIVELY INEFFICIENT ACCRETION IN NEARBY GALAXIES (2009, background): “…concentrations, either in the formf nuclear cusps or photometrically distinct, compact stellar nuclei (e.g., Lauer et al. 1995; Phillips et al. 1996; Carollo et al.1997; Faber et al. 1997; Rest et al. 2001; Ravindranath et al. 2001; Böker et al. 2002; Ferrarese et al. 2006; Kormendy et al. 2009).”
Quantifying the coexistence of massive black holes and dense nuclear star clusters (2009, background): “Deconvolved F702W (R-band) WFPC2, minor-axis surface brightness profile for the galaxy NGC 2778 (Rest et al. 2001).”
The Centers of Early-Type Galaxies with Hubble Space Telescope. VI. Bimodal Central Surface Brightness Profiles (2006, methodology): “…CENTRAL STRUCTURE We define a combined sample of 219 early-type galaxies observed with HST for which Nuker law parameters have been derived by a variety of studies (Lauer et al. 1995, 2005; Faber et al. 1997; Quillen et al. 2000; Rest et al. 2001; Ravindranath et al. 2001; Laine et al. 2003).”
Inclination- and dust-corrected galaxy parameters: bulge-to-disc ratios and size–luminosity relations (2008, background): “If real, these discs might be more akin to the nuclear discs seen in many elliptical galaxies (e.g. Rest et al. 2001).”
Internal Dynamics, Structure, and Formation of Dwarf Elliptical Galaxies. II. Rotating versus Nonrotating Dwarfs (2002, methodology): “…al. (2001), consist of 2 230 s WFPC2 images in the F555W (V ) bandpass, except in the case of VCC 1261 where only archival WFPC2 F702W (R-band) imaging was available (Rest et al. 2001); photometric parameters for this galaxy were transformed to V-band assuming V R = 0.5 (Prugniel & Heraudeau 1998).”
Gravitational Lens Time Delays: A Statistical Assessment of Lens Model Dependences and Implications for the Global Hubble Constant (2006, methodology): “For both A3 and A4, the amplitudes are distributed by the Gaussian with mean zero and dispersion 0.01, which is roughly consistent with reported distributions (Bender et al. 1989; Saglia et al. 1993; Rest et al. 2001).”
Secular Evolution and the Formation of Pseudobulges in Disk Galaxies (2004, background): “…include Elmegreen et al. (1998); van den Bosch, Jaffe, & van der Marel (1998); Peletier et al. (1999); Erwin & Sparke (1999, 2002, 2003); Ravindranath et al. (2001); Rest et al. (2001); Hughes et al. (2003); Martini et al. (2003a); Fathi & Peletier (2003), Erwin et al. 2003, and Erwin (2004).”
A Correlation between Galaxy Light Concentration and Supermassive Black Hole Mass (2001, background): “The inner arc second of the profiles was generally excluded from the fit, since these regions are often dominated by relatively flat cores, bright nuclear disks, or nuclear point-sources (e.g., Rest et al. 2001, and references therein), none of which can be modeled with Sérsic profiles.”
Supermassive Black Holes in Galactic Nuclei: Past, Present and Future Research (2004, background): “Stellar absorption lines are faint and the central surface brightness, especially in bright ellipticals, is low (Crane et al. 1993; Ferrarese et al. 1994; Lauer et al. 1995; Rest et al. 2001).”
Tests for Substructure in Gravitational Lenses (2003, background): “For example, Bender et al. (1989) and Rest et al. (2001) examine a sample of local ellipticals and quantify the deviations of the isophotes from ellipses.”