THE DISTRIBUTION OF SATELLITE GALAXIES

We carry out a statistical analysis of the distribution of faint satel lites around galaxies of differing Hubble type. Following Holmberg, we count the number of faint images on Schmidt survey plates around prim aries of known redshift. Our procedure leads to a highly significant d etection of the satellites. On average, the projected distance of thes e systems from their primaries is distributed as SIGMA(r(p)) is-propor tional-to r(p)-gamma with gamma approximately 0.9. The satellite popul ations around primaries of different Hubble type are significantly dif ferent: satellites are more concentrated around early-type primaries, with a higher absolute abundance within approximately 0.25 h-1 Mpc.1 I f we assume a standard 'field' luminosity function, we find that galax ies with - 18 < B < - 17(2) are about three times more weakly clustere d to their primaries than are bright galaxies at separations of order 1 Mpc. At fainter magnitudes, the clustering appears stronger, suggest ing the presence of a new population of dwarfs which exist only in clo se association with bright galaxies.