THE PECULIAR MOTIONS OF EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES IN 2 DISTANT REGIONS .1. CLUSTER AND GALAXY SELECTION

The EFAR project is a study of 736 candidate elliptical galaxies in 84 clusters lying in two regions, toward Hercules-Corona Borealis and Pe rseus-Pisces-Cetus, at distances cz approximate to 6000-15,000 km s(-1 ). In this paper (the first of a series), we present an introduction t o the EFAR project and describe in detail the selection of the cluster s and galaxies in our sample. Fundamental data for the galaxies and cl usters are given, including accurate new positions for each galaxy and redshifts for each cluster. The galaxy selection functions are determ ined by using diameters measured from Schmidt sky survey images for 21 85 galaxies in the cluster fields. Future papers in this series will p resent the spectroscopic and photometric observations of this sample, investigate the properties of the fundamental plane for elliptical gal axies, and determine the large-scale peculiar velocity fields in these two regions of the universe.