P. Katgert et al., THE ESO NEARBY ABELL CLUSTER SURVEY - V - THE CATALOG - CONTENTS AND INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE, Astronomy & Astrophysics. Supplement series, 129(2), 1998, pp. 399-412
We present the catalogue resulting from the ESO Nearby Abell Cluster S
urvey (the ENACS), which contains redshifts and magnitudes for 5634 ga
laxies in the directions of 107 rich, nearby southern Abell cluster ca
ndidates. We describe the contents of the catalogue and discuss the re
sults of a comparison between the ENACS catalogue and the COSMOS Galax
y Catalogue. When cross-correlating the two catalogues we find that, a
t least in the areas of the ENACS clusters, the completeness of the CO
SMOS catalogue is somewhat lower than was estimated previously for the
carefully analyzed and well-calibrated part of the COSMOS catalogue k
nown as the Edinburgh-Durham Southern Galaxy Survey (EDSGC). The galax
y positions in the COSMOS and ENACS catalogues are found to be on the
same system to within about one arcsecond. For the clusters for which
the photometry in the ENACS and COSMOS catalogues is based on the same
survey plates, the two magnitude scales agree very well. We confirm t
hat the photometric calibration in the EDSGC subset of the COSMOS cata
logue is of higher quality than in the EDSGC complement. The ENACS gal
axy samples are unbiased subsets of the COSMOS catalogue as far as the
projected galaxy distribution is concerned, except in only a few case
s. We summarize how the ENACS galaxy samples are subsets of the COSMOS
catalogues in the ENACS apertures, with respect to magnitude. For the
ENACS catalogue as a whole. We describe the apparent incompleteness a
t faint magnitudes and towards higher redshifts. Finally, we provide s
ome detailed information about the ENACS catalogue that is essential f
or its proper statistical use and we summarize some facts that must be
remembered when selecting subsets of galaxies from it.