G. Fasano et M. Filippi, SURFACE PHOTOMETRY OF EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES IN THE HUBBLE DEEP FIELD, Astronomy & Astrophysics. Supplement series, 129(3), 1998, pp. 583-591
The detailed surface photometry of a sample of early-type galaxies in
the Hubble Deep Field is presented as part of a long-term project aime
d to settle strong observational constraints to the theories modelling
the evolution of elliptical galaxies from the early stages. The sampl
e has been extracted, in the V-606 band, from the database provided by
the ESO-STECF-HDF Group (Couch 1996). The selection criteria involve
the total magnitude, the number of pixels detected above the backgroun
d level and an automatic star/galaxy classifier. Moreover, form visual
inspection of the frames, we excluded the galaxies showing unambiguou
s late-type morphology. The analysis of the luminosity and geometrical
profiles, carried out on the 162 candidates obeying our selection cri
teria, resulted in a list of 99 ''bona fide'' early-type galaxies, for
which accurate total magnitudes and effective radii were computed on
the basis of the equivalent luminosity profiles. The comparison with t
he magnitudes given by Williams et al. (1996) indicates that the autom
ated photometry tends to underestimate the total luminosity of the ell
ipticals.The luminosity profiles of most of galaxies in our sample fol
low fairly well the de Vaucouleurs law (''Normal'' profiles). However,
a relevant fraction of galaxies, even following the r(1/4) law in the
main body light distribution, exhibit in the inner region a flattenin
g of the luminosity profile not attributable to the PSF (''Flat'' prof
iles) or, in some cases, a complex (multi-nucleus) structure (''Merger
'' profiles). A statistically significant correlation is found between
the shapes of the luminosity profiles and the ellipticity distributio
n. In particular, the average ellipticity of galaxies belonging to the
''Flat'' and ''Merger'' classes is significantly higher than that of
the ''Normal'' galaxies. Finally, even taken into account the relevant
uncertainty of the outer position angle profiles, the amount of isoph
otal twisting of HDF ellipticals turns out to be significantly larger
with respect to that of the local samples.