INFRARED OBSERVATIONS OF GALAXIES IN THE LOCAL UNIVERSE - I - THE SURVEY AND SOME REPRESENTATIVE RESULTS

This paper introduces a continuing survey of galaxies in the local uni verse. Consistent deep images are being acquired for a representative sample of 321 galaxies in the Uppsala General Catalogue down to 21.7 m ag arcsec(-2) at Ks (2.16 mu m) and 22.4 mag arcsec(-2) at J (1.25 mu m) using a NICMOS camera with a 3'.8 x 3'.8 field of view attached to the 61 inch (1.5 m) telescope on Mount Bigelow. We provide some exampl es of the results being obtained by employing 64 deep images of a subs et of 44 galaxies. Bulge-to-disk ratios are tabulated for 30 galaxies. The brightness of the central region of 44 galaxies declines approxim ately 5 mag from Hubble type SO to Sm. An exponential vertical scale h eight at Ks is found to be 500 pc for the disk of UGC 5173. Arm amplit udes of four nearly face-on spiral galaxies are found to range between 11% and 88% compared to the interarm region. There is some evidence t hat the arm amplitude is larger at Ks than it is at J, Color gradients ar measured for 15 galaxies with only one showing a significant nonze ro result. A measurement of galactic symmetry applied to 64 deep image s reveals an average asymmetry of 7.6% (sigma = 4.6%) for these galaxi es.