Redshift-distance Survey of Early-type Galaxies: the ENEARc Cluster Sample

Abstract

This paper presents data on the ENEARc subsample of the larger ENEAR survey of the nearby early-type galaxies. The ENEARc galaxies belong to clusters and were specifically chosen to be used for the construction of a D_n-sigma template. The ENEARc sample includes new measurements of spectroscopic and photometric parameters (redshift, velocity dispersion, line index Mg_2, and the angular diameter d_n) as well as data from the literature. New spectroscopic data are given for 229 cluster early-type galaxies and new photometry is presented for 348 objects. Repeat and overlap observations with external data sets are used to construct a final merged catalog consisting of 640 early-type galaxies in 28 clusters. Objective criteria, based on catalogs of groups of galaxies derived from complete redshift surveys of the nearby universe, are used to assign galaxies to clusters. In a companion paper these data are used to construct the template D_n-sigma distance relation for early-type galaxies which has been used to estimate galaxy distances and derive peculiar velocities for the ENEAR all-sky sample.