An Atlas for Structural Studies of Spiral Galaxies

Abstract

This is an announcement of a new database of structural properties for 304 late-type (Sb-Sc) spiral galaxies drawn from the UGC catalogue. These data were compiled from the kinematic and photometric studies of Courteau (1996, 1997), and are made available to the community via the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre. The data base contains redshift information and Tully-Fisher distances, various measures of optical (Halpha) line width and rotational velocity, isophotal diameters and magnitudes, disk scale lengths, B-r colour, rotation curve model parameters, and more. The main table includes 66 entries (columns); it can be down-loaded as one single file, or searched for any range of parameters using our search engine. The data files for each rotation curve and luminosity profile (including multiple observations) are also available and can be retrieved as two separate tar files. These data were originally obtained for cosmic flow studies (e.g. Courteau etal 1993, Courteau 1993) and have been included in the Mark III Catalog of Galaxy Peculiar Velocities (Willick etal 1997). The high spatial and spectral resolution of these data make them ideal for structural and dynamical investigations of spiral galaxies (e.g. Broeils & Courteau 1997; Mo, Mao, & White 1998; Somerville & Primack 1999 (astro-ph/9802268); Courteau & Rix 1999 (astro-ph/9707290).) The data base can be accessed at http://cadcwww.hia.nrc.ca/astrocat/courteau.html