A MINNESOTA AUTOMATED PLATE SCANNER CATALOG OF GALAXIES BEHIND THE VIRGO CLUSTER AND TOWARD ITS ANTIPODE

摘要

We present a catalog of 1268 galaxies, essentially complete to B ≤ 17.0, found by scanning glass copies of several fields of the original Palomar Sky Survey using the Minnesota Automated Plate Scanner in its isodensitometric mode (as opposed to the threshold densitometric mode used in the APS Catalog of the POSS I). In addition to the different scanning mode, we have employed a different star-galaxy separation method and have visually inspected POSS prints to verify that each image remaining in the catalog is nonstellar. The scanned fields are distributed generally in two areas, one around the outskirts of the Virgo Cluster, the other toward the antipode of the cluster (but still in the northern celestial hemisphere). The catalog gives the position of the center of each galaxy; estimates of the blue and red magnitudes within the outermost threshold crossing and of the blue magnitude extrapolated to zero surface brightness; and the blue and red diameters of four ellipses fitted to the four threshold crossings (approximately 23.8, 23.6, 23.2, and 22.7 mag arcsec~(-2) in blue, and 22.5, 22.4, 21.5, and 21.2 mag arcsec~(-2) in red), and the ellipticities of those four ellipses. The catalog has served as a base from which to draw targets for a Tully-Fisher study of the Virgocentric infall velocity of the Local Group.