There is a clear scarcity of structural parameters for stellar thick discs,especially for spiral galaxies located in high-density regions, such as galaxyclusters and compact groups. We have modelled the thin and thick discs of 4edge-on spirals located in Abell clusters: NGC 705, ESO243G49, ESO187G19,LCSBS0496P. Deep I band images of NGC 705 were taken from the HST archive,whereas the remaining images were obtained with the Southern Telescope forAstrophysical Research (SOAR) in Gunn r filter. They reached surface brightnesslevels of $\mu_I \simeq 26.0$ mag arcsec$^{-2}$ and $\mu_r \simeq 26.5$ magarcsec$^{-2}$, respectively. Profiles were extracted from the deep images, indirections both parallel and perpendicular to the major axis. Profile fits werecarried out at several positions, yielding horizontal and vertical scaleparameters for both thin and thick disc components. The extracted profiles andfitted disc parameters vary from galaxy to galaxy. Two galaxies have ahorizontal profile with a strong down-turn at outer radii, preventing a simpleexponential from fitting the entire range. For the 2 early-type spirals, thethick discs have larger scalelengths than the thin discs, whereas no trend isseen for the later types . Both the thin and thick discs sampled tend to havesimilar scalelengths and scaleheights when compared to typical field discgalaxies. However, the thin disc parameters of the 2 farthest galaxies, bothlate-type spirals, may be significantly affected by seeing effects. Taken atface value, our results suggest that environment plays a minor role indetermining the thin and thick disc sizes.
展开▼
