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American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, (465), p. 534, 1996

DOI: 10.1086/177440

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Brightest cluster galaxy profile shapes

Journal article published in 1996 by Alister Graham, Tod R. Lauer ORCID, Matthew Colless ORCID, Marc Postman ORCID
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

We model the surface brightness profiles of a sample of 119 Abell Brightest Cluster Galaxies (BCG), finding a generalised deVaucouleurs R^{1/n} law, where n is a free parameter, to be appropriate. Departures from the R^{1/4} law are shown to be a real feature of galaxy profiles, not due to observational errors or coupling of n with the other model parameters. BCG typically have values of n greater than 4. The shape parameter n is shown to correlate with effective half-light radius, such that the larger BCG have larger values of n. This continues a trend noticed amongst ordinary elliptical galaxies and dwarf ellipticals, such that the fainter galaxies have smaller values of n. Comment: To appear in Ap.J., 16 pages