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# IRAS 05358+3543: Multiple outflows at the earliest stages of massive star formation

## 1 Introduction

It is still not known whether the physical processes leading to massive stars are similar to those of low-mass star formation, or whether different processes are taking place. Classical star formation scenarios predict moderate accretion rates around $`10^610^5`$ M yr-1 (Shu, 1977), which are incapable to overcome the radiation pressure for sources more massive than approximately 10 M (Wolfire & Cassinelli, 1987). Observations over the last decade showed that massive star formation occurs most likely in a clustered mode, and theories were proposed that advocate the coalescence of protostars in dense cluster centers to build up the most massive sources (Bonnell et al., 1998; Stahler et al., 2000). In contrast, according to other theories following the classical accretion scenario, it is possible to form massive stars via enhanced accretion and disks (Jijina & Adams, 1996; Norberg & Maeder, 2000; Tan & McKee, 2002; Yorke, 2002). For more details on massive star formation see recent reviews, e.g., Stahler et al. (2000), Richer et al. (2000), Churchwell (2000), and Kurtz et al. (2000).

Because molecular outflows give on large angular scales a wealth of information about the innermost part of star-forming regions, in recent years massive outflows have been investigated in more detail. Such outflow studies seemed to indicate a lower degree of collimation for massive outflows than known for low-mass sources. Collimation factors between 1 and 2 were reported as compared to low-mass outflows, where collimation factors up to 10 are found (e.g., Richer et al. 2000). Based on those observations new outflow scenarios were suggested, e.g., Churchwell (2000) proposed that massive outflows might be produced by deflection of infalling material from the central protostar. But the analysis of the data has not taken into account properly the spatial resolution of single-dish observations. Massive star formation sites are on the average far more distant (a few kpc) than well known low-mass sources (a few hundred pc), and thus their angular sizes are smaller in spite of larger linear sizes. Recent statistical work on massive outflows with $`11^{\prime \prime }`$ resolution by Beuther et al. (2002b) shows that the average collimation – even with this spatial resolution – is higher than previously thought. Additionally, Beuther et al. (2002b) find that low-mass correlations of outflow and core parameters continue up to the high-mass regime, suggesting that similar star formation processes are responsible for forming stars of all masses. But their data also indicate that even higher angular resolution is needed to disentangle real source and outflow structures, and thus detailed studies with mm interferometers are needed.

There have been recent interferometric studies of massive outflow sources, of which prominent examples are IRAS 20126+4104 (Cesaroni et al., 1997, 1999) or G192.16-3.82 (Shepherd et al., 1998; Shepherd & Kurtz, 1999). While the outflow of IRAS 20126+4104 is rather collimated, G192.16-3.82 does not show high degrees of collimation, and Shepherd & Kurtz (1999) propose as outflow mechanism a combination of a strong, wide-angle wind with a weak jet.

In this paper, we present a detailed interferometric and single-dish study at mm wavelengths of an extremely young and deeply embedded high-mass protostellar object IRAS 05358+3543, which is also known in the literature as S233IR. This source is part of a larger sample presented and discussed by Sridharan et al. (2001) and Beuther et al. (2002a, b, c).

IRAS 05358+3543 has different peak positions in the IRAS 12 $`\mu `$m and 100 $`\mu `$m bands. While the position in the Point Source Catalog is based on the 12 $`\mu `$m emission due to an infrared cluster, the 100 $`\mu `$m emission peaks approximately $`40^{\prime \prime }`$ away to the north-east and traces the high-mass protostellar cluster we are focusing on (Fig. 1). As the mm dust continuum emission coincides with the 100 $`\mu `$m peak, we will refer to that source as IRAS 05358+3543mm. Based on IRAS infrared data, we estimate the bolometric luminosity of the source to be $`6300`$ L, and the dust temperature to be around 47 K (Table 2, Sridharan et al. 2001). The first CO 1–0 observations of this region are reported by Snell et al. (1990), who detected a 15 M bipolar outflow and classify the source as a massive star formation site. The estimated distance of 1.8 kpc is based on observations of the nearby Hii region S233 (Snell et al., 1990). As additional massive star formation and outflow signposts, Class ii CH3OH (Menten, 1991; Sridharan et al., 2001) and H2O maser emission (Tofani et al., 1995; Beuther et al., 2002c) is observed towards IRAS 05358+3543mm. Additionally, OH maser emission is found in the region with low spatial resolution (Wouterloot et al., 1988). As reported by Tofani et al. (1995) and confirmed by Sridharan et al. (2001), IRAS 05358+3543mm does not show any 3.6 cm emission down to 1 mJy. Thus, based on the total luminosity of the region and a regular initial mass function, it is likely that we are witnessing a very early stage of massive star formation (see Sridharan et al. 2001). The spectral type of the most massive object of the cluster is likely between B2 and B1 ($`10\mathrm{M}_{}M13\mathrm{M}_{}`$).

Porras et al. (2000), Yao et al. (2000) and Jiang et al. (2001) have published a series of near-infrared imaging and polarimetric studies of this region, showing that there are two young embedded stellar clusters, one associated with the 12 $`\mu `$m source (age $``$ 3 Myr) and one with IRAS 05358+3543mm (age $`2`$ Myr). Narrow-band observations in the v=1–0 S(1) line of molecular hydrogen at 2.122$`\mu `$m delineate at least two bipolar jets emanating from the younger cluster, and polarimetric imaging identifies the likely source of the outflows as being deeply embedded and undetected at near-infrared wavelengths (Yao et al., 2000; Jiang et al., 2001). In an accompanying paper, McCaughrean et al. (in prep.) present new, more sensitive, and higher-spatial-resolution near- and mid-infrared observations of the region, which reveal new information concerning the shocked H2 outflows and their driving sources.

## 2 Observations

We have observed IRAS 05358+3543mm in several tracers with different telescopes. Table 1 summarizes the observations described below.

### 2.1 Plateau de Bure Interferometer (PdBI)

IRAS 05358+3543mm was observed with the IRAM Plateau de Bure millimeter array (Guilloteau et al., 1992) between August and October 1999 in two frequency setups111The IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer is supported by INSU/CNRS (France), MPG (Germany) and IGN (Spain).. Five 15 m antennas equipped with dual-frequency receivers were used in three different configurations (4D1, 4C2 & 4C2+N09) with baselines ranging from 24 m to 180 m. Only four antennas were used during the August observations. Because of the poor summer weather conditions, the quality of the 1 mm data was not satisfactory in both setups, and they were only used for phase corrections. The 3 mm receivers were tuned to 115.27 GHz (USB) and 86.8 GHz (LSB) to cover the CO 1–0 line, and the SiO 2-1 and H13CO+ 1–0 lines simultanously. The phase noise was lower than 30 and atmospheric phase correction based on the 1.3 mm total power was applied. For continuum measurements, we placed two 160 MHz correlator units in each band. Temporal fluctuations of amplitude and phase were calibrated with frequent observations of the quasars 2145+067 and 0548+378. The amplitude scale was derived from measurements of MWC349 and CRL618. We estimate the final flux density accuracy to be $`15\%`$. The reference center is R.A.\[J2000\] 05:39:13.0 and Dec.\[J2000\] 35:45:54, and the $`v_{\mathrm{LSR}}`$ is $`17.6`$ km s-1. Ten fields (see Figure 1) were observed to cover the whole source, with the exception of the first configuration which covered only the 6 eastern fields.

### 2.2 Pico Veleta (PV)

Line observations:
To obtain large scale information about IRAS 05358+3543mm, we used the IRAM 30 m telescope at Pico Veleta in the Sierra Nevada, Spain in April 1999 and mapped the whole region on-the-fly in the CO 2–1, CO 1–0, 13CO 1–0, H13CO+ 1–0, SiO 2–1 and CH3OH $`5_04_0(A+)`$ lines (near 241.79 GHz). Due to the continuous movement of the telescope during on-the-fly observations, spurious stripes in scanning direction (R.A.) are found in some maps (see Fig 2). Except for CO 1–0 (observed later \[May 2000\] to add the short spacings, see §2.3) all the other lines were observed simultaneously, which guarantees the best alignment between the different maps. The on-the-fly coverages were done twice with 2 sec integration time per dump and a $`4^{\prime \prime }`$ grid (i.e., Nyquist-sampling at 241 GHz). As backends we used the autocorrelator and two 1 MHz filterbanks.

Bolometer observations:
The 1.2 mm single-dish continuum observations were conducted with the MAMBO array at the IRAM 30m telescope. For details on the observations and analysis of this data see Beuther et al. (2002a).

### 2.3 Merging the interferometric and single-dish data

The IRAM 30 m data (CO 1–0, SiO 2–1 and H13CO+ 1–0) were used to derive short-spacing information and thereby complement the interferometric PdBI data. The algorithm used to derive the visibilities corresponding to each pointing center of the mosaic is described by Gueth et al. (1996). The single-dish and interferometer visibilities are subsequently processed together. Relative weighting has been chosen to minimize the negative side-lobes in the resulting dirty beam while keeping the highest angular resolution possible. Again images were produced using natural weighting, then a CLEAN-based deconvolution of the mosaic was performed. The final beam sizes are $`4.7^{\prime \prime }\times 3.8^{\prime \prime }`$ (P.A. $`51^{}`$) for CO 1–0, and $`5.9^{\prime \prime }\times 5.5^{\prime \prime }`$ (P.A. $`65^{}`$) for H13CO+ 1–0 and SiO 2–1. The beam size for the 115 GHz continuum data, where only the PdBI data were used, is $`4^{\prime \prime }\times 3^{\prime \prime }`$ (P.A. $`46^{}`$).

### 2.4 Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO)

We used the CSO222The CSO is operated by the California Institute of Technology under funding from the National Science Foundation, Grant No. AST 9980846. 10.4 m telescope to obtain a CO 6–5 map of IRAS 05358+3543mm in the on-the-fly mode on December, 15th 1999. At this frequency, the angular resolution of the CSO is $`11^{\prime \prime }`$, well suited to be compared with the CO 2–1 data of Pico Veleta. As backend we used the facility AOS. Further observation parameters are given in Table 1.

## 3 Observational results

### 3.1 Single-dish observations

#### 3.1.1 Dust continuum emission

Figure 1 presents the 1.2 mm continuum image of IRAS 05358+3543mm. The main peak is at the IRAS 100 $`\mu `$m peak position and has more extended emission to the north-west and the south-west. The latter sub-source is directly next to the 12 $`\mu `$m peak position, which is the center of a slightly older cluster (Porras et al., 2000) and can be interpreted as a remnant of this older star-forming region. Additionally, there exists a north-western elongation in the dust map, which will be shown to be associated with molecular line emission (see section 3.1.2).

Assuming that the mm continuum is mainly produced by optically thin dust emission with a grain emissivity index $`\beta =2`$, Beuther et al. (2002a) estimate the total gas mass $`M`$ to $`600\mathrm{M}_{}`$ and the column density $`N_{\mathrm{H}_2}`$ to a few times $`10^{24}`$ cm-2 (Table 2), which shows that we are really dealing with a high-mass star formation site. The column density converts to a visual absorption magnitude $`A_\mathrm{v}`$ of $`1000`$ ($`A_\mathrm{v}=N_{\mathrm{H}_2}/0.94\times 10^{21}`$, Frerking 1982). If a central star has already ignited, its free-free emission could be quenched by the infalling core (Walmsley, 1995).

#### 3.1.2 Molecular emission

Figure 2 presents single-dish data obtained at the 30 m telescope on Pico Veleta. The 12CO 2–1 lines show self-absorption at the line center (Fig. 3), and blue and red wing emission due to molecular outflows. Blue (v=\[$`32,21`$\] km s-1) and red (v=\[$`12,4`$\] km s-1) 12CO wing emission maps were produced by integrating the wing-part of the spectra. It is difficult to disentangle bipolar structure in spite of the known outflow features presented by Porras et al. (2000), but the outflow lobes are centered at the mm core. As outlined in §3.2.2, the inclination angle of the outflow is low, and we use the mean intensities of the red and blue line-wing maps in the spatial area known from the Plateau de Bure observations for further outflow parameter determination. Opacity-corrected H2 column densities $`N_\mathrm{b}`$ and $`N_\mathrm{r}`$ in both outflow lobes can be calculated by assuming a constant 13CO/12CO $`21`$ line wing ratio throughout the outflow (Cabrit & Bertout, 1990). Choi et al. (1993) found an average 13CO/12CO $`21`$ line wing ratio around 0.1 in 7 massive star-forming regions, corresponding to a $`\tau (^{13}`$CO $`21)=0.1`$. We adopt this value for our sample as well, and we assume 30 K as average temperature in the outflow. The outflow mass $`M_{out}`$, the dynamical timescale $`t`$, and the mass entrainment rate $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{out}}`$ are calculated via:

$`M_{\mathrm{out}}`$ $`=`$ $`(N_\mathrm{b}\times \mathrm{size}_\mathrm{b}+\mathrm{N}_\mathrm{r}\times \mathrm{size}_\mathrm{r})\mathrm{m}_{\mathrm{H}_2}`$
$`t`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{r}{(v_{\mathrm{max}_\mathrm{b}}+v_{\mathrm{max}_\mathrm{r}})/2}}`$
$`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{out}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{M_{\mathrm{out}}}{t}}`$
where $`\mathrm{size}_\mathrm{b}`$ and $`\mathrm{size}_\mathrm{r}`$ are the areas of the blue and red outflow lobes, respectively, $`m_{\mathrm{H}_2}`$ the mass of the H2 molecule, and $`v_{\mathrm{max}_\mathrm{b}}`$ and $`v_{\mathrm{max}_\mathrm{r}}`$ the maximum velocities observed in each line wing. A more detailed description of how the outflow parameters are determined is given in Beuther et al. (2002b). According to Cabrit & Bertout (1990) derived masses are accurate to a factor 2 to 4, whereas the error in the determination of the dynamical parameters is higher, up to a factor 10. The derived total outflow mass $`M_{\mathrm{out}}`$ is around 20 $`M_{}`$ and the mass entrainment rate of molecular gas $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{out}}`$ approximately $`6\times 10^4`$ Myr-1 (see Table 2). The latter value is derived dividing $`M_{\mathrm{out}}`$ by the dynamical timescale $`t`$. As outlined in Beuther et al. (2002b), such a mass entrainment rate results in accretion rate estimates $`\dot{M}_{\mathrm{accr}}`$ around $`10^4`$ Myr-1. These are lower limits, because the outflow is not strongly inclined to the plane of the sky (see section 3.2.2), which minimizes the wing emission and by that the detectable (and separable) outflow emission. In spite of the low accuracy, these values are high and confirm the outflow to be massive.

All other molecular line maps presented in Figure 2 peak at positions that are clearly offset from the main mm core. This is in contrast with the 12CO emission, where not only the wing emission is centered on the main mm peak, but also the integrated emission (see the 12CO 6–5 map in Figure 4). All data at Pico Veleta were taken simultaneously, thus pointing errors cannot produce these offsets. The 13CO 1–0, H13CO+, SiO and CH3OH images at the line center show a similar north-western elongation as the mm continuum map. Low spatial as well as spectral resolution of the H13CO+ and SiO data prevents further analysis of these data, but the line wings of the CH3OH data show a bipolar distribution slightly shifted to the west with respect to the CO outflow, indicating that the CH3OH emission might trace a different outflow in the west (see §3.2.2).

#### 3.1.3 Temperature gradients

Multi-line studies of rotationally excited CO provide a good tool to study temperature variations in molecular clouds. In thermalized gas, where the local thermodynamical equilibrium (LTE) approximation applies, the low-$`J`$ CO 1–0 and 2–1 lines trace cooler material while the mid-$`J`$ CO 6–5 line is sensitive to warmer molecular gas (e.g., Beuther et al. 2000, Hirano & Taniguchi 2001). To get an idea of the temperature distribution in IRAS 05358+3543mm, we derived $`{}_{}{}^{12}\mathrm{CO}65/21`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{12}\mathrm{CO}10/21`$ ratio maps for the blue and red wing emission as defined in §3.1.2 (Figure 5). All data are smoothed to the resolution of the CO 1–0 transition ($`22^{\prime \prime }`$), even the 6–5/2–1 ratio map to increase its signal-to-noise ratio.

In most regions rather uniform ratios around 0.5 are observed, but each of the ratio maps has a prominent region with line ratios larger than 1. The blue 6–5/2–1 ratios rise slightly east of the IRAS Position (named P1 and marked by an asterisk in Figure 5), and the red 6–5/2–1 ratios rise south-east of the main mm peak (P2, triangle in Figure 5), which is not prominent in the blue wings. Contrasting to the increases in the 6–5/2–1 ratios around P1 and P2, the 1–0/2–1 ratios are rather uniform around 0.5 throughout those regions, but they rise – independent of the line wings – around $`30^{\prime \prime }`$ west of the mm peak, where the mm emission drops significantly (P3, circle in Figure 5). The blue 6–5/2–1 ratios are lowest there.

As the average 13CO/12CO $`21=0.1`$ line wing ratio (§3.1.2) corresponds to a $`{}_{}{}^{13}\mathrm{CO}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}1`$ opacity of $`0.1`$, the average $`{}_{}{}^{12}\mathrm{CO}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}1`$ opacity in the wings is about 6 (Langer & Penzias, 1990). To quantify the temperatures in those regions, we ran several Large Velocity Gradient models (LVG) for optically thick CO emission ($`\tau (^{12}\mathrm{CO}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}1)6`$). The regions around P1 and P2 have average densities of a few times $`10^5`$ cm-3 (Beuther et al., 2002a), which is sufficient to thermalize even the $`J=65`$ transition. To thermalize the CO 2–1 transition, densities of $`10^4`$ cm-3 are sufficient, which is a reasonable assumption at position P3. Fig. 6 presents the resulting line ratios versus the kinetic temperatures for the above estimated densities, as calculated via the LVG approximation. Obviously, increasing $`{}_{}{}^{12}\mathrm{CO}10/21`$ ratios do indicate decreasing temperatures, whereas increasing $`{}_{}{}^{12}\mathrm{CO}65/21`$ ratios are signposting enhanced temperatures in such regions. The LVG calculations result in temperatures $`80`$ K at P1 and P2, and temperatures below 20 K around P3.

### 3.2 Interferometric observations

#### 3.2.1 The main core at high resolution

Zooming in the main single-dish mm core with the PdBI at 2.6 mm at a spatial resolution of $`4^{\prime \prime }\times 3^{\prime \prime }`$ (7000$`\times `$5000 AU), it resolves into three massive sub-sources with separations between $`4^{\prime \prime }`$ and $`6^{\prime \prime }`$. We label those three sources mm1, mm2 and mm3 (see Figure 7). The major and minor core sizes were determined by fitting two-dimensional Gaussian to the data, the integrated emission is derived within approximately these areas. Assuming optically thin dust emission, masses and column densities presented in Table 3 were calculated at 30 K (for more details on the calculations see Beuther et al. 2002a). Source mm1 coincides within less than $`1^{\prime \prime }`$ with the main mid-infrared source (at $`11.7\mu `$m) presented by McCaughrean et al. (in prep.) as well as with the deeply embedded source found by Yao et al. (2000) and Jiang et al. (2001) in their K-band polarimetric imaging study.

Three H2O maser features found by Tofani et al. (1995) are associated with mm1, while one is associated with mm2. In 1999, Beuther et al. (2002c) detected only one of the previously known H2O maser feature south of mm1 (Fig. 7).

The CH3OH maser feature is located near the mm cores as well, but the position is based on single-dish observations (Menten, 1991) and not accurate enough for a closer interpretation.

Porras et al. (2000) found 3 infrared sources (IR56, IR58 and IR93 in Figure 7) that are all offset from mm1 and mm2. Yao et al. (2000) and Jiang et al. (2001) then showed that the emission from IR58 and IR93 is highly polarized, and thus both are not independent sources but reflection nebulae powered by mm1.

#### 3.2.2 Three (at least) bipolar outflows

The most striking features of IRAS 05358+3543mm are the three outflows observed with the Plateau de Bure Interferometer in CO and SiO (Fig. 8).

A large scale highly collimated CO outflow ($`𝒜`$)
Figure 8a shows a highly collimated large scale ($`1`$ pc) molecular outflow observed in CO in the east of the region. We present the PdBI data without merging the single-dish data in Figure 8a, because the spatial filtering properties of the interferometer help to isolate the flow from the ambient gas (the combined data are presented in §3.2.4). To highlight the differences between outflow ($`𝒜`$) and the high-velocity outflow ($``$), which is presented in the next paragraph, we used slightly different velocity windows compared to the single-dish image (Fig. 2). Outflow ($`𝒜`$) is slightly bent and oriented from north to south terminating in H2 bow shocks. This corresponds to one of the two outflows discussed by Porras et al. (2000) and by McCaughrean et al. (in prep.) based on H2 data. To quantify the degree of collimation, we divide the length of the outflow by its width, which results in a collimation factor of 10. A number of emission peaks along the outflow show red and blue emission in CO and SiO (Fig. 8a,b), which is a typical feature for expanding bow shocks near the plane of the sky. Thus, we conclude that the outflow is not strongly inclined to the plane of the sky. Porras et al. (2000) claim that IR93 is powering the outflow, but Yao et al. (2000) and Jiang et al. (2001) show that IR93 is highly polarized and thus not a separate source. Our mm data, the mid-infrared images by McCaughrean et al. (in prep.), and the polarimetric images by Yao et al. (2000) and Jiang et al. (2001) strongly suggest that a protostar within mm1 is the powering source of outflow ($`𝒜`$).

A high-velocity CO outflow ($``$)
A second bipolar outflow is seen in CO at high velocities relative to the system velocity (Fig. 7, blue lobe v=\[–43,–29\] km s-1 , red lobe v=\[–9,0\] km s-1). As Fig. 7 shows, this outflow is driven most likely by a source within the same protostellar condensation as outflow ($`𝒜`$), and both outflows together form a quadrupolar system, inclined by a position angle PA of $`40^{}`$. McCaughrean et al. (in prep.) differently speculate that the second mid-infrared source $`2^{\prime \prime }`$ east might be the powering source. Blue and red lobes are clearly resolved by the PdBI with the red one to the south-east and the blue one to the north-west. The high-velocity outflow corresponds to the second outflow detected in H2 emission by Porras et al. (2000) and further discussed by McCaughrean et al. (in prep.). It has a collimation factor around 6 (estimated from combined CO and H2 data). At the tip of the south-eastern lobe, shocked SiO and H2 emission is observed (Figure 8a,b). This is also the position of the warm region P2 (see section 3.1.3), which suggests that the temperature increase may be caused by shock interaction of the outflow with the ambient medium.

A third outflow mainly observed in SiO ($`𝒞`$)
Further to the west, a third outflow is observed mainly in SiO 2–1 on large scales in north-south direction (Fig. 8b). Red and blue lobes are resolved with three symmetric bullet-like features in each lobe. But as the region is very complicated, we present two alternate scenarios for the observed outflow features in this region.

(1) Outflow ($`𝒞_{\mathrm{bent}}`$): The first hypothesis of outflow structure is outlined by the two western arrows in Fig. 8. This way, the outflow shows the same bending as the large scale CO outflow ($`𝒜`$) in the east, and it follows to a large degree the mm emission as outlined in Fig. 4. CO emission is found there with the same bending structure (Figure 8a). The collimation factor of this outflow is around 3, and the powering source is possibly the western H13CO+ core (§3.2.3).

(2) Outflow ($`𝒞_{\mathrm{cavity}}`$): The other possible interpretation of the observation is sketched by the two ellipses presented in Fig. 8. This way, the northern SiO emission is not tracing the main part of the outflow, but rather the western cavity wall. The northern elongated CO feature (Figure 8a), which is not accounted for in the previous scenario, could then represent the bow shock at the tip of the cavity. A problem with this interpretation is that the SiO emission in the north is mainly red-shifted with regard to the system velocity, whereas the northern CO emission is on the blue side of the spectrum with a difference of approximately 10 km s-1. A possible solution of this discrepancy is that the outflow is in the plane of the sky at the front side of the dense gas traced by the 1.2 mm dust continuum emission. Thus, the SiO emission is produced at the backside of the cavity, where the outflow interacts with the dense gas, and the material moves away from the observer. The blue CO feature then could be produced in the final expanding bow shock, when the outflow interacts with less dense gas at the tip of the flow, which is in front of the outflow and thus pushed towards the observer, producing blue-shifted emission. In this interpretation, not H13CO+ but rather the H13CO+ core  is the center of the outflow (§3.2.3), and the bending structure, especially of the northern lobe, is less prominent. The collimation factor of this structure is approximately 3 as well.

The southern part of the outflow seems to be less complicated and can be interpreted in both scenarios. At the edge of the more evolved IRAS 12 $`\mu `$m cluster, we find the hot blue region P1 described in section 3.1.3. The temperature increase of the outflowing gas in this region could be caused by UV heating of the adjacent more evolved cluster. We point out that the details of the morphological interpretation of outflow ($`𝒞`$) have no bearing on the overall energetics of the whole outflow system, which is dominated by outflow ($`𝒜`$).

Outflow parameters
We calculated the outflow parameters from the merged CO Plateau de Bure and 30 m data with the same assumptions and within the same velocity range as outlined in §3.1.2. The derived values (Table 4) agree reasonably well with the single-dish results (Table 2), and make us confident that the orders of magnitude are correct. For this calculations we cannot disentangle properly the contributions of the outflows ($`𝒜`$) and ($``$), thus the derived values include both outflows. But from the spatial extent of both outflows, it becomes clear that most of the outflowing mass and of the mass entrainment rate is due to the large scale flow ($`𝒜`$). The value of outflow ($`𝒞`$) is calculated for the morphologically bent interpretation ($`𝒞_{\mathrm{bent}}`$).

Additional features
Are there even more outflows? We tentatively identify one more outflow oriented in east-west direction. Molecular line emission of CO and SiO shows extensions in that direction, in the interferometric data as well as with the single-dish observations (dotted east-west line in Figures 4, 8, and 9). Furthermore, at the western end of these molecular extensions, H2 emission is detected. One of the mm sources mm2 or mm3 might be the center of this tentative flow. Finally, we note that even more outflows are indicated in the H2 data of McCaughrean et al. (in prep.).

#### 3.2.3 H13CO+ emission

The PdBI data of H13CO+ 1–0 show three peaks in east-west orientation, and more extended emission to the north and south. One H13CO+ peak (H13CO+) is associated with the three mm continuum peaks (mm1 to mm3). The other H13CO+ peaks  and  are both close to the center of outflow ($`𝒞`$), but we cannot determine with certainty, which of the two is the powering source of this flow (§3.2.2). Assuming local thermodynamic equilibrium, an HCO+ abundance of $`1\times 10^9`$ (van Dishoeck, 1993) and a C to 13C ratio of 67 (Langer & Penzias, 1990), we can estimate the approximate masses of the H13CO+ clumps, which are listed in Table 5. The temperatures decrease to the west according to the line ratio results found in §3.1.3.

The three H13CO+ clumps are aligned in east-west direction with similar fluxes in each clump. Morphologically, this is different from the mm continuum emission which decreases towards the west (see Fig. 1). Therefore, the H13CO+ peaks correspond only weakly to column density and mass concentrations traced by the mm continuum. As we do not have other high-resolution molecular line observations, it is difficult to discriminate between abundance and density variations, and it is probable that the H13CO+ peaks  and  are caused by an interplay of different processes. The mass of H13CO+ is about an order of magnitude below the value we derive from the mm continuum (Tables 2 & 3). Thus, in this region H13CO+ is likely depleted. Remarkably, we detect no mm source near H13CO+ and  and therefore at the center of outflow ($`𝒞`$). The 2.6 mm PdBI data show at the H13CO+ position just a peak at the 2$`\sigma `$ level, and our 3$`\sigma `$ mm sensitivity corresponds to a mass limit of $`50`$ M (at 15 K). Even by a factor 5 enhanced H13CO+ abundances result in lower mass estimates based on the H13CO+ data, and the clump stays undetected in the mm continuum with our sensitivity limit. This is also the region P3, where the temperature decreases significantly according to the CO $`10`$/$`21`$ ratios (§3.1.3), and where only weak emission is observed in the integrated CO $`65`$ map (Fig. 4).

#### 3.2.4 Channel maps of the CO data

In Figure 8a we show for clarity the CO 1–0 data from the interferometer only, since the large-scale flow is more pronounced than in the merged data. Figure 9 now presents a channel map of the Plateau de Bure data merged with short spacings obtained at Pico Veleta. The eastern large scale outflow is still visible (e.g., channels at $`25.5`$, $`23.5`$, $`7.5`$ and $`5.5`$ \[km s-1\]), and new features appear by adding the short spacings due to bright extended emission at velocities close to the system velocity.

The ring-like structures seen in a number of channels are no artefacts caused by the merging with the interferometric data, because the ring is also seen in the 12CO 6–5 single-dish data (Fig. 4). At $`21.5`$ km -1, the ring-like structure seems to surround the position of the H13CO+ peak, which suggests that self absorption could cause the ring-like structure. But as the center of this structure moves spatially between the different channels, the ring might be produced by different overlapping outflows. The east-west structure at $`23.5`$ km s-1 has the same orientation as the putative fourth flow, which supports our idea of another outflow.

### 3.3 Interpretation of single-dish maps with PdBI data

Some of the puzzling single-dish features outlined in section 3.1.2 can be explained with the high-resolution data.

Being near the plane of the sky, outflow ($`𝒜`$) is difficult to resolve from the ambient gas in the single-dish data, and the outflows are far better visible with the Plateau de Bure Interferometer alone. Its higher spatial resolution is capable of resolving different flows spatially, whereas the interferometric feature of filtering out large scale uniform emission makes outflow ($`𝒜`$) a very prominent structure (Fig. 8a).

Interestingly, the offsets between the molecular line peaks of H13CO+, SiO, and CH3OH, and the 1.2 mm continuum peak are based on different physical processes in spite of their similar spatial distribution in the single-dish observation (Fig. 2). In the case of H13CO+, the PdBI data resolve the single-dish map into three sub-sources with an extension along the north western 1.2 mm continuum ridge, which makes H13CO+ being at least partly a tracer of core-structure, though likely with varying relative abundances (§3.2.3). In contrast, SiO is only found in the outflows, but because IRAS 05358+3543mm exhibits at least three outflows, the single-dish map looks very similar to the H13CO+ image.

The situation is different with regard to the thermal CH3OH emission at 241 GHz. While the line center emission corresponds to the dust emission, the wing emission seems to be associated with outflow ($`𝒞`$). From these data it appears that CH3OH is a tracer of outflows as well as of core emission.

## 4 Discussion

### 4.1 The 1 pc, highly collimated outflow ($`𝒜`$)

The eastern large scale outflow ($`𝒜`$) in IRAS 05358+3543mm is the first example of a highly collimated, jet-like, bipolar and massive outflow with an extension of $``$ 1 pc. The collimation factor 10 is as high as the highest found in low-mass flows. High degrees of collimation are difficult to explain by stellar winds or deflection of infalling matter. Outflow models involving highly collimated jets entraining the surrounding material are much more likely (Cabrit et al., 1997). Churchwell (2000) argues that the predictions of shock-entrainment models for the amount of material that can be entrained are far too low to account for several tens of solar masses found in massive outflows, as it is the case for IRAS 05358+3543mm (Table 2). But he also stresses the caveats in these estimates, because they are highly sensible to different assumptions, especially the entrainment efficiency in the dense interstellar medium as found in massive star formation sites. It is well possible that the entrainment efficiency rises significantly in the very dense interstellar medium, and higher efficiencies could easily account for the observed high outflow masses found in massive star-forming regions. Therefore, outflow ($`𝒜`$) links massive outflow phenomena to scenarios already known from low-mass star formation. It strongly suggests that entrainment by bow shocks propagating in a collimated jet also has an important role in the formation of massive outflows.

### 4.2 The high-velocity outflow ($``$) and the quadrupolar structure

Emanating at a PA of $`40^{}`$, most likely from the same mm core mm1 (Fig. 7), the less extended high-velocity outflow ($``$) is clearly distinct from the large scale outflow ($`𝒜`$). Different quadrupolar outflow mechanisms are discussed in the literature (for a brief compilation and discussion see Gueth et al. 2001), and the most appealing explanation in the case of IRAS 05358+3543mm seems to be that the two outflows are produced independently by adjacent protostars inside the same mm condensation mm1. Being parts of one and the same outflow is unlikely, mainly because the large scale outflow does not show any elongation at a PA of $`40^{}`$, which would be expected if the quadrupolar structure was due to deflected or precessing material. Assuming half of the HPBW ($`1.75^{\prime \prime }3100`$ AU) at a distance of 1.8 kpc as the the maximal separation of the two powering sources, this is well within the range of typical binary separation.

### 4.3 The SiO outflow ($`𝒞`$)

In the bent interpretation, the SiO outflow ($`𝒞_{\mathrm{bent}}`$) closely follows the north-south elongation of the dust continuum emission. It is slightly less collimated than the large CO outflow ($`𝒜`$), and blue and red lobes are separated in SiO as well as in CO. The northern and southern lobes show three peaks each that are symmetric with respect to the assumed origin, suggesting three different ejection events. In contrast to this, the cavity interpretation of outflow ($`𝒞_{\mathrm{cavity}}`$) does not imply that the outflow has to follow the core structure, but rather that SiO is only observed in that part of the flow where the densities are high enough to excite SiO sufficiently. As already mentioned, outflow ($`𝒞_{\mathrm{cavity}}`$) then is likely to be located at the front side of the core outlined in Fig. 1. The bullet-like structures and their interpretation as three ejection events are independent of the exact scenarios.

It is a rather intriguing fact that SiO, which forms in shocks from dust disruption (Schilke et al., 1997), is only found in regions with strong dust emission (Figure 4). Outflow ($`𝒞`$) follows to a large degree the north-south dust filament, while the eastern large scale CO outflow leaves the dense core very soon. Thus, throughout most parts of outflow ($`𝒜`$), column densities are low and the gas densities there are not high enough to excite the SiO sufficiently. Another reason may be that that C-shocks (shock velocities $`v_s50`$ km s-1) are needed to produce SiO (Schilke et al., 1997). In the less massive outflow ($`𝒞`$) C-shocks are likely to be more common than in the more massive outflow ($`𝒜`$), where higher jet velocities are expected ($`>500`$ km s-1, e.g., Eislöffel et al. 2000) and shocks are more likely of J-type ($`v_s50`$ km s-1), dissociating the molecular material. These different scenarios have to be checked for a larger sample.

### 4.4 The large scale bending

Assuming the bent interpretation of outflow ($`𝒞_{\mathrm{bent}}`$), both large scale outflows and the mm dust core show the same bent morphology. For the cavity interpretation of outflow ($`𝒞_{\mathrm{cavity}}`$), still outflow ($`𝒜`$), the southern lobe of outflow ($`𝒞_{\mathrm{cavity}}`$), and the mm dust emission exhibit the same bent structure. Possible bending mechanisms for protostellar jets are discussed, e.g., in Fendt & Zinnecker (1998).

Internal bending scenarios on small scales seem to be ruled out in the case of IRAS 05358+3543mm, because it is not likely that in both large scale outflows exactly the same small scale physics takes place (e.g., acceleration of the jet source by a binary component, or precession of an accretion disk in a binary system), and additionally the dust core follows a similar morphology.

Considering the whole source structure, external effects seem to be more plausible to explain the structure of this massive star-forming site. On larger scales (4 to 10 pc) other Hii regions are found: in the north-east S233 (at a distance of $`4`$ pc), in the west S235 (at a distance of $`10`$ pc), in the north-west S231 (distance $`4`$ pc) and a bit further away S232 (distance $`15`$ pc, for large scale images see, e.g., Porras et al. 2000). As a whole, the region contains different massive star formation sites at the edge of IRAS 05358+3543mm, and the most likely explanation of the overall bending of this youngest site is due to energy input (UV radiation as well as stellar winds) from the more evolved star forming regions in the vicinity. Thus, we are possibly observing an example of sequential star formation and interactions of regions of different ages.

### 4.5 Outflows from young stellar objects of all masses

A key question triggering this observational study was whether massive outflows are generated by different physical mechanism than their low-mass counterparts. We therefore compare IRAS 05358+3543mm with other outflow sources of different core masses.

A low-mass object: a prototype of a low-mass outflow is HH211 emanating from a dust condensation of $`0.2`$ M (Gueth & Guilloteau, 1999). It includes a highly collimated, high-velocity molecular jet surrounded by a less collimated cavity-like outflow at lower velocity. A shock-entrainment model nicely explains the outflow structure.

An intermediate-mass object: Gueth et al. (2001) recently observed the intermediate-mass young stellar object powering HH288 (core mass between 6 and 30 M). This outflow is quadrupolar and most likely due to two powering sources not separable by the resolution of the observation. But in spite of being quadrupolar, the whole system can be explained by two outflows with shock-entrained material similar to HH211.

A high-mass object: our observations of IRAS 05358+3543mm show an example of a massive star-forming cluster. High-resolution Plateau de Bure observations resolve the single-dish features into a number of different outflows. So far, just a few massive outflows have been mapped with high spatial resolution (see Introduction), and we stress that the large scale eastern outflow is the first massive outflow observed with such a high degree of collimation (collimation factor $`10`$). We estimate the accretion rate to be $`10^4`$ Myr-1, and Beuther et al. (2002b) recently showed that mass entrainment rates of massive star-forming regions are usually of that order. This is high enough to overcome the radiation pressure of the central object and build up more massive stars (Wolfire & Cassinelli, 1987; Jijina & Adams, 1996; Norberg & Maeder, 2000; Tan & McKee, 2002; Yorke, 2002). Additionally, jet models require disks, which are believed to be observed in a few massive objects (e.g., IRAS 20126+4104, Cesaroni et al. 1997, Zhang et al. 1998; IRAS 23385+6053 Molinari et al. 1998). Thus, to explain the outflow features observed in IRAS 05358+3543mm, shock-entrainment models are sufficient (e.g., Gueth & Guilloteau 1999, Richer et al. 2000, and Cabrit et al. 1997), and no other formation mechanism is needed. It cannot be ruled out that in other sources different physical mechanisms are taking place, but these observations indicate that other massive star formation sites of rather chaotic appearance might be disentangled into simpler structures if they are observed at higher angular resolution.

## 5 Summary

IRAS 05358+3543mm is the first example of a massive ($`>10`$ M) bipolar outflow with a high degree of collimation on scales of 1 pc (collimation factor $`10`$). High-angular-resolution observations with the Plateau de Bure Interferometer resolve the single-dish observations into at least three different outflows. Two of them form a quadrupolar system, most likely emanating from adjacent protostars within the same mm core. Our data resolve three massive mm cores (between 100 M and 75 M) at the center of the quadrupolar outflow.

The data suggest that the physical processes associated with this massive outflow are similar to those driving their low-mass counterparts. It is likely that many massive star formation sites can be shown by interferometric high-resolution observations to be composed of basic features known from low-mass star formation. The accretion rate is high ($`10^4`$ Myr-1) and consistent with disk-accretion scenarios explaining the formation of massive stars (e.g., Wolfire & Cassinelli 1987, Jijina & Adams 1996, Norberg & Maeder 2000, Tan & McKee 2002, and Yorke 2002).

The overall distribution of H13CO+, SiO and thermal CH3OH looks very similar, but the higher resolution PdBI observations show varying morphologies traced by the different lines. While SiO is observed mainly in the outflows, H13CO+ traces core-like structures, which do not coincide exactly with the dust cores because of varying relative H13CO+ abundances. Finally, CH3OH can be decomposed into a core tracing component at the line center and wing emission tracing the outflows.

Ratio maps between CO 6–5, 2–1 and 1–0 reveal local temperature gradients. At the tip of the high-velocity outflow ($``$), we find a temperature increase ($`80`$ K) caused by shock-interaction of the outflow with the ambient medium. Additionally, the southern lobe of the third outflow ($`𝒞`$) is much warmer (again $`80`$ K) than the rest of the outflow, possibly due to UV heating of a close by and more evolved cluster. Contrasting to these temperature increases, the possible center H13CO+ of outflow ($`𝒞`$) is cold, below 15 K.

###### Acknowledgements.

We like to thank an unknown referee for helpful comments on the initial draft of this paper. H. Beuther is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG project number SPP 471.


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# The scaling relations of early–type galaxies in clusters

## 1 Introduction

Clusters of galaxies are the most massive, yet dynamically bound, known entities in the Universe. The identification of properties that could be universal would make them tracers of cosmic evolution since they can be detected at large distances. Indeed, the scaling relations satisfied by the global parameters of the early type galaxies, the dominant population in the densest parts of clusters, have become a powerful tool to elucidate the nature of the processes of formation and evolution of galaxies, as well as to perform different cosmological tests.

In general, assuming that early type (E or S0) galaxies of mass M and luminosity L, are in virial equilibrium, and that they all are homologous systems, it follows that some relation between size, surface brightness and velocity dispersion would be expected, provided that the M/L ratio is a function of the same variables. It is now well established that such a relation, the so called Fundamental Plane (FP hereafter), does exist (Dressler et al. 1987, Djorgovski & Davis 1987, Jørgensen, Franx and Kjærgaard 1995). It has the form R$`{}_{e}{}^{}\sigma ^\alpha \times `$ I$`{}_{}{}^{\beta }{}_{e}{}^{}`$, where Re is the effective radius, $`\sigma `$ the velocity dispersion, and $`<`$I$`>_e`$ the mean effective surface brightness.

The existence of the FP implies that the main physical relation governing the properties of E and S0 galaxies is just the virial condition (Faber et al. 1987). The precise form of the FP relation depends on different factors, such as the lack of exact homology of the early type galaxies in different contexts (i.e., differences in the luminosity profiles or in the dynamical structure: Caon et al. 1993, Graham et al. 1996, Ciotti et al. 1996) and the dependence of the M/L versus M relation on wavelength (Pahre and Djorgovski 1995; Pahre, Djorgovski, & de Carvalho 1998; Pierini et al. 2000; Mobasher et al. 1999). Moreover, it should be established which galaxies (i.e.: their luminosity range) are appropriate to build the FP. Given the number of factors that could contribute to the scatter of the FP, its small amplitude is remarkable. It is that small scatter which makes the FP an accurate distance indicator. The Kormendy relation, the projection of the FP onto the Re–Ie plane, has substantially more scatter. However, if part of that scatter could be understood in terms other than the velocity dispersion, its suitability for cosmological analysis could be reinforced. As discussed by Kjærgaard, Jørgensen and Moles (1993; KJM hereafter), the rapidly increasing difficulty, for increasing cluster redshift, to obtain the velocity dispersion of a sizeable number of galaxies, results in defining the FP with rather limited samples, implying an increasing scatter.

In all the studies it is assumed that the Fundamental Plane, as well as its projections, the Kormendy relation in particular, are universal, in the sense of presenting the same coefficients everywhere, independently of any local property or even of the redshift. Indeed, it is the assumption of universality of the FP that could make it an appropriate tool in cosmology, e.g. in performing the Tolman test (KJM; Pahre, Djorgovski, & de Carvalho 1996; Moles et al. 1998), or to assess the evolution of M/L with z (Bender, Burstein, & Faber 1992; Guzmán, Lucey, & Bower 1993; van Dokkum and Franx 1996; Kelson et al. 1997; Jørgensen, & Hjorth 1997; Bender et al. 1998; Ziegler et al. 1999; Jørgensen et al. 1999; Kelson et al. 2000). This assumption, however, has to be empirically verified.

Jørgensen, Franx, & Kjærgaard (1996; hereafter JFK) have discussed the problem and presented a study of early type galaxies in ten clusters, finding that the distribution of their structural parameters can be fitted with a unique set of coefficients for all the clusters. However, as indicated by JFK, given the small sample size, in some cases, some variations of the order of 10% in the coefficients cannot be excluded. Their sample included clusters with a wide range of richness and regularity, with z$``$0.038. Work at higher redshift (van Dokkum and Franx 1996) shows that the data can be consitently fitted with similar coefficients, but cannot be considered as definitive due to the small number of galaxies used to define the relations.

The program presented in KJM addresses the same question of the universality of the scaling relations, trying to separate the cosmic variance at a given redshift, from cosmic evolution effects in a systematic way. Our work includes galaxy clusters with a more restricted range of properties than in JFK, in the redshift range 0.035$``$ z $``$0.28, in 5 redshift steps. The comparison of the results for galaxy clusters at a similar redshift will allow to control the effects of local aspects of the evolution on the FP coefficients. Going to significantly higher redshift that JFK, we’ll be able to test the behaviour of the scaling relations with z. We stress here that we not only consider in our program the FP relation, but, for the resons pointed out before and discussed by KJM, we’ll analyze the properties and behaviour of the Kormendy relation as well.

Another interesting aspect we want to study is the characterization of the family of galaxies that define and satisfy the scaling relations, an aspect not yet understood. Regarding the Kormendy relation, it is known that it is satisfied by only a fraction of early type galaxies in the (Ie-re) plane (Capaccioli, Caon, & D’onofrio 1992). It is one of our goals to analyze where the borderline of these two families lies, and the reason of such a dichotomy. Concerning the FP, even the deepest studies to now (Jørgensen 1999) only include the brightest end of the lumnosity function, as the measurement of the velocity dispersion of fainter early type galaxies needs of important amounts of observing time with very large telescopes.

The data we collected, following the scheme proposed by KJM, include surface photometry and spectroscopy (intermediate and low resolution) of a sizeable number of E and S0 galaxies in each cluster, to get not only the parameters $`<`$I$`>_e`$, Re and $`\sigma `$, but also a measure of the K-effect for each galaxy, together with their spectral energy distributions and some spectral indicators.

In the present paper, which is the first step to achieve such a program, we give an overview of all the photometric observations relative to the project, illustrating the sample selection and the observing strategy, describing the reduction and calibration of the data and discussing their quality (Section 2). We present here the detailed surface photometry of the galaxies, down to $`M_r`$18.0 mag (H0 = 75 km s-1 Mpc-1), for 7 nearby (z$`<`$0.075) clusters of the sample (Section 3), describing the procedure we used to extract the global photometric and morphological parameters of galaxies (Sections 4,5). Finally we perform internal and external comparisons to check the reliability of our analysis (Section 6). The results on more distant clusters and the properties of the scaling relations will be given in following papers. Some preliminary results were anticipated in Fasano et al. (1997), and in Moles et al. (1998), where we have used the Kormendy relation to perform the Tolman surface brightness test. In Fasano et al.(2000) we have also presented the analysis of the morphological content (the E/S0/S fractions) in clusters up to z $``$ 0.5, including some of our sample. Through this paper we assume $`H_0`$=75 km s-1 Mpc-1and $`q_0`$=0.1.

## 2 The global sample: observations and data reduction

### 2.1 Sample selection and cluster coverage

Table 1 lists the clusters in our sample and the observing runs in which they were observed (see next subsection). The clusters have been grouped in five redshift bins with step $``$0.05, from z$``$0.025 up to z$``$0.25. They were selected from the catalog by Abell et al. (1989) to be representative of massive, apparently relaxed systems, not too different from Coma, a regular cluster for which an important amount of relevant data is available. Thus we selected clusters of intermediate richness class, with Bautz-Morgan (1970) type II, II-III or III. Types I and I-II were excluded to avoid clusters dominated by a central, big cD galaxy. We also excluded those clusters with Rood-Sastry (1971) class L or I, to maximize the probability of dealing with virialized systems. Finally, we restricted the sample to rather high galactic latitudes (most have $`|b|`$36) in order to avoid problems with the extinction. The 22 clusters we actually observed (see Table 1) are from the resulting list, the final selection being a matter of opportunity. We notice that there is an exception to our selection criteria, namely A2670, a cD dominated cluster, BM class I-II.

The choice of the cluster fields to be observed in the framework of our global program is a more delicate question. The ideal approach would be to cover the whole cluster within $``$1 Abell diameter. Indeed, for the determination of the FP, measuring the $`\sigma `$ for substantially more than the $``$15-20 brightest early type galaxies in each cluster is too consuming in telescope time, and would require a separate observing program. On the other hand, to tackle the question of the family of galaxies actually defining the scaling relations, in particular the Kormendy relation, it would be necessary to have a fairly complete sample reaching some (faint) absolute magnitude limit. This is a program now under way, but for the time being we tried to optimize the effort making some compromises. Basically, for the nearest clusters (see Section 3) only individual targets were selected from the catalog by Dressler (1980) – the brightest E and S0 galaxies in his lists. Consequently only the galaxies entering the fields of those individual targets were recorded and measured (see Table 6). For more distant clusters the coverage approaches the ideal, since a substantial fraction of the whole cluster was sampled. The final data collection includes several dozens of galaxies per cluster with accurate surface photometry.

### 2.2 Observations and basic reductions

The observations for the whole sample of 22 clusters were collected from Dec. 1994 to Aug. 1998 with the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT, La Palma) and with the 1.5m Danish telescope at La Silla (Chile). Images have been obtained in two or three bands \[Gunn $`r`$ ($`r`$), Bessel V ($`V`$) and Bessel B ($`B`$)\] to provide the color term of each object. Moreover, as a general strategy, at least two exposures for each field in each filter were usually taken, allowing us to clean-up the combined images for cosmic-rays.

In Table 2 we report the log of observations, together with the basic information about the instrumentation. In each observing run, besides the cluster fields, a number of nearby standard galaxies were imaged in the above mentioned bands, thus allowing internal and external check of the surface photometry (see Section 6).

Dark counts with different exposure times were obtained in each run and turned out to be negligible. For the bias, several frames were recorded every night to check the stability of the corresponding frame structure. We also obtained, every night, several flat field (FF), twilight sky exposures which, after comparison, were used to derive an average frame. Apart from run #5, the quotient frames obtained using FFs relative to different nights of the same run, turned out to be almost flat, allowing us to produce a grand-averaged, high S/N ratio FF to be used for the whole run.

The typical uncertainties associated with the reduction procedures are of few tenths of ADU (0.1$``$0.2) for the bias removal and of few thousandths of the background (0.001$``$0.006) for the flat fielding. These uncertainties, together with those relative to the photometric calibration (see Table 3), will be used in Section 5 to evaluate the expected errors in the global photometric and morphological parameters.

During run #1 we used DFOSC during its testing phase, paying this choice with some instability of the acquisition system. The most serious drawback was the unreliability of the header content, including the exposure time and the zenith distance. In the next subsection we will report on the problems caused by this fact in the calibration procedure.

Runs #2 and #3 were characterized by exceptional weather conditions. All the nights were photometric and the seeing turned out to be permanently and largely below one arcsecond, with a minimum value around 0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$45 (run #2, May 24 1995).

During the run #5 the seeing was mediocre (1$`\stackrel{}{.}`$3–1$`\stackrel{}{.}`$5). We had six photometric nights grouped in two intervals (Jan. 1–3 and 6–8), which turned out to be slightly different as far as the reduction and calibration parameters are concerned (see Table 3).

### 2.3 Calibration to standard passbands

During each observing night, several (from 30 to 60) standard stars from Landolt (1992), Jørgensen (1994) and Montgomery et al (1993), were observed at different zenith distances. In some cases the standard stars exposures were slightly defocused to avoid saturation of the brightest stars. The radius for the aperture photometry was set to 3.5$`\times `$FWHM, where the FWHM includes the possible effect of defocusing.

The coefficients of the relations between instrumental magnitudes in the $`i^{th}`$ band, $`m_i^{raw}`$=$``$2.5 log(counts/sec), and the standard systems have been computed adopting general expressions of the form:

$$K_i=m_i^{std}m_i^{raw}=C_0^i+C_c^i(ij)\times col_{ij}^{std}+C_z^i\times sec(z_d)$$
(1)
were $`m_i^{std}`$ is the standard magnitude in the $`i^{th}`$ band, $`col_{ij}^{std}`$=($`m_j^{std}m_i^{std}`$) is the color of the object in the standard system, $`z_d`$ is the zenith distance and $`C_0^i`$, $`C_c^i(ij)`$, $`C_z^i`$ are the night constant, the color coefficient and the extinction coefficient, respectively.

The coefficients $`C_0^i`$ and $`C_z^i`$ depend on the observing conditions (basically on the site and on the night), whereas the color coefficient $`C_c^i(ij)`$ should only depend on the filter ($`i`$) and on the color ($`ij`$) since it indicate how well the instrumental response (telescope$`+`$filter$`+`$detector) match the adopted standard system.

Since in each given run we found similar extinction coefficients for the nights when we did photometry, in order to derive the calibration coefficients we adopted the following multistep procedure:

(i) for each run and filter, the instrumental magnitudes of individual stars observed at different zenith distances were compared with the corresponding magnitudes in the standard system in order to determine a ‘run-averaged’ extinction coefficient; (ii) for each night and for each filter, the extinction coefficients were used to determine the night zero-point offsets; (iii) for each filter, the ’zero–airmass’ calibration coefficients, reduced to a common offset, were then correlated with the standard colors to get the color coefficients and the ’common offset’ zero points; (iv) for each night and for each filter, the final zero point was obtained by adding the night offset to the corresponding ’common offset’ zero point.

Since we did $`r`$ band observations in all runs, we report in Table 3 the best-fit values of the coefficients $`K_r`$ for each observing night, together with the relative uncertainties and the final r.m.s.

A special case is that of the run #1 due to the incompleteness of the header information (see Section 2.2). The large uncertainties relative to this run in Table 3 reflect these calibration problems. For the time being we present here just the results from a field which overlaps with other field observed in a different run. The complete photometry of run #1 will be presented separately in a forthcoming paper.

## 3 The sample of early-type galaxies in nearby clusters

In the following we will concentrate on the surface photometry of early type galaxies in the seven clusters of Table 1 belonging to the first redshift bin (z$`<`$0.075). The results of the present analysis will be used in a forthcoming paper to investigate the properties of the galaxy scaling relations in nearby clusters (see Section 1).

In column 1 of Table 4 we list the clusters ordered by increasing redshift, while columns 2 to 4 report, for each cluster, the galactic extinction given by Schlegel et al. (1998; see Jørgensen et al. 1994 for conversion to the $`r`$ band).

As explained in the previous section, the observations relative to the present sample of nearby clusters have been done in different observing runs, using different telescopes and different CCD cameras (see Table 2). In most cases it was not possible to secure a systematic coverage of the cluster area. In particular, for clusters observed only during the runs #2 and #3 (A2151 and A1983; detector field of view $`3^{}\times 3^{}`$), only a few galaxies per frame were registered.

The size and the location of the fields inside the cluster areas are shown in Figures 12a,..,g. In these figures each field color refers to a given telescope+camera equipment (see caption) and the grid sizes in right ascension and declination are of $`30^s`$ and $`5^{}`$, respectively. In Table 6 the list of the imaged fields for each cluster is reported in ascending order of declination (see pointing coordinates in columns 4 and 5) and each field is identified by a letter (column 2). In the same table the seeing (column 6) and the relative uncertainty of the background (column 7; see Section 4.1) are reported.

### 3.1 Selection of galaxies

Even if the available imaging did not allow us to deal with complete samples of galaxies as far as the cluster coverage is concerned, we decided to set the absolute magnitude limit $`M_r^{lim}=18`$ mag for inclusion in the final sample, in order to provide homogeneous data to study the Kormendy relation in a consistent way. That luminosity limit represents a compromise between depth of the sampling and the possibility to perform a detailed morphological analysis. The corresponding limits in apparent magnitude, $`r_{lim}`$, given our choice of cosmology (see Section 1) and taking into account the proper galactic extinctions (see Table 4), are given in column 5 of Table 4.

The automatic tool SExtractor (Bertin and Arnouts 1996) was used to produce preliminary galaxy catalogs from the images in the $`r`$ band, allowing also an easy identification and rejection of stars. The preliminary catalog contained galaxies of all morphological types, down to SExtractor magnitudes $`r_{lim}+0.5`$ mag. The additive factor 0.5 mag represents an upper limit of the bias affecting SExtractor magnitudes of early-type galaxies (Fasano and Filippi 1998, Franceschini et al. 1998). It prevented faint galaxies with lower average surface brightness from being excluded a priori from the sample.

The images were then processed by the automatic surface photometry tool $`GASPHOT`$ (Pignatelli and Fasano 1999) to produce a first version (rough but fast) of the luminosity and geometrical profiles of the selected galaxies. These were used as a powerful complement to the visual inspection with the IRAF–imexamine tool in estimating the morphological types, allowing us to retain in the catalog only galaxies classified as E or S0. Our classification scheme is not based on quantitative morphology. However it is worth noticing that, relying on the same observational material presented here, we give in Fasano et al. (2000) the morphological type of galaxies in nine clusters with 0.1$``$z$``$0.25. In that paper it is shown that our classification scheme turns out to be a robust one, both in an absolute sense and relative to the scheme by Dressler et al. (1997). In column 6 of Table 4 the number of galaxies after this preliminary selection is reported for each cluster. Moreover, in column 3 of Table 7 we give the morphological type of the galaxies in the final sample.

### 3.2 Cluster membership

The next step was to evaluate the cluster membership of the galaxies in our catalogues. The definitive criterion is indeed the redshift, so we searched the literature for the redshift information relative to our low redshift clusters. To the collected 147 redshifts we have to add the 26 new redshifts that were obtained in the framework of our long–term project aimed at measuring line strengths of galaxies in nearby clusters (136 low resolution spectra of galaxies in 11 nearby clusters; Moles et al. 2001, in preparation). In column 7 of Table 4 we report, for each cluster, the total number of available redshifts, while the number of redshifts derived from our spectra are reported in parenthesis. The number of galaxies which are not cluster members ($`|cz<cz>|2500`$) in each cluster is reported in column 8 of Table 4.

Since redshift determinations are usually available only for $`r<16`$, we tried the color–magnitude relations ($`CMR`$) to eliminate some red objects, presumably background galaxies. The package SExtractor was again used to derive the instrumental colors using apertures corresponding to a rest-frame radius of $``$5 kpc. Then, the standard ($`Br`$) and/or ($`Vr`$) colors were derived, depending on the bands in which each cluster (or even each field) had been imaged.

In Figure 1 we present the $`CMR`$s of the 7 clusters, together with the red cutoff lines we used for the membership acceptance. These were obtained shifting the average $`CMR`$s we derived from the literature by an arbitrary factor (0.2) accounting for both the intrinsic scatter of the $`CMR`$s ($``$0.1) and the expected uncertainties in the magnitude estimates of SExtractor ($``$0.1 in $`r`$ and $``$0.2 in $`B`$ and $`V`$). The average $`CMR`$s in the left part of Figure 1 ($`Br`$ vs. $`r`$) were derived adopting for the slope the fixed value of -0.03, obtained from the data in Jørgensen et al. (1995; see also Gladders et al. 1998). The zero points as a function of redshift were computed according to the equation given in Yee et al. (1999) and using the transformations to the Gunn system provided by Jørgensen (1994). The same transformations were used to derive the slope and the zero points for the ($`Vr`$)–$`r`$ relations (right part of the figure). All the galaxies in each cluster redder than the corresponding cutoff line were excluded from the final sample; they are reported in column 9 of Table 4. The full/open dots in the figures represent galaxies with/without measured redshift, while the crosses indicate galaxies which, according to the redshift criterion, are not cluster members. Notice that we do not use any cut-off in the blue side to avoid arbitrarily eliminating genuine blue galaxies. We stress that we don’t use the CMR as real membership discriminator, but only as a tool to eliminate those galaxies most likely in the background of the cluster.

In column 10 of Table 4, for each cluster (with the proper area coverage and limiting magnitude) we report the expected background and field contamination obtained using the galaxy number counts given by Metcalfe et al. (1995) and assuming the canonical breakdown into morphological classes given for the field by Dressler (1980; E:S0:Sp+Irr = 10:10:80). Table 4 (see also Figure 1) shows that, in all clusters but Abell 1983, the expected number of background and field galaxies agrees, within the Poissonian uncertainty, with the total number of objects excluded from the sample due to redshift and/or color discrepancy. The sizeable number of faint, red galaxies in Abell 1983 could indicate the presence of some background galaxy concentration.

In the Figures 12a,..,g the selected galaxies are marked by small circles, whereas the corresponding Figures 13a,..,g show the detailed maps of the fields, the galaxies being numbered in ascending order of declination for each field. In this way each galaxy in our sample is identified by the cluster name, the field letter and the galaxy number. In Tables 7a,..,g we report, for each cluster, the galaxy sample for which accurate surface photometry has been achieved.

## 4 Surface photometry

Detailed surface photometry was obtained using the $`AIAP`$ package running at the Padova Observatory (Fasano 1990), which allows to derive photometric and structural profiles of individual galaxies. The advantages of using this software have been presented elsewhere (i.e. Fasano et al. 1996). We note that, due to its high degree of interactivity, the $`AIAP`$ package turns out to be particularly useful for analyzing the isophotes of galaxies embedded in high density regions, such as rich clusters or compact galaxy groups.

### 4.1 Ellipse fitting profiles

The surface photometry was always accomplished on the $`r`$ images, apart from that relative to the observations of A119 during the runs #1 and #5 (33 galaxies), for which the images in the V band turned out to be deeper.

Before starting the analysis of individual galaxies, each frame was handled in order to achieve a careful sampling, fitting and removal of the sky. Apart from a few cases, a two–dimensional, first–degree polynomial was sufficient to give an accurate fit to the sky. The distribution of the residuals in the frame was used to estimate the relative uncertainty of the sky level ($`\mathrm{\Delta }`$sky/sky; see column 7 in Table 6), which has influence on the errors of the profiles and on the global parameters.

In each $`AIAP`$ run we sliced the galaxy image with a fixed step in surface brightness (0.2 mag), we fitted the isophotes with ellipses and we produced a set of profiles (surface brightness $`\mu `$, coordinates of the center, ellipticity $`\epsilon `$, position angle $`\theta `$ and coefficients of the Fourier analysis of the residuals) as a function of the semi-major axis $`a_{maj}`$ of the ellipses. Following Fasano and Bonoli (1990), the error estimates of luminosity, ellipticity and position angles profiles were derived taking into account the $`FWHM`$ and the above mentioned uncertainty of the sky level.

The errors of the Fourier coefficients were estimated from the local noise of the profiles. To illustrate what kind of information we are dealing with, we report in Figure 2 two examples of $`AIAP`$ profiles, the first one referred to an elliptical galaxy (A2151–f1), the other one to an S0 galaxy (A1069–a3). The complete set of profiles (Tables and Figures) for the whole galaxy sample is available in electronic form. We note that, for historical reasons, the position angles in the Tables (see also Tables 7a,..,g) are counted clockwise from the North, while in the figures (see also Figure 2) they are counted counter-clockwise (again from the North).

### 4.2 Provisional magnitudes and metric sizes

The global parameters of galaxies have been mostly extracted from the equivalent luminosity profiles, which give the surface brightness as a function of the isophotal equivalent radius $`R_{eq}=a_{maj}\sqrt{1\epsilon }`$.

Estimating the total magnitude $`m__T`$ of elliptical galaxies is known to be a rather difficult task, particularly in the cores of rich clusters. The light distribution of elliptical galaxies smoothly decreases outwards and it is practically impossible to establish the galaxy bounds. The problem is two-fold: first, an extended aperture photometry turns out to be unfeasible in the crowded galaxy fields typical of the cluster cores; and, on the other hand, due to the rapidly decreasing S/N ratio, usually the luminosity profiles obtained from ellipse fitting of the isophotes cannot be extended to approach the true value of the total magnitude close enough. This makes some extrapolation unavoidable.

Our strategy in estimating the provisional values of the total galaxy magnitudes was the following: ($`a`$) for $`R_{eq}>3\times FWHM`$, the luminosity profiles were tentatively fitted with a generalized de Vaucouleurs law $`\mu (R)=\mu _0+C(n)\times (R/R_e)^{1/n}`$ (Sersic 1968, Ciotti 1991, Caon et al. 1993), providing a first guess of the parameter $`n`$. To each profile fitting we assigned arbitrarily a quality index Q (good fit: Q=1) that takes into account the problems encountered during the fit (such as the presence of undulations, bumps, etc.) and during the data reduction (the galaxy was in a crowded region, or near the boundaries of the chip, etc.); ($`b1`$) in case of good fit (Q=1), the $`R^{1/n}`$ law was used to extrapolate the luminosity profile in order to derive the total magnitude; ($`b2`$) if the fit was not satisfactory in spite of the large angular size and brightness of the galaxy (luminosity profile intrinsically not performable by a $`R^{1/n}`$ law, i.e. S0s with bulge+disk profiles, bright extended halos, etc..) the extrapolation was achieved using the de Vaucouleurs $`R^{1/4}`$ law or the exponential law, depending on the shape of the outer part of the profile; ($`b3`$) if the fit was not good due to the small size and/or low brightness of the galaxy, the total magnitude was computed by averaging the luminosities derived by the $`R^{1/4}`$ and exponential extrapolations of the luminosity profile.

In order to give model independent estimates of the scale radius of galaxies, as well as of the average surface brightness inside that radius (both to be used in the scaling relations), we decided not to use the effective radius $`R_e`$ defined by the slope of the $`R^{1/n}`$ law representation of the luminosity profile. Instead, we preferred to use the half-light radius $`R_{50}`$, defined as the equivalent radius enclosing half of the total galaxy light, and the corresponding average surface brightness $`<\mu _{50}>`$. We also derived from the equivalent luminosity profile of each galaxy the radius $`R_{75}`$ corresponding to 75% of its total luminosity (together with the corresponding average surface brightness $`<\mu _{75}>`$) and the Petrosian (1976) radii $`R_{P139}`$ and $`R_{P200}`$, corresponding to the radii for which the difference $`\mu <\mu >`$ (local minus average surface brightness) is 1.39 and 2.00, respectively. We refer the reader to KJM for an exhaustive discussion of the features of the Petrosian metric sizes. Here we remind that, in case of a perfect de Vaucouleurs luminosity profile, the Petrosian radii $`R_{P139}`$ and $`R_{P200}`$ coincide with $`R_{50}`$ and $`R_{75}`$, respectively.

### 4.3 Luminosity profile restoration

The study of the Kormendy relation of early type galaxies in clusters requires accurate estimates of some metric radius $`R_m`$ and of the average surface brightness inside that radius $`<\mu _m>`$. In Fasano et al. (1997) it is illustrated, for two clusters at z$``$0.25 (A2111 and A1878), the crucial role played by the deconvolution of the luminosity profiles in recovering the global parameters $`R_{50}`$ and $`<\mu _{50}>`$ from ground–based material (even of excellent quality). The redshift of the clusters in the present sample is smaller, but the correction is still important for the faint (and small) end of the galaxy population, for which the values of $`R_m`$ and $`<\mu _m>`$ derived directly from the observed luminosity profiles can be strongly affected by the seeing.

As in Fasano et al. (1997), we used the Multi–Gaussian Expansion deconvolution technique ($`EMGDEC`$, Bendinelli 1991) to achieve the luminosity profile restoration. The input data of the $`EMGDEC`$ algorithm are the equivalent luminosity profiles of the galaxy and of the $`PSF`$, both represented in analytical form by means of suitable series of gaussians. Although using a parametric approach, $`EMGDEC`$ has the advantage of a very accurate representation of the luminosity profiles. In Figure 3 we show some examples of $`EMGDEC`$ restoration applied to the luminosity profiles of galaxies belonging to our sample and spanning a wide range in size. Obviously for large galaxies, only the inner part of the profile is modified by $`EMGDEC`$, while for small galaxies the restoration affects the whole profiles. We emphasize that in any case the convolution of the restored luminosity profiles perfectly reproduces the profiles actually observed.

It is worth noticing that the $`EMGDEC`$ deconvolution is not unique, the result depending on the multi–gaussian representation (and extrapolation) of the profiles, as well as on the so called regularization tool (see Bendinelli 1991 for details). In order to check the reliability and the robustness of the deconvolved half–light radii we have analysed a sample of 64 toy galaxies with ellipticity $`\epsilon `$=0, Sersic’s indexes $`n`$=1 and $`n`$=4 and half–light radii spanning the range $`R_{50}^{true}/FWHM`$=0.5–5. The simulated frames reproduces the typical conditions of our observing runs #2 and #3, including the background noise. The luminosity profile of each toy galaxy was deconvolved nine times changing both the number of gaussians used to represent it (3 to 5) and the regularization coefficient of $`EMGDEC`$ (0.0001, 0.001 and 0.01). In Figure 4 we report, for each toy galaxy, the average value (together with the relative $`r.m.s.`$) of the difference between estimated and true values of the half–light radius as a function of the true value itself. We conclude that, at least for circularly symmetric objects, the $`EMGDEC`$ tool produces un–biased values of the deconvolved half–light radii and that, changing the starting conditions within wide ranges produces only marginal changes in the half–light radius down to $`R_{50}FWHM`$.

Since the $`EMGDEC`$ algorithm only deals with circularly symmetric objects, we have carried out numerical simulations of galaxies with different flattening in order to explore how the ellipticity influences the $`EMGDEC`$ equivalent profile restoration, in particular as far as the Sersic’s index, the effective radius and the corresponding average surface brightness estimates are concerned. Figure 5 illustrates the results for a sample of 64 elliptical ($`n`$=4) or disk ($`n`$=1) toy galaxies having faint magnitudes (17.5-18.5 mag) and small effective radii (5-9 pixels). Again, the simulated frames reproduces the typical conditions of our observing runs #2 and #3. We conclude that the influence of the isophotal flattening on the estimation of the equivalent parameters after $`EMGDEC`$ restoration is relatively unimportant except for an ellipticity greater than 0.7.

## 5 Global parameters and errors

We have used the restored, $`equivalent`$ luminosity profiles to derive the final values of the global parameters related to magnitudes and metric sizes, as well as to compute the final value of the Sersic’s index $`n`$. The other ’$`globals`$’ related to the morphology ($`\epsilon `$, $`\theta `$ and Fourier coefficients) have been derived from the original profiles, since our one-dimension technique of restoration is not able to recover the ’$`true`$’ galaxy geometry.

### 5.1 Final magnitudes and metric sizes

The same strategy as outlined in Section 4.2 to estimate the $`provisional`$ total magnitudes from the raw luminosity profiles, was used to estimate the final total magnitudes from the de-convolved luminosity profiles (columns 7 of Tables 7). In this case we have adopted a fixed range of $`R/R_{50}`$ (0.15 to 4, with a minimum allowed angular radius of 0$`^{\prime \prime }.`$5) to produce $`\chi ^2`$ fits of the luminosity profiles, leading to the final values of the Sersic’s parameter $`n`$. Since the value of $`R_{50}`$ depends on the total magnitude itself, a two–step iterative procedure was necessary. We note that, if the quality of the fit is good ($`Q=1`$, case \[$`b1`$\]), the total magnitude $`m__T`$ was derived extrapolating the observed luminosity profile by a generalized de Vaucouleurs law with index $`n`$. Otherwise (cases \[$`b2`$\] and \[$`b3`$\] in Section 4.2) the $`R^{1/4}`$ and/or the exponential laws were used for the extrapolation.

The final values of the different metric sizes mentioned in Section 4.2, together with the corresponding average surface brightness, were easily derived from the restored luminosity profiles, once the total magnitudes were known. It is worth mentioning that the restored values of the total magnitude differ only slightly from the corresponding ones provisionally derived from the raw luminosity profiles. On the contrary, the restoration procedure deeply influences the different kinds of metric radius, as well as the corresponding average surface brightness.

As an example, in Figure 6 the difference between restored and raw values of $`R_{50}`$ for the galaxies in A3125 is reported as a function of $`R_{50}`$. The same qualitative behaviour is found for all clusters, with systematic differences mainly depending on the seeing, on the pixel-size and on the S/N ratio, and individual differences due to the shape of profiles.

In order to give realistic estimates of the uncertainties associated to total magnitude, metric radius and average surface brightness, we have taken into account all the possible sources of error. The contribution due to the standard calibration includes all the uncertainties related to the color term and to the atmospheric extinction and can be easily derived from Table 3 (column 7). Even affecting all the quantities related to some magnitude estimate (i.e. surface brightness), this contribution does not influence the shape of the luminosity profiles and, therefore, it does not affect any estimate of the metric radius. On the contrary, the uncertainty related to the shape of the luminosity profile (including that attributable to the background removal) and to its extrapolation, affects both the magnitude and the radius. In case of luminosity profiles well represented by a generalized de Vaucouleurs law (case \[$`b1`$\] in Section 4.2), we estimated this contribution by examining the $`r.m.s`$ of the $`R^{1/n}`$ fit as a function of $`n`$. The behaviour of this function varies with the profile. In particular, when $`n`$ is large ($`n>`$4), the minimum of the function $`rms(n)`$ is rather flat, while for small values of $`n`$ it turns out to be much better defined. In any case, the best fit $`r.m.s`$ turns out to span the range 0.02$``$0.04. We empirically verified that an excess of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{rms}`$=0.01 mag with respect to the minimum, always corresponds to a value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }n`$ which is large enough to make the new fit with $`n^{}=n\pm \mathrm{\Delta }n`$ significantly worse than the best fit. We therefore fixed, for each galaxy, the confidence range $`\mathrm{\Delta }n`$ corresponding to $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{rms}`$=0.01, and we derived the expected uncertainties for the total magnitude ($`\mathrm{\Delta }m__T`$), metric size ($`\mathrm{\Delta }R`$) and surface brightness ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\mu `$). In case of a bad fit of the luminosity profile (cases \[$`b2`$\] and \[$`b3`$\] of Section 4.2), we simply assumed the magnitude difference between the $`R^{1/4}`$ and exponential extrapolations to be an estimate of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m__T`$, and derived the corresponding values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }R`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mu `$.

We illustrate in Figure 7 the adequacy of our fits to the luminosity profiles. We present the results for 3 galaxies with very different Sersic indices. The fraction of the profile actually used for the fits is indicated with the vertical, dashed lines in each panel. The best fit, obtained with the prescriptions given above, is given by the full lines. The acompanying dashed lines are for the fits corresponding to $`n^{}=n\pm \mathrm{\Delta }n`$, n being the Sersic coefficient of the best fit. Finally, the dotted lines show the effect of the errors in the background (given in Table 6).

### 5.2 Ellipticity, isophotal twisting and Fourier coefficients

Apart from the global quantities extracted from the equivalent luminosity profile ($`n`$, $`m__T`$, $`R_{50}`$, $`<\mu _{50}>`$, etc.), we produced some more ’$`globals`$’ related to the geometrical profiles. In particular, we measured the ellipticity, the position angle and the Fourier coefficient $`c_4`$ (disky/boxy) of the equivalent effective isophote and at $`R_{eq}=3\times R_{50}`$. We also recorded the maximum ellipticity found on the profile ($`\epsilon _{max}`$), the most likely value of the isophotal twisting ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta `$), together with the minimum ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta _{min}`$) and maximum ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta _{max}`$) values allowed on the basis of the position angle uncertainties, and a luminosity–weighted value of $`c_4`$ ($`c_4^w`$), together with the minimum and maximum values of $`c_4`$ found on the profile ($`c_4^{min}`$, $`c_4^{max}`$). Finally, again from the luminosity profiles, we derived three different gradients of surface brightness, namely:

$`\delta \mu _1=(\mu _{R_{50}}\mu _{R_{50}/2})`$,

$`\delta \mu _2=(\mu _{R_{50}/2}\mu _{R_{50}/3})`$,

$`\delta \mu _3=(\mu _{R_{50}/4}\mu _{R_{50}/3})`$.

All the quantities relevant for our analysis are reported for each galaxy in Tables 7a,..,g. The electronic versions of these tables contain the whole information, whereas their printed versions contain only the most important entries, namely:

Column 1: galaxy identifier;

Column 2: galaxy name \[NGC/IC/UGC/Dressler(1980)\];

Column 3: morphological type;

Column 4: right ascension (J2000);

Column 5: declination (J2000);

Column 6: redshift (an asterisk indicates our own measurement);

Column 7: (mT) total magnitude in the Gunn r band;

Column 8: ($`\mathrm{\Delta }`$mT) 1$`\sigma `$ uncertainty on the total magnitude;

Column 9: color $`(Br)`$;

Column 10: color $`(Vr)`$;

Column 11: (R50) equivalent half–light radius in arcseconds, after deconvolution;

Column 12: ($`\mathrm{\Delta }`$R50) 1$`\sigma `$ uncertainty on the deconvolved equivalent half–light radius;

Column 13: ($`<\mu _{50}>`$) mean surface brightness relative to the deconvolved half–light radius;

Column 14: ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\mu _{50}`$) 1$`\sigma `$ uncertainty on the mean surface brightness relative to the deconvolved half–light radius;

Column 15: ($`n`$) Sersic’s index of the deconvolved luminosity profile;

Column 16: ($`\mathrm{\Delta }n`$) 1$`\sigma `$ uncertainty on the Sersic’s index;

Column 17: (Q) quality index of the fit (good fit = 1);

Column 18: ($`\epsilon _e`$) ellipticity of the half–light isophote;

Column 19: ($`\epsilon _{max}`$) maximum ellipticity;

Column 20: ($`\theta _e`$) position angle (clockwise from the North) of the half–light isophote;

Column 21: ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta `$) average isophotal twisting estimated from the position angle profile;

Column 22: \[$`c_4(r_e)`$\] disky/boxy Fourier coefficient ($`\times `$100) of the half–light isophote;

Column 23: ($`c_4^w`$) luminosity weighted value of the Fourier coefficient;

Column 24: ($`\delta \mu _1`$) surface brightness gradient ($`\mu _{R_{50}}\mu _{R_{50}/2}`$);

Column 25: ($`\delta \mu _2`$) surface brightness gradient ($`\mu _{R_{50}/2}\mu _{R_{50}/3}`$).

All the photometric and morphological parameters will be used in a forthcoming paper of the series to investigate the possibility to define some photometric version of the fundamental plane of early–type galaxies.

## 6 Internal and external comparisons

### 6.1 Check for consistency

To check the robustness of our results, we compared the surface photometry from different runs. First, we compared the different magnitudes for each standard galaxy. Table 5 lists the sample of standard galaxies we observed. For each galaxy we report the runs when it was observed, together with the average values we found for the total $`r`$ magnitude, half–light radius and Sersic’s index $`n`$.

In Figure 8 we report, as a function of the half–light radius in arcseconds, the differences between the individual magnitude measurements of each galaxy and the average of all available measurements for the same galaxy. Unfortunately, only for NGC 1395 observations in three different runs turned out to be available, the other standard galaxies having been observed in the same run or (at best) in two different runs. Even if this fact prevented us from performing a complete check for consistency of our photometric zero points, from Figure 8 we concluded that the uncertainties are of the order of a few hundredths of magnitude, at worst.

Then we compared the surface photometry of galaxies in our clusters. The cluster Abell 119 turned out to be the best candidate for this purpose, since it was imaged in three different observing runs (#1,#5 and #7), with three different instrumental setups (see Tables 1 and 2).

As mentioned in Section 2.3, during run #1 (DFOSC 1994) we encountered several calibration problems. The file headers were corrupted and we were able to retrieve the calibration only for the night Dec. 4 (see Table 3). In spite of these problems, we tentatively decided to adopt the calibration coefficients relative to this night as representative of the whole run, checking a posteriori the possible systematic zero–point differences with the other runs. Therefore, we retrieved some exposures in the field of Abell 119 taken during the same run #1 (nights Dec. 7–8 1994) and centered on the galaxies $`D41`$, $`D99`$ and $`D105`$ (our identifications: $`b`$5, $`e`$1 and $`g`$4, respectively). We also retrieved an exposure taken during run #5, centered on the galaxy $`D105`$.

In summary, we compared imaging from the three runs #1, #5 and #7, for the above mentioned fields. In each field more than 15 galaxies of various sizes and luminosity turned out to be in common among the different runs. Again the $`AIAP`$ tool was used to analyze the galaxies in the retrieved frames, providing their luminosity and geometrical profiles, as well as their global parameters.

In Figure 9 the differences between different kinds of magnitudes derived for each galaxy from different runs are shown. In particular, in the lower panels we illustrate the magnitude differences relative to the isophote $`\mu _r=24`$. Being insensitive to the adopted extrapolation of the luminosity profiles (see Section 4.2), these differences should give indication about the true biases affecting the different runs. As expected, the calibration relative to run #1 turned out to be inaccurate. In particular, accordingly to Figure 9, a systematic zero point correction of $``$0.1 mag was applied to the magnitudes of galaxies observed during that run. In the upper and middle panels we report the magnitude differences obtained by using the pure $`R^{1/4}`$ ($`n`$=4) and exponential ($`n`$=1) extrapolations (depurated from the previous biases), respectively. They give an indication of the maximum uncertainties inherent to the extrapolation procedure.

The binned and averaged residuals of ellipticity, position angle and Fourier coefficient for the galaxies in common among the three runs, are plotted in Figure 10 as a function of the isophotal semi–major axis. Figure 10 shows a general good agreement among the morphological profiles of the same galaxies obtained in different runs. The wave-like behaviour of the ellipticity residuals in the comparisons involving run #7 can be easily explained by the better seeing of this run, which is likely to produce a better representation of the inner (possibly flat) isophotes.

### 6.2 External comparisons

We compared our photometry with the data available in the literature for the nearby standard galaxies we observed during the various runs (see Table 5). In particular, in Figure 11 our photometry is compared with that of Jørgensen and Franx (1994) and Jørgensen et al. (1995; both indicated by JFK in the plots), as well as with the data collection from Paturel et al. (1997; LEDA) and with the results given by Faber et al. (1987, FA+ in the plots). Our observations in the $`r`$ band were directly compared with the corresponding ones from JFK, whereas, to compare with the magnitudes from LEDA and FA+, we have converted them into the $`r`$ band by using our colors $`(Br)`$. We found:

$`<`$mT(our)-mT(other)$`>`$=0.005$`\pm `$0.025 mag (r.m.s.=0.112),

$`<`$logR50(our)-logRe(other)$`>`$=0.009$`\pm `$0.023 (r.m.s.=0.095).

It is worth stressing that the methodologies used in the above mentioned works to derive total magnitudes and effective radii differ from ours and also differ from each one another. In particular, our $`R_{50}`$ is defined as the equivalent radius enclosing half of the total galaxy light (irrespectively of the shape of the luminosity profile), while past work generally derive the effective radius $`R_e`$ assuming an $`r^{1/4}`$ profile. This produces systematically different results, depending on the true luminosity profile shape, and likely explains the relatively large scatter we find in comparing the radius estimates (22%). Actually, an even larger scatter (30%) was suggested to be expected by Kelson et al. (2000) in their extensive discussion of comparisons of $`R_{50}`$ derived from bulge+disk fits and from Sersic’s law fits.

## 7 Summary and future plans

This paper mainly deals with the illustration of the photometric data we have collected in the framework of a long term project aimed at investigating systematically the so called ‘scaling relations’ of early–type galaxies in clusters. The main goal of this project is to throw light upon the cosmic variance of the scaling relations themselves, as well as upon their possible dependence on the redshift.

We start here discussing the reduction and calibration procedures we have applied to the whole photometric data set, relative to the global sample of 22 clusters in different bins of redshift, up to z$``$0.25. Then, we present the detailed surface photometry of 312 early–type galaxies in 7 nearby clusters belonging to the first redshift bin and defining the local reference sample. The whole set of luminosity and geometrical profiles is placed at reader’s disposal (in both tabular and postscript format) in the electronic version of the paper, while several global photometric and structural parameters are evaluated for each galaxy and are collected in tables (one for each cluster), which again are at reader’s disposal.

Here we do not try to analyze the data in the tables, nor to seek for possible correlations among the various parameters. These items will be addressed in the third paper of this series, where the scaling relations of early–type galaxies in the local sample of clusters will be discussed in detail, using both the photometric and the spectroscopic information. We will present the latter one in the second (forthcoming) paper of this series, where the results of both the low- and the intermediate- resolution spectroscopy for a subsample of the present galaxy sample will be discussed.

The two final steps of the series will concern the detailed surface photometry of early–type galaxies in the remaining 15 (more distant) clusters and the analysis of the scaling relations as a function of different parameters, including the redshift of the cluster.

###### Acknowledgements.

We wish to thank the referee Dan Kelson for the very usefull suggestions which helped us to greatly improve the final version of the paper.   *