WINGS: A WIde-field Nearby Galaxy-cluster Survey. II. Deep optical photometry of 77 nearby clusters

TL;DR

This paper presents deep optical photometric catalogs for 77 nearby galaxy clusters from the WINGS survey, providing essential data for studying galaxy and cluster evolution.

Contribution

It offers detailed B and V band photometric catalogs for a complete sample of local galaxy clusters, constructed with a standardized procedure and extensive data on galaxy properties.

Findings

Deep optical catalogs with 90% completeness at V~21.7

Catalogs include positions, magnitudes, and geometrical parameters

Separation of galaxies, stars, and unknown objects in the data

Abstract

(Abridged) Context. This is the second paper of a series devoted to the WIde Field Nearby Galaxy-cluster Survey (WINGS). WINGS is a long term project which is gathering wide-field, multi-band imaging and spectroscopy of galaxies in a complete sample of 77 X-ray selected, nearby clusters (0.04<z<0.07) located far from the galactic plane (|b|>=20deg). The main goal of this project is to establish a local reference for evolutionary studies of galaxies and galaxy clusters. Aims. This paper presents the optical (B,V) photometric catalogs of the WINGS sample and describes the procedures followed to construct them. Methods. We have constructed photometric catalogs based on wide-field images in B and V bands using SExtractor. Photometry has been performed on images in which large galaxies and halos of bright stars were removed after modeling them with elliptical isophotes. Results. We publish deep optical photometric catalogs (90% complete at V~21.7, which translates to ~M*(V)+6 at mean redshift), giving positions, geometrical parameters, and several total and aperture magnitudes for all the objects detected. For each field we have produced three catalogs containing galaxies, stars and objects of "unknown" classification (~16%).