Morphology of early–type galaxies in compact groups. IV. Rose groups

Osservatorio Astronomico, Vicolo dell' Osservatorio, 5, I–35122 Padova, Italy

Send offprint request to: D. Bettoni

Received: 28 July 1995
Accepted: 23 January 1996

Abstract

In the previous papers of this series (Bettoni & Fasano 1993, 1995 and Fasano & Bettoni 1994) we presented data relative to early-type galaxies in several Hickson (1982) and Shakhbazyan (1973-1979) Compact Groups. In this paper we present, for the first time, data on early-type galaxies belonging to 9 Rose (1977) compact groups. The selection criteria of these groups make them more compact than the Hickson and Shakhbazyan groups and, for this reason, the Rose groups constitute a good sample for testing the properties of early-type galaxies in environments of extreme (at least apparent) density. Even if the present sample is not a sizeable one (18 objects), we find that morphological and photometric properties of E and S0 galaxies in the Rose groups are fairly consistent with those of galaxies in the Hickson and Shakhbazyan samples. In particular, there is a lack of very flat objects in the ellipticity distribution.