Spatially resolved spectroscopy of Coma cluster early–type galaxies^*

I. The database

¹ Universitätssternwarte München, 81679 München, Germany
² Present address: Landessternwarte Heidelberg, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, 6127 Wilder Laboratory, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755-3528, U.S.A.

Send offprint request to: D. Mehlert e-mail: dmehlert@lsw.uni-heidelberg.de

Received: 8 March 1999
Accepted: 30 September 1999

Abstract


We present long slit spectra for a magnitude limited sample of 35 E and S0 galaxies of the Coma cluster. The high quality of the data allowed us to derive spatially resolved spectra for a substantial sample of Coma galaxies for the first time. From these spectra we obtained rotation curves, the velocity dispersion profiles and the H₃ and H₄ coefficients of the Hermite decomposition of the line of sight velocity distribution. Moreover, we derive the radial line index profiles of Mg, Fe and H line indices out to with high signal-to-noise ratio. We describe the galaxy sample, the observations and data reduction, and present the spectroscopic database. Ground-based photometry for a subsample of 8 galaxies is also presented.
The Coma cluster is one of the richest known clusters of galaxies, spanning about 4 decades in density. Hence it is the ideal place to study the structure of galaxies as a function of environmental density in order to constrain the theories of galaxy formation and evolution. Based on the spectroscopic database presented, we will discuss these issues in a series of future papers.