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11. Mean surface brightness

The parameter brief (with its actual uncertainty sbrief) is the mean effective surface brightness, i.e. the mean surface brightness inside the effective aperture (the circular aperture enclosing one-half the total flux). This mean surface brightness is expressed in B-tex2html_wrap_inline2373.

Two equivalent measurements of brief were derived: i) from the apparent diameter tex2html_wrap_inline2375 enclosing a mean surface brightness of 20.75 tex2html_wrap_inline2377 (Dressler et al. 1987), ii) from the mean surface brightness inside the effective isophote (elliptical isophote enclosing one-half the total flux) measured by Lauberts & Valentijn (1989; LV).


eqnarray552
where tex2html_wrap_inline2379, tex2html_wrap_inline2381 is the standard deviation, tex2html_wrap_inline2383 is the correlation coefficient and n the number of galaxies used for the comparison.

Similarly we have:


eqnarray562
where m'(LV) is the average blue central surface brightness within half total Blight (noted tex2html_wrap_inline2391 in LV) , from Lauberts & Valentijn (1989). The correction for inclination is in good agreement with the predicted one tex2html_wrap_inline2393 (see RC3 p50, Rel.71). The final value brief is calculated as the weighted mean of each determination.

Another estimate of the mean surface brightness is bri25, the mean surface brightness inside the isophote tex2html_wrap_inline2399.

This brightness must be corrected for inclination effect (Bottinelli et al. 1995). We then obtain the corrected mean brightness bri25:


equation574
where


equation579

Notations are those used for the calculation of ai (Sect. 7).



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