This paper describes HI observations of eleven
galaxies in the cluster Abell 262. This is a spiral rich cluster,
classed III in the Bautz-Morgan system and characterized by the
X-ray source 3U 015+36, located near the core and concentric
with respect to the elliptical galaxy NCG 708.
Its X-ray luminosity (
; Jones & Forman 1984) is comparable to
that of the Virgo cluster. Its relatively low redshift
(z = 0.0156) combined with its
wealth of spirals, makes it an interesting cluster for a study of
the HI content of its member galaxies as a parameter of
environmental conditions.
The 21 cm line of neutral hydrogen is a very useful tool for probing the evolution of spirals in a cluster environment. Through comparisons of the HI content of isolated galaxies with galaxies in Virgo (Chamaraux et al. 1980; Giovanelli & Haynes 1983; Cayatte et al. 1990, 1994), and in other clusters (e.g. Giovanelli & Haynes 1985) it has been shown that cluster galaxies can be substantially deficient in neutral hydrogen. The HI content of individual galaxies depends on the distance from the cluster center, with the most gas deficient objects near the core. Furthermore, the HI deficiency of the cluster is also correlated with its X-ray luminosity.
In order to obtain more information on the spatial distribution of
the neutral hydrogen in deficient galaxies in A 262,
21 cm line observations were done with the WSRT.
Five fields were surveyed,
centered between 0.07 and 0.70 
(the Abell radius , equals 
for A 262),
covering a significant part of the core of the cluster where we searched for
galaxies already detected by Giovanelli et al. (1982), Giovanelli &
Haynes (1985)
and Wegner et al. (1993).
We describe the observations and the data reduction in Sect. 2 (click here). Results are given in Sect. 3 (click here), where we present the total HI maps of eleven galaxies superposed on optical images from the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS). For some of these galaxies (NGC 688 and NGC 753), we show the intensity weighted velocity fields, and position velocity diagrams along the major axis (for NGC 688, NGC 753 and UGC 1347). Our conclusions are summarized in Sect. 4 (click here).