1. Introduction and sample selection

As it is noted by Kenney & Koopmann (1996) many papers in the last years point out that the "morphology-environment" relationship (Oemler 1992) may partially be due to galaxy- galaxy interactions that play a fundamental role in galaxy evolution (Kennicutt 1990; Moss & Whittle 1993; Kenney et al. 1995). Schweizer (1992) proposes, on a basis of observational data, that mergers were the primary formation mechanism for elliptical galaxies and spiral bulges. Moreover, this hypothesis has received new observational support since Dressler et al. (1994) studied distant galaxy clusters. These authors noticed the existence of peculiarities in many disk galaxies that could be attributed to interactions or mergers.

On the other hand, peculiar galaxies such as ring galaxies or amorphous galaxies also show evidence of star formation rates higher than normal galaxies (e.g., Appleton & Struck-Marcell 1987; Gallagher & Hunter 1987).

Thus, the study of the properties of peculiar galaxies and the search for evidences of mergers could help to understand the role played by the environment on galaxy evolution. The main goal of this paper is to describe photometric and spectroscopic properties of a sample of peculiar galaxies in order to shed light on these processes.

Objects were first selected by Agüero (1971) from visual inspection to the Palomar Sky Survey prints. In that work, galaxies were considered peculiar if their subsystems were not concentric or coplanar, or showed some characteristics such as a very fragmented structure or the presence of jets, filaments or amorphous and asymmetric arms. From this Catalogue we have selected those galaxies with no reference available in the Third Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies, hereafter RC3, (de Vaucouleurs et al. 1991). We also made use of the Nasa Extragalaxtic Database (NED) to avoid selected galaxies with previous photometric and spectroscopic data. From this sample we have considered a randomly selected sub-sample of ten galaxies for which we have obtained BVRI CCD-images and/or spectra. Table 1 (click here) lists selected galaxies together with the information given by the RC3.

   

Galaxy R.A. (2000) Dec. (2000) Type               cz (km s^-1)                        Other names

ESO 316-G029 10:07:46.0 -41:20:00 PSBT2? 0.80 IRAS 10056-4105

NGC 3250E 10:29:00.9 -40:04:59 .SXS6* 0.48 ESO 317-G 034 IRAS 10268-3949

ESO 317-G041 10:31:22.9 -42:03:38 .SBR4*P 0.56 IRAS 10292-4148

NGC 3318 10:37:15.7 -41:37:42 .SXT3.. 0.35 ESO 317

-G052 IRAS 10350-4122

NGC 3378 10:46:43.0 -40:00:56 .S..4*. 0.40 ESO 318- G 012 IRAS 10444-3945

ESO 266-G015 11:40:56.0 -44:28:50 .S..4.. 0.41 IRAS 11384-4412

ESO 340-G021 20:22:28.9 -41:53:58 .SXR2.. 0.15 IRAS 20191-4203

AM 2054-433 N 20:57:49.4 -43:21:05 .L..0?. 0.07 ESO 286- G 017 IRAS 2054-4333

AM 2054-433 S 20:57:50.3 -43:22:23 .SBS4? 0.07 ESO 286-G018

IC 5325 23:28:43.2 -41:19:58 .SXT4.. 0.04 ESO 347-G018 IRAS 23260-4116

In the following, Sect. 2 (click here) describes the imaging and spectroscopic observations and reduction techniques. Sect. 3 (click here) presents the results of photometry and spectroscopy. In Sect. 4 (click here) we present a detailed analysis of the photometric and spectroscopic properties of all galaxies of the sample. Finally, Sect. 5 (click here) provides a brief final discussion of our results.