Besides UGC 3698 and UGC 5086, the studied galaxies are well isolated
systems, whose crossing time with respect to their nearest massive
neighbours is of the order of the cosmological time, years.
Evolution of such isolated dwarf galaxies should not be affected
by tidal disturbances. Nevertheless, these
objects show impressively diversified morphologies, which
are likely to result from
their starburst activity.
The absolute magnitudes of the galaxies lie in the interval
[-12.5, -16.9] with a median of -14.6, and their integral colours,
, are concentrated within [0.30, 0.70] with a median of
0.47. Outside this colour index interval there is only one galaxy, UGC 5340,
with
. It has also a high M(HI)/LB ratio, being
probably a young system.
Note that among these 20 nearby irregular dwarfs only 4 objects are IRAS sources. If we rank them according to their apparent magnitude, they occupy positions #3-6 in our sample, whereas their classification by the mean surface brightness give them positions #2-5. Therefore, the IR-flux from dwarf galaxies seems to exhibit a correlation both with their optical flux and with their surface brightness. Besides, the dwarf galaxies detected in the IR have a slightly bluer integral colour.
Because the radial velocities of the considered galaxies can not be much affected by neighbours, one can use them to estimate the local value of the Hubble parameter, H = V0/D. According to the data of Table 18, individual estimates of H have a median of 65 km s-1/Mpc. This value is in reasonable agreement with other estimates of the Hubble parameter.
AcknowledgementsWe are indebted to Leo Takalo and Pekka Heinamaki, who took part in the observations, and Serafim Kajsin, who made preliminary processing of the data. This work is partly supported by INTAS-RFBR grant No. 95-1390.
Copyright The European Southern Observatory (ESO)