Astron. Astrophys. Suppl. Ser. 141, 449-468

Spatially resolved spectroscopy of Coma cluster early-type galaxies

I. The database

D. Mehlert^1,2 - R.P. Saglia¹ - R. Bender¹ - G. Wegner³

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

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.

Received March 8; accepted September 30, 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$\beta$ line indices out to $R\approx 1 r_{\rm e} - 3 r_{\rm e}$ 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.

Key words: galaxies: elliptical and lenticular, cD; kinematics and dynamics; stellar content; abundances; formation