6 Summary

We have obtained images in the near-infrared H bandpass for an optical-magnitude-selected ( $m_{\rm p} \le 15.7$) sample of 558 nearby (z<0.02) galaxies primarily of early-type, in the regions of Coma and Virgo. We derived H magnitudes at the optical radius, total H magnitudes, isophotal radii at the 20.5 mag arcsec^-2  isophote, and the light concentration index C₃₁. As mentioned in the Introduction, the galaxies presented in this paper do not form by themselves a complete sample. Therefore we postpone the comprehensive analysis of the NIR properties of galaxies to forthcoming papers of this series. Paper V will report on the profile decomposition.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the TIRGO T.A.C. for the generous time allocation to this project and the TIRGO team for support during the observations. We thank A. Borriello, V. Calamai, B. Catinella, I. Randone, P. Ranfagni, M. Sozzi, P. Strambio for their assistance during the observations at TIRGO. A special thank to V. Gavriusev for software assistance at TIRGO.