A survey of 286 Virgo cluster galaxies at optical griz and near-IR H band: surface brightness profiles and bulge-disc decompositions

We present and g-, r-, i-, z- and H-band surface brightness profiles and bulge-disc decompositions for a morphologically broad sample of 286 Virgo Cluster Catalogue (VCC) galaxies. The H-band data come from a variety of sources including our survey of 171 VCC galaxies at the University of Hawaii (UH) 2.2-m telescope, Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) and United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT), and another 115 galaxies from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) and GOLDMine archives. The optical data for all 286 VCC galaxies were extracted from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) images. The H-band and the SDSS griz data were analysed in a homogeneous manner using our own software, yielding a consistent set of deep, multiband surface brightness profiles for each galaxy. Average surface brightness profiles per morphological bin were created in order to characterize the variety of galaxy light profiles across the Hubble sequence. The 1D bulge-disc decomposition parameters, as well as non-parametric galaxy measures, such as effective radius, effective surface brightness and light concentration, are presented for all 286 VCC galaxies in each of the five optical/ near-infrared wavebands. The profile decompositions account for bulge and disc components, spiral arms, nucleus and atmospheric blurring. The Virgo spiral galaxy bulges typically have a Sersic index n similar to 1, while elliptical galaxies prefer n similar to 2. No galaxy spheroid requires n > 3. The light profiles for 70 per cent of the Virgo elliptical galaxies reveal the presence of both a spheroid and disc component. A more in-depth discussion of the structural parameter trends can be found in McDonald, Courteau & Tully. The data provided here should serve as a base for studies of galaxy structure and stellar populations in the cluster environment. The galaxy light profiles and bulge-disc decomposition results are available at the Centre de Donnees astronomiques de Strasbourg (CDS; http://http://cds.u-strasbg.fr/) and the author's own website (http://www.astro.queensu.ca/virgo).