REVISITING THE SCALE LENGTH-μ0 PLANE AND THE FREEMAN LAW IN THE LOCAL UNIVERSE

We have used Virtual Observatory technology to analyze the disk scale length r(d) and central surface brightness mu(0) for a sample of 29,955 bright disk galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We use the results in the r band and revisit the relation between these parameters and the galaxy morphology, and find the average value = 20.2 +/- 0.7 mag arcsec(-2). We confirm that late-type spirals populate the lower left corner of the r(d)-mu(0) plane and that the early and intermediate spirals are mixed in this diagram, with disky ellipticals at the top left corner. We further investigate the Freeman Law and confirm that it indeed defines an upper limit for mu(0) in bright disk galaxies with r(mag) < 17.0, and that disks in late-type spirals ( T >= 6) have fainter central surface brightness. Our results are based on a volume-corrected sample of galaxies in the local universe (z < 0.3) that is two orders of magnitudes larger than any sample previously studied and deliver statistically significant implications that provide a comprehensive test bed for future theoretical studies and numerical simulations of galaxy formation and evolution.