A photometric distance-indicator relation for low surface brightness dwarfs

Abstract

Recently, dwarf elliptical galaxies have received a great deal of attention and some of the points to be addressed in future investigations include metallicities of the stellar population, structural properties, and the large scale distribution (Caldwell and Bothun 1987; Impey et al. 1988; Eder et al. 1989). Here we are more concerned with the large scale structure for this class of galaxies. Recent analysis by Eder et al. (1989) has indicated that dwarf galaxies seem to trace the large scale structures in the same way as bright ones. Another important characteristic of dwarfs is that they are more populous in clusters than bright elliptical galaxies. The ratio dE/E (dwarf/normal) in Fomax is around 4, and in Virgo 17, which means that if we can define a distance indicator relation for dwarfs with at least the same accuracy as we have for normal ellipticals, we can substantially improve our distance measurement for clusters, thus mapping the large-scale velocity field more efficiently.