Because the sky brightness at the South Pole is low in the in near-infrared, low surface brightness galaxies are relatively easy to detect and observe, and we conducted a survey of 6 such galaxies during the 1997 observing season. These galaxies are interesting because they contain relatively few stars, yet sometimes possess morphological and dynamical properties of much larger galaxies. They may also represent a large percentage of the galaxies which populate the universe. We are investigating what limits star formation in these galaxies and what is supplying the gravtity that holds them together. This image is the culmination of 6.5 hours of on-source integration and is about 4 arcminutes on a side.
North is up and east is to the left.
At galaxy center, the B band surface brightness is 23.1 mag arcsec , while the K-band central surface brightness is 20.4 mag arcsec . For more information on this work, please see Bell et al 1998 . Near-IR Extinction Click image for a larger, readable version. On most days, we made at least two measurements, and on 12 days we made three or more measurements, for a total of 91 separate measurements. The histogram above shows the distribution of extinction for all 91 measurements.