Alignment of Clusters with Brightest Member Galaxies

Abstract

We have obtained CCD images of the brightest elliptical galaxy in 27 clusters of galaxies with redshifts z < 0.1. For each galaxy we fitted elliptical isophotes to the galaxy image. We also measured the position angle of each cluster from the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS) prints. We find only marginal evidence for alignment of brightest cluster members (BCM) with their parent clusters, but we find that our CCD isophotes are well aligned with the POSS image.