The Discovery of Red Low Surface Brightness Galaxies

Abstract

AbstractWe have performed a digital survey for Low Surface Brightness (LSB) galaxies in the spiral-rich Cancer and Pegasus clusters as well as the low density regime defined by the Great Wall. A total of 127 galaxies were found with μB(0) > 22.0 mag arcsec‒2, 119 of which were previously unidentified.Consistent with other surveys, we find a significant number of galaxies with μB(0) > 23.0 mag arcsec‒2 which suggests that the space density of galaxies as a function of μB(0) is not strongly peaked. To more rigorously test this hypothesis we compare the actual surface brightness distribution from our survey with that from two different types of Monte-Carlo based sky images and show that it is not possible to distinguish between the flat distribution and the Gaussian one as the proper description of the underlying surface brightness distribution for this survey beyond 24.0 mag arcsec−2.The colors of the survey galaxies range continuously from very blue to the first discovery of very red LSB galaxies. It also includes a group of old galaxies which show evidence for recent star formation. This continuous range of colors clearly shows that LSB galaxies at the present epoch define a wide range of evolutionary states.