Abstract

Received 2000 May 3, accepted 2001 June 1

We investigate the photographic-magnitude (m_p) scale of Volume I of the Catalogue of Galaxies and of Clusters of Galaxies for galaxies in the Virgo direction. It is found that for 11.5 ≤ B_t < 14.5, the m_p values listed correspond very closely (with a scatter of only 0.16 magnitude) to blue magnitudes measured to the _B = 24.4 isophote. If m_p values need to be used as estimates of total blue magnitude the scatter is 0.27 magnitude over the same range in B_t and the mean offset is m_p – B_t = 0.28 magnitude. However, a serious scale error at the bright end causes both the isophotal and total luminosities of galaxies brighter than B_t ~ 11.5 to be severely underestimated. At the faint end there also appears to be a significant scale error. This causes galaxy luminosities to be seriously overestimated faintward of B_t ~ 14.5.We demonstrate that this is a real effect based on a detailed galaxy-by-galaxy study of the catalogue’s completeness down to B_t = 17.0. The catalogue is found only to be complete to B_t ~ 14.7 whilst its degree of incompleteness is found to be relatively constant at the 30% level over the range 14.75 ≤ B_t < 15.75. Most of the missing objects are found to be elliptical galaxies and so late-type objects are over-represented at the faint end.