SIMBAD references

CCD surface photometry in Thuan and Gunn g and r filters is used to study the structure of stellar disks in 27 edge-on galaxies. Parameters for models of the light distribution such as the scale height z₀, the radial scale length h, the cut-off radius R_max, and the central surface brightness µ₀ are determined. The observed disks generally show a radial cut-off at a surface brightness level of ∼23 mag/arcsec², well above the signal-to-noise limit. Several galaxies in our sample have a ratio R_max/h<3.0, smaller than typical values found in previous studies. The light distribution perpendicular to the plane is, even at visual wavelength, better described by an exponential or a sech function in z than by the sech² function of an isothermal disk model. The central face-on corrected surface brightness µ₀ of the disks presented here are lower than values of comparable face-on samples.