SIMBAD references

Galaxies classified as flocculent have stochastic spiral structure in their stellar disks. Recent observations reveal that some optically flocculent galaxies have underlying, faint two-arm near-IR symmetric structure, which is indicative of a density wave. We present K'-band observations of 14 flocculent galaxies, of which half show some symmetry in their stellar disks and four have prominent near-IR structure. Their arm-interarm contrasts increase with radius as they do in grand-design galaxies, but the contrast is much smaller, indicating that the density waves are very weak.