SIMBAD references

We present a study of the optical brightness profiles of early type galaxies, using a number of samples of radio galaxies and optically selected elliptical galaxies. For the radio galaxy samples - B2 of Fanaroff-Riley type I and 3C of Fanaroff-Riley type II - we determined a number of parameters that describe a ``Nuker-law'' profile, which were compared with those already known for the optically selected objects. We find that radio active galaxies are always of the ``core'' type (i.e. an inner Nuker law slope γ<0.3). However, there are core-type galaxies which harbor no significant radio source and which are indistinguishable from the radio active galaxies. We do not find any radio detected galaxy with a power law profile (γ>0.5). This difference is not due to any effect with absolute magnitude, since in a region of overlap in magnitude the dichotomy between radio active and radio quiescent galaxies remains. We speculate that core-type objects represent the galaxies that have been, are, or may become, radio active at some stage in their lives; active and non-active core-type galaxies are therefore identical in all respects except their eventual radio-activity: on HST scales we do not find any relationship between boxiness and radio-activity. There is a fundamental plane, defined by the parameters of the core (break radius r_b and break brightness µ_b), which is seen in the strong correlation between r_b and µ_b. The break radius is also linearly proportional to the optical Luminosity in the I band. Moreover, for the few galaxies with an independently measured black hole mass, the break radius turns out to be tightly correlated with M_BH. The black hole mass correlates even better with the combination of fundamental plane parameters r_b and µ_b, which represents the central velocity dispersion.