Hubble Deep Field surface photometry

The detailed surface photometry of a sample of early-type galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field is presented as part of a long-term project aimed to settle strong observational constraints to the theories modelling the evolution of elliptical galaxies from the early stages. The sample has been extracted, in the V_606_ band, from the database provided by the ESO-STECF-HDF Group (Couch, 1996, <ecf.hq.eso.org>). The selection criteria involve the total magnitude, the number of pixels detected above the background level and an automatic star/galaxy classifier.

Moreover, form visual inspection of the frames, we excluded the galaxies showing unambiguous late-type morphology. The analysis of the luminosity and geometrical profiles, carried out on the 162 candidates obeying our selection criteria, resulted in a list of 99 'bona fide' early-type galaxies, for which accurate total magnitudes and effective radii were computed on the basis of the equivalent luminosity profiles. The comparison with the magnitudes given by Williams et al. (1996, Cat. <J/AJ/112/1335>) indicates that the automated photometry tends to underestimate the total luminosity of the ellipticals.