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J.J. Feldmeier (CWRU), C. Mihos (CWRU), H.L. Morrison (CWRU), S. Rodney (CWRU), P. Harding (Steward Observatory)
We report the first results of a deep surface brightness survey of a sample of galaxy clusters designed to quantify the properties of the intracluster light as a function of cluster environment. Our goals are to determine how the amount of intracluster starlight varies with other cluster properties (Bautz-Morgan type, richness), and to search for the presence of arcs of tidal debris which have recently been found in the Coma and Centaurus clusters. We report the results on the first two clusters of our survey: Abell~1413 and MKW~7, two clusters of greatly differing richness. Our data securely reach to a surface brightness level of \muV=26.5 mag/sq arcsec, five magnitudes below the brightness of the night sky. We discuss the detection of arc-like structures surrounding the cD galaxy in Abell~1413, and give estimates for the total amount of intracluster starlight in these two clusters.
This work was funded by the NSF through CAREER grants 9876143 (CM) & 9624542 (HLM).
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The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: johnf@eor.astr.cwru.edu