BVI SURFACE PHOTOMETRY OF FOUR SPIRAL GALAXIES

We have conducted BVI photographic surface photometry of four spiral galaxies NGC1087, NGC2715, NGC2844 and NGC3593, by making use of the Kiso Schmidt plates. Detailed examination of the morphological properties of the galaxies using isophotal maps and luminosity profiles showed that all the program galaxies have some peculiarities in their luminosity distributions. NGC1087 and NGC2715 have extremely small nuclei with inner rings which contain several bright HII regions. NGC2844 has a very large bulge whose luminosity dominates over the disk luminosity in all the radii. The I-band luminosity profile of NGC3593 shows shallower gradient than B- and V-band profiles. We were able to successfully decompose the luminosity profile into a bulge following de Vaucouleurs $\gamma^{1/4}-law$ and an exponential disk only for NGC 3953. Other galaxies have more complicated luminosit profiles.