WINGS: a WIde-field nearby Galaxy-cluster survey^*,**

III. Deep near-infrared photometry of 28 nearby clusters

¹ Astronomy Department, University of Padova, Vicolo Osservatorio 3, 35122 Padova, Italy e-mail: tiziano.valentinuzzi@unipd.it
² School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, NSW, Australia
³ Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, University of British Columbia, 6224 Agricultural Road, Vancouver, V6T 1Z1, BC, Canada
⁴ INAF – Padova Astronomical Observatory, Vicolo Osservatorio 5, 35122 Padova, Italy
⁵ Institute of Astronomy, Madingley Rd., Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK
⁶ Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, via Lactea s.n., 38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
⁷ Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing, Swinburne University, Hawthorn 3122, VIC, Australia
⁸ Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Pasadena, CA 91101, USA
⁹ Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (C.S.I.C.) Apartado 3004, 18080 Granada, Spain
¹⁰ Specola Vaticana, 00120 Stato Citta' del Vaticano, Vatican
¹¹ The Niels Bohr Institute, Juliane Maries Vej 30, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark

Received: 29 September 2008
Accepted: 20 February 2009

Abstract

Context. This is the third paper in a series devoted to the WIde-field Nearby Galaxy-cluster Survey (WINGS). WINGS is a long-term project aimed at gathering wide-field, multiband imaging and spectroscopy of galaxies in a complete sample of 77 X-ray selected, nearby clusters () located far from the galactic plane (). The main goal of this project is to establish a local reference sample for evolutionary studies of galaxies and galaxy clusters.

Aims. This paper presents the near-infrared () photometric catalogs of 28 clusters of the WINGS sample and describes the procedures followed to construct them.

Methods. The raw data has been reduced at CASU and special care has been devoted to the final coadding, drizzling technique, astrometric solution, and magnitude calibration for the WFCAM pipeline-processed data. We constructed the photometric catalogs based on the final calibrated, coadded mosaics (≈0.79 deg²) in J (19 clusters) and K (27 clusters) bands. A customized interactive pipeline was used to clean the catalogs and to make mock images for photometric errors and completeness estimates.

Results. We provide deep near-infrared photometric catalogs (90% complete in detection rate at total magnitudes , , and in classification rate at and ), giving positions, geometrical parameters, total and aperture magnitudes for all detected sources. For each field we classify the detected sources as stars, galaxies, and objects of “unknown” nature.