Infrared observations of galaxies in the local universe. I. The survey and some representative results

This paper introduces a continuing survey of galaxies in the local universe. Consistent deep images are being acquired for a representative sample of 321 galaxies in the Uppsala General Catalogue down to 21.7 mag arcsec(-2) at Ks (2.16 mu m) and 22.4 mag arcsec(-2) at J (1.25 mu m) using a NICMOS camera with a 3'.8 x 3'.8 field of view attached to the 61 inch (1.5 m) telescope on Mount Bigelow. We provide some examples of the results being obtained by employing 64 deep images of a subset of 44 galaxies. Bulge-to-disk ratios are tabulated for 30 galaxies. The brightness of the central region of 44 galaxies declines approximately 5 mag from Hubble type SO to Sm. An exponential vertical scale height at Ks is found to be 500 pc for the disk of UGC 5173. Arm amplitudes of four nearly face-on spiral galaxies are found to range between 11% and 88% compared to the interarm region. There is some evidence that the arm amplitude is larger at Ks than it is at J, Color gradients ar measured for 15 galaxies with only one showing a significant nonzero result. A measurement of galactic symmetry applied to 64 deep images reveals an average asymmetry of 7.6% (sigma = 4.6%) for these galaxies.