Sample & observing runs

A first series of observations were carried out by M. Pohlen in February 2004 with the Calar Alto 3.5-m telescope, using OMEGA-Prime, a direct imaging, prime focus, wide-field near infrared camera, giving a field-of-view of 6.8$\times$6.8 arcminutes, with a resolution of 0.396 arcseconds per pixel. A comparison of star position between our and 2MASS images confirmed this resolution within an error of 0.001 arcseconds per pixel. Six late-type edge-on disk galaxies were observed, of which two both in K (2.118 $\mu$m) and J-band (1.275 $\mu$m), one only in the K'-band and three only in the J-band. We will refer to this set as the CA set.
A second data set of an older observing campain was added to enlarge the sample. This set was observed by R. de Grijs in December 2000 with the 4-m UKIRT telescope, using UFTI, a 1-2.5 $\mu$m camera (1024 $\times$ 1024 array), with a resolution of 0.091 arcseconds per pixel which was 2$\times$2 binned to a resolution of 0.182 arcseconds per pixel. A comparison of star positions confirmed this resolution as well within an error of 0.001. Six late-type edge-on disk galaxies were taken from this observing run, both in the J and K'-band. We will refer to this set as the UKIRT set.
A third set of reduced optical and R-band images (see Pohlen et. al. (2001,2004) for observation details for observation details), containing two low-mass late-type galaxies and one early-type lenticular galaxy, was kindly provided by M. Pohlen to give a wider range of galaxy types and to allow a better comparison with the literature. For the lenticular galaxy NGC 4179 Pohlen et. al. (2004) already showed it contained a clear thick disk component. We will compare their results for this galaxy with ours, as they used a completely different method.
The galaxy data of the different sets are divided by a horizontal line in Table 1. The data were mostly obtained from the HyperLEDA database⁴. The inclination values were taken from Pohlen (2001). For those galaxies of which no accurate inclination determination could be found, no value is entered. All galaxies have an approximate inclination of 90$^{\circ}$.