Astronomy & Astrophysics manuscript no. Meusinger_12jun20 c ESO 2020 June 16, 2020 The galaxy population within the virial radius of the Perseus cluster? H. Meusinger1; 2, C. Rudolf1, B. Stecklum1, M. Hoeft1, R. Mauersberger3, and D. Apai4 1 Thüringer Landessternwarte, Sternwarte 5, 07778 Tautenburg, Germany, e-mail:
[email protected] 2 Universität Leipzig, Fakultät für Physik und Geowissenschaften, Linnestraße 5, 04103 Leipzig, Germany 3 Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, Auf dem Hügel 69, 53121 Bonn (Endenich), Germany 4 Steward Observatory and the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA Received XXXXXX; accepted XXXXXX ABSTRACT Context. The Perseus cluster is one of the most massive nearby galaxy clusters and is fascinating in various respects. Though the galaxies in the central cluster region have been intensively investigated, an analysis of the galaxy population in a larger field is still outstanding. Aims. This paper investigates the galaxies that are brighter than B ≈ 20 within a field corresponding to the Abell radius of the Perseus cluster. Our first aim is to compile a new catalogue in a wide field around the centre of the Perseus cluster. The second aim of this study is to employ this catalogue for a systematic study of the cluster galaxy population with an emphasis on morphology and activity. Methods. We selected the galaxies in a 10 square degrees field of the Perseus cluster on Schmidt CCD images in B and Hα in com- bination with SDSS images. Morphological information was obtained both from the ‘eyeball’ inspection and the surface brightness profile analysis. We obtained low-resolution spectra for 82 galaxies and exploited the spectra archive of SDSS and redshift data from the literature.