THE ASTRONOMICAL JOURNAL    VOLUME 108, NUMBER 5, PAGE 1598       NOVEMBER 1994

   HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE PHOTOMETRY OF THE CENTRAL REGIONS OF VIRGO CLUSTER
                 ELLIPTICAL GALAXIES. III. BRIGHTNESS PROFILES

                                LAURA FERRARESE

        Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute,
                           Baltimore, Maryland 21218
                 Electronic mail: ferrares@jhufos.pha.jhu.edu

                            FRANK C. VAN DEN BOSCH

                  Leiden Observatory, Leiden, The Netherlands
                  Electronic mail: vdbosch@strw.leidenuniv.nl

                                HOLLAND C. FORD

        Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute,
                           Baltimore, Maryland 21218
                   Electronic mail: ford@jhufos.pha.jhu.edu

                                 WALTER JAFFE

                  Leiden Observatory, Leiden, The Netherlands
                   Electronic mail: jaffe@strw.leidenuniv.nl

                              ROBERT W. O'CONNELL

            University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22903
                Electronic mail: rwo@perseus.astro.virginia.edu


                                   ABSTRACT
    
    We have used the Planetary Camera on the Hubble Space Telescope to
    study the morphology and surface brightness parameters of a luminosity-
    limited sample of fourteen elliptical galaxies in the Virgo cluster.
    The total apparent blue magnitudes of the galaxies range between 9.4
    and 13.4.  In this paper, the core brightness profiles are presented,
    while the overall morphology and the isophotal shapes are discussed in
    two companion papers [Jaffe et al. AJ, 108, 1567 (1994); van den Bosch
    et al. AJ, 108, 1579 (1994)].  We show that, in spite of the spherical
    aberration affecting the HST primary mirror, deconvolution techniques
    allow recovery of the brightness profile up to 0.2 arcsec from the
    center of the galaxies.  We find that none of the galaxies has an
    isothermal core.  On the basis of their morphological and photometrical
    properties, the galaxies can be divided in two physically distinct
    groups, referred to as Type I and Type II.  All of the Type I galaxies
    are classified as E1 to E3 in the Revised Shapley Ames Catalog (Sandage
    & Tammann 1981), while Type II galaxies are classified as E5 to E7.
    The characteristics of Type II galaxies are explained by the presence
    of disks component on both the 1 arcsec and the 10 arcsec scales, while
    Type I galaxies correspond to the classical disk-free ellipticals.