THE ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL, 473:822-827, 1996 December 20

            A MINNESOTA AUTOMATED PLATE SCANNER CATALOG OF GALAXIES
               BEHIND THE VIRGO CLUSTER AND TOWARD ITS ANTIPODE

                                G. LYLE HOFFMAN
          Department of Physics, Lafayette College, Easton, PA 18042;
                            hoffmang@lafayette.edu

                                JOHN M. DICKEY
   Department of Astronomy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455;
                             john@ast1.spa.umn.edu

                                 NANYAO Y. LU
IPAC, Mail Stop 100-22, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125;
                              lu@ipac.caltech.edu

                                      AND

                              RENE FROMHOLD-TREU
          Department of Physics, Lafayette College, Easton, PA 18042;
                            fromholr@lafayette.edu

     We present a catalog of 1268 galaxies, essentially complete to B <=
     17.0, found by scanning glass copies of several fields of the original
     Palomar Sky Survey using the Minnesota Automated Plate Scanner in its
     isodensitometric mode (as opposed to the threshold densitometric mode
     used in the APS Catalog of the POSS I). In addition to the different
     scanning mode, we have employed a different star-galaxy separation
     method and have visually inspected POSS prints to verify that each
     image remaining in the catalog is nonstellar. The scanned fields are
     distributed generally in two areas, one around the outskirts of the
     Virgo Cluster, the other toward the antipode of the cluster (but still
     in the northern celestial hemisphere). The catalog gives the position
     of the center of each galaxy; estimates of the blue and red magnitudes
     within the outermost threshold crossing and of the blue magnitude
     extrapolated to zero surface brightness; and the blue and red
     diameters of four ellipses fitted to the four threshold crossings
     (approximately 23.8, 23.6, 23.2, and 22.7 mag/arcsec^2 in blue, and
     22.5, 22.4, 21.5, and 21.2 mag/arcsec^2 in red), and the ellipticities
     of those four ellipses.  The catalog has served as a base from which
     to draw targets for a Tully-Fisher study of the Virgocentric infall
     velocity of the Local Group.

     Subject heading: catalogs -- galaxies: clusters: individual (Virgo)
                      -- galaxies: photometry