Structure of Brightest Cluster Galaxies and Intracluster Light

Understand

Observations of 170 local ($z\lesssim0.08$) galaxy clusters in the northern hemisphere have been obtained with the Wendelstein Telescope Wide Field Imager (WWFI).

• We correct for systematic effects such as point-spread function broadening, foreground star contamination, relative bias offsets, and charge persistence.
• Background inhomogeneities induced by scattered light are reduced down to $\Delta {\rm SB} > 31~g'$ mag arcsec$^{-2}$ by large dithering and subtraction of night-sky flats.
• Residual background inhomogeneities brighter than ${\rm SB}_{\sigma}< 27.6~g'$ mag arcsec$^{-2}$ caused by galactic cirrus are detected in front of 23% of the clusters.