FRACTAL DIMENSION OF GALAXY ISOPHOTES

In this paper we investigate the use of the fractal dimension of galaxy isophotes in galaxy classification. We have applied two different methods for determining fractal dimensions to the isophotes of elliptical and spiral galaxies derived from CCD images. We conclude that fractal dimension alone is not a reliable tool but that combined with other parameters in a neural net algorithm the fractal dimension could be of use. In particular, we have used three parameters to segregate the ellipticals and lenticulars from the spiral galaxies in our sample. These three parameters are the correlation fractal dimension D {sub corr}, the difference between the correlation fractal dimension and the capacity fractal dimension D {sub corr} - D {sub cap}, and, thirdly, the B - V color of the galaxy.