Redshift-Distance Survey of Early-Type Galaxies. I. Sample Selection, Properties, and Completeness

This is the first in a series of papers describing the recently completedall-sky redshift-distance survey of nearby early-type galaxies (ENEAR) carriedout for peculiar velocity analysis. The sample is divided into two parts andconsists of 1607 elliptical and lenticular galaxies with cz < 7000 km/s andwith blue magnitudes brighter than m_B=14.5 (ENEARm), and of galaxies inclusters (ENEARc). Galaxy distances based on the Dn-sigma and Fundamental Plane(FP) relations are now available for 1359 and 1107 ENEARm galaxies,respectively, with roughly 80% based on new data gathered by our group. TheDn-sigma and FP template distance relations are derived by combining 569 and431 galaxies in 28 clusters, respectively, of which about 60% are based on ournew measurements. The ENEARm redshift-distance survey extends the earlier workof the 7S and the recent Tully-Fisher surveys sampling a comparable volume. Insubsequent papers of this series we intend to use the ENEAR sample by itself orin combination with the SFI Tully-Fisher survey to analyze the properties ofthe local peculiar velocity field and to test how sensitive the results are todifferent sampling and to the distance indicators. We also anticipate that thehomogeneous database assembled will be used for a variety of other applicationsand serve as a benchmark for similar studies at high-redshift.Comment: 43 pages, 15 figures, submitted to the Astronomical Journa