Faint Field Galaxies around Bright Stars: A New Strategy for Imaging at the Diffraction Limit

This paper presents a new strategy for observing faint galaxies with highorder natural guide star systems. We have imaged 5 high galactic latitudefields within the isoplanatic patch of bright stars (8.5 < R < 10.3 mag). Thefields provide a rich set of faint field galaxies that are observable with anatural guide star adaptive optics system on a large telescope. Due to thesmall fields of many AO science cameras, these preliminary images are necessaryto identify candidate galaxies. We present the photometry and positions for 78objects (at least 40 galaxies) near five bright stars, appropriate fordiffraction limited studies with the Keck and other AO systems on largeground-based telescopes. The K band seeing conditions in each field wereexcellent (0.4" - 0.7") allowing us to identify stars and estimate galaxysizes. We also simulate AO images of field galaxies to determine thefeasibility of infrared morphological studies at the diffraction limit. Withnew high order AO systems coming on line with 8-10 meter class telescopes, webelieve these observations are invaluable in beginning to study faint galaxypopulations at the diffraction limit.Comment: 15 pages, Latex, 9 figures. Accepted for publication in P.A.S.