Nuclear Components in the Bulges of Disk Galaxies

Authors: M. Balcells, L. Dominguez-Palmero, A.W. Graham, R.F. Peletier

Abstract: By combining surface brightness profiles from images taken in the HST/NICMOS F160W and ground-based (GB) K bands, we have obtained NIR profiles for a well studied sample of inclined disk galaxies, spanning radial ranges from 20 pc to a few kpc. We fit PSF-convolved Sersic-plus-exponential laws to the profiles, and compare the results with the fits to the ground-based data alone. HST profiles show light excesses over the best-fit Sersic law in the inner ~1 arcsec. This is often as a result of inner power-law cusps similar to the inner profiles of intermediate-luminosity elliptical galaxies.