Context: Galaxy clusters are the largest virialized structures in the observable Universe. Knowledge of their properties provides many useful astrophysical and cosmological information.
Aim: Our aim is to derive the luminosity and stellar mass profiles of the nearby galaxy clusters of the Omega-WINGS survey, to study the main scaling relations valid for such systems and to compare them with those valid for early-type galaxies (ETGs).
Methods: We merged data from the WINGS and Omega-WINGS databases, sorted the sources according to the distance from the brightest cluster galaxy (BCG), and calculated the integrated luminosity profiles in the B and V bands, taking into account extinction, photometric and spatial completeness, K correction, and background contribution. Then, by exploiting the spectroscopic sample we derived the stellar mass profiles of the clusters.
Results: We obtained the luminosity profiles of 46 galaxy clusters, reaching the virial radius in 30 cases, and the stellar mass profiles of 42 of our objects. We successfully fitted all the integrated luminosity growth profiles with one or two embedded Sérsic components, deriving the main clusters parameters. We checked the main scaling relation among the clusters parameters in comparison with those obtained for a selected sample of ETGs of the same clusters.
Conclusions: We found that the nearby galaxy clusters are non-homologous structures such as ETGs and exhibit a color-magnitude (CM) red-sequence relation very similar to that observed for galaxies in clusters. These properties are not expected in the current cluster formation scenarios. In particular the existence of a CM relation for clusters, shown here for the first time, suggests that the baryonic structures grow and evolve in a similar way at all scales. We also provided an explanation of the properties of the fundamental plane relation of both clusters and ETGs in terms of a fine-tuning between the time-averaged star formation rate and the structural and dynamical characteristics of the system. Finally, we showed that the light profiles of clusters mirrors, in at least half cases, the light profile of the corresponding BCGs
