We have presented an optical monitoring of 3C 273, the first quasar discovered fifty years ago. It does not show variability both on intra-night and long-term time scales. To facilitate the further monitoring of 3C 273, we compiled the available cali
brations of the comparison stars in its field into a mean sequence.
This paper is third in a series, studying the optical properties of a sample of Seyfert galaxies. Here we present a homogeneous set of global (ellipticity, position angle, inclination, and total magnitude) and isophotal (semi-major axis and colour in
dices at 24 V mag/sq.arcsec) parameters of the galaxy sample. We find the following median corrected isophotal colour indices: B-Ic = 1.9 mag/sq.arcsec and V-Ic = 1.1 mag/sq.arcsec. A set of bar parameters - ellipticity, position angle, semi-major axis corresponding to the ellipticity maximum in the bar region, and length, are also reported; deprojection has been applied to the bar ellipticity, length, and relative length in terms of galaxy isophotal semi-major axis. Regarding bar length estimation, we use a method, based on the relation between the behaviour of the profiles and orbit analysis. The so estimated bar length tightly correlates with the semi-major axis, corresponding to the ellipticity maximum with a median ratio of the former to the latter of 1.22. The median of the deprojected bar ellipticity, length, and relative length are 0.39, 5.44 kpc, and 0.44, respectively. There is a correlation between the deprojected bar length and the corrected isophotal semi-major axis at 24 V mag/sq.arcsec. Three of the 17 large-scale bars appear strong, based on the deprojected bar ellipticity as a first-order approximation of bar strength. The deprojected relative bar length does not appear to correlate with the bar ellipticity.
Parallel analysis of the large-scale morphology and local environment of matched active and control galaxy samples plays an important role in studies of the fueling of active galactic nuclei. We carry out a detailed morphological characterization of
a sample of 35 Seyfert galaxies and a matched sample of inactive galaxies in order to compare the evidence of non-axisymmetric perturbation of the potential and, in the second part of this paper, to be able to perform a multicomponent photometric decomposition of the Seyfert galaxies. We constructed contour maps, BVRcIc profiles of the surface brightness, ellipticity, and position angle, as well as colour index profiles. We further used colour index images, residual images, and structure maps, which helped clarify the morphology of the galaxies. We studied the presence of close companions using literature data. By straightening out the morphological status of some of the objects, we derived an improved morphological classification and built a solid basis for a further multicomponent decomposition of the Seyfert sample. We report hitherto undetected (to our knowledge) structural components in some Seyfert galaxies - a bar (Ark 479), an oval/lens (Mrk 595), rings (Ark 120, Mrk 376), a nuclear bar and ring (Mrk 352), and nuclear dust lanes (Mrk 590). We compared the large-scale morphology and local environment of the Seyfert sample to those of the control one and found that (1) the two samples show similar incidences of bars, rings, asymmetries, and close companions; (2) the Seyfert bars are generally weaker than the bars of the control galaxies; (3) the bulk of the two samples shows morphological evidence of non-axisymmetric perturbations of the potential or close companions; (4) the fueling of Seyfert nuclei is not directly related to the large-scale morphology and local environment of their host galaxies.
