The Fueling of Nuclear Activity. I. A Near‐Infrared Imaging Survey of Seyfert and Normal Galaxies

We present near-infrared, modified K-band images of a sample of Seyfert and control galaxies. Our sample includes all known Seyfert galaxies in the Revised Shapely-Ames Catalog and Sandage & Tammann's 1987 extension to the RSA with recessional velocities less than 5000 km s-1 and logarithmic axial ratios less than 0.2 (excluding the two early-type Seyfert galaxies Centaurus A and Perseus A). A control sample of normal galaxies, matched to the Seyfert sample in Hubble type, redshift, inclination, and blue luminosity, has also been observed. To quantify the incidence of bars in both samples, elliptical fits to the isophotes of each galaxy have been performed. In agreement with earlier studies, we find that many galaxies classified as unbarred in the optical, display evidence for bars in the near-infrared.