Our current knowledge of the morphology of the extraplanar diffuse ionized
gas (eDIG) in normal (non-starburst) edge-on spiral galaxies rests on a
few investigations of small galaxy samples
(Hoopes et al., 1999;
Pildis et al., 1994;
Rand, 1996;
Rossa & Dettmar,
2000), as
well as on some additional studies of individual galaxies
(e.g., Dettmar, 1990;
Domgörgen &
Dettmar, 1997;
Rand et al., 1992;
Ferguson et al., 1996).
There have been a few galaxies
studied during the last decade, however, the question was raised, whether
or not the presence of eDIG is a common phenomenon among all types of
galaxies, or whether it is indeed a direct consequence of the strength of
the star formation activity, both on local and global scales
(Rand, 1996;
Rossa & Dettmar,
2000).
To answer this question a systematic investigation is
obligatory. We have therefore conducted, for the first time, a large survey
of nearby non-starburst edge-on spiral galaxies, aiming at a
quantitative morphological study of gaseous halos, based on the broad
coverage of the strength of SF activity in the underlying galaxy disks
(i.e. broad coverage of LFIR) of these galaxies. We
present the observed morphological results, based on the
H
imaging observations, and
describe the derived DIG characteristics for each galaxy in this paper in
greater detail. For information on the scientific background on eDIG and
its detection in external galaxies we refer the reader to our previous
works
(Rossa & Dettmar,
2003,
2000),
and references therein and to some older review articles
(Dettmar, 1992;
Dahlem, 1997)
for a more detailed overview on this topic.
The current paper is structured as follows. In
Sect. 2 we present some
details on the observations and data reduction procedures. In
Sect. 3 we show
the actual results for the galaxies, while in
Sect. 4 we discuss the
extraplanar dust. Then the atlas is presented (available only
electronically at EDP Sciences), where we display two galaxies on each
page. Each of the two columns per page consists of the R-band (top), the
unsharp-masked R-band (middle), and the continuum subtracted
H
image (bottom). Finally, in Sect. 5 we
summarize briefly the results.