Color gradients in three Virgo ellipticals

Accurate surface photometry at optical wavelengths is presented for NGC 4486, NGC 4472, and NGC 4406. Ellipses of varying ellipticity and position angle as a function of semimajor axis (A) are fit over the range in A spanned by the data, 2 ≤ A ≤ ≈400 arcsec. Color gradients in these galaxies are definitely present but are quite small. For each galaxy, the parameters describing the fit ellipses in the four colors are identical.