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Description
GALEX detected a significant fraction of early-type galaxies, in particular S0s, showing Far-UV bright structures, sometimes involving an entire galaxy out to its outskirts. These features suggest the presence of either recent, ongoing and/or prolonged star formation episodes, shedding new light on the evolution of these systems. We aim at understanding the evolutionary path[s] of these early-type galaxies and the mechanisms at the origin of their UV-bright structures. We investigate with a multi{lambda} approach the link between the inner and the outer galaxy regions of a set of eleven early-type galaxies selected because of their nearly passive stage of evolution in the nuclear region. This paper, second of a series, focuses on the information coming from the comparison between UV features detected by Swift-UVOT, tracing recent star formation, and the galaxy optical structure mapping older stellar populations. We performed a surface photometric study of these early-type galaxies, observed with Swift-UVOT UV filters, W2 2030{AA} {lambda_0}, M2 2231{AA} {lambda_0}, W1 2634{AA} {lambda_0}, and UBV bands. BVRI photometry from other sources in the literature is also used. Our integrated magnitude measurements have been analyzed and compared with corresponding values in the literature. We characterize the overall galaxy structure best fitting the UV and optical luminosity profiles using a single Sersic law. NGC 1366, NGC 1426, NGC 3818, NGC 3962 and NGC 7192 show featureless luminosity profiles. Excluding NGC~1366 which has a clear edge-on disk (n~1-2), and NGC 3818, the remaining three have Sersic's indices n~3-4 in optical and a lower index in the UV. Bright ring/arm-like structures are revealed by UV images and luminosity profiles of NGC 1415, NGC 1533, NGC 1543, NGC 2685, NGC 2974 and IC 2006. The ring/arm-like structures are different from galaxy to galaxy. Sersic indices of UV profiles for those galaxies are in the range n=1.5-3 both in S0s and in galaxies classified as "bona fide" ellipticals, such as NGC 2974 and IC 2006. We notice that in our sample optical Sersic indices are usually larger than in the UV ones. (M2-V) color profiles are bluer in ring/arm-like structures with respect to the galaxy body. The lower values of Sersic's indices in the UV bands with respect to optical ones, suggesting the presence of a disk, point out that the role of the dissipation cannot be neglected in recent evolutionary phases of these early-type galaxies.
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