operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc., under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. Near-Infrared and Optical Morphology of Spiral Galaxies**Based partially on observations obtained at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory

We announce the initial release of data from the Ohio State University (OSU) Bright Spiral Galaxy Survey, a BVRJHK imaging survey of a well-defined sample of 205 bright, nearby spiral galaxies. We present H-band morphological classification on the Hubble sequence for the OSU Survey sample. We compare the H-band classification to B-band classification from our own images and from standard galaxy catalogs. Our B-band classifications match well with those of the standard catalogs. On average, galaxies with optical classifications from Sa through Scd appear about one T type earlier in the H band than in the B band, but with large scatter. This result does not support recent claims made in the literature that the optical and near-IR morphologies of spiral galaxies are uncorrelated. We present detailed descriptions of the H-band morphologies of our entire sample, as well as B- and H-band images for a set of 17 galaxies chosen as type examples and BRH color-composite images of six galaxies chosen to demonstrate the range in morphological variation as a function of wavelength.

Eskridge, P. B., Frogel, J. A., Pogge, R. W., Quillen, A. C., Berlind, A. A., Davies, R. L., ... Tiede, G. P.

Eskridge, Paul B||Frogel, Jay A||Pogge, Richard W||Quillen, Alice C||Berlind, Andreas A||Davies, Roger L||DePoy, DL||Gilbert, Karoline M||Houdashelt, Mark L||Kuchinski, Leslie E||Ramírez, Solange V||Sellgren, K||Stutz, Amelia||Terndrup, Donald M||Tiede, Glenn P

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