the procedure described in KFS98. Briefly, for nearby targets object frames were interspersed with sky frames. Distant targets, on the other hand, were always kept in the field by shifting them across the array. Individual exposures were coadded to achieve the final integration time (see Table 1).

Data reduction consisted of correction for bad pixels by interpolating across neighboring pixels, sky subtraction using a median averaged sky frame (for nearby sources) or a median averaged frame of all observations (for distant sources), flat-fielding, and combination of images of the same target. Standard stars from the list of Landolt (1992) were used for photometric calibration, for which we estimate an accuracy of $\sim$0.1 mag. K–correction was applied to the host galaxy magnitudes following the method of Neugebauer (1985). The size of this correction is insignificant at low redshift in the H filter (m(H) = 0.01 at z = 0.2). No K–correction was applied to the nuclear component, assumed to have a power-law spectrum ($f_\nu \propto \nu^{-\alpha}$) with $\alpha$ $\sim$–1.

Azimuthally averaged radial luminosity profile was extracted for each object and stars in the frames down to surface brightness of $\mu$(H) = 22–23 mag arcsec$^{-2}$. Only for few objects, bright stars were 