Morphological classification of galaxies using simple photometric parameters

A simple method is proposed for the morphological classification of galaxies. The method uses two distance-independent photometric parameters, the concentration index and the mean surface brightness within an isophote of fixed brightness level in a single colour band. This method is insensitive both to the image sizes of galaxies and to their inclinations. With this method we achieve a reasonably high success rate (≳ 85 per cent) in classifying galaxies into early and late types. We demonstrate that the method works well for galaxies near the observational limit of automated galaxy surveys.