Star counts on six Schmidt plates, covering the Sculptor dwarf galaxy and the surrounding area, provide information on the distribution of the brightest stars in the system. Equidensity contours drawn from the counts are smooth ellipses with ellipticity 0.35. Density profiles along the major axis do not agree with Hubble's or de Vaucouleurs' interpolation formulas for luminosity profiles of giant ellipticals. The size of the Sculptor system as observed agrees well with the computed tidally limited size caused by the attraction of our Galaxy on its outer stars.
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P. W. Hodge (1961) studied this question.