A subarcsecond-resolution near-infrared study of Seyfert and "normal" galaxies.: I.: Imaging data

We present new high-resolution near-infrared observations in the J, H, and K bands, obtained to study the properties of Seyfert host galaxies. The data set consists of images in the three bands of practically the entire CfA sample of Seyfert galaxies, and K-band images of a control sample of nonactive, "normal," galaxies, matched to the Seyfert sample in the distribution of type and inclination. The spatial resolution and sampling of the new images is a factor of 2 better than previously published K-band data. In this paper, we present the data in the form of profiles of surface brightness and color, ellipticity and major axis position angle, as well as gray-scale maps of surface brightness in H or K and both J-H and H-K colors. We compare our surface brightness and color profiles with the literature and find good agreement. Our data are discussed in detail in three subsequent publications, where we analyze the morphologies of Seyfert and normal hosts, quantify the strength of nonaxisymmetric features in disks and their relationship to nuclear activity, address the question of bar fraction in Seyferts and normal galaxies, and analyze the color information in the framework of emission mechanisms in Seyfert 1's and 2's and in nonactive galaxies.