Deep photometry of galaxies in the VEGAS survey: the case of NGC 4472
  The VST-VEGAS project is aimed at observing and studying a rich sample of
nearby early-type galaxies in order to systematically characterize their
properties over a wide baseline of sizes and out to the faint outskirts where
data are rather scarce so far. The external regions of galaxies more easily
retain signatures about the formation and evolution mechanisms which shaped
them, as their relaxation time are longer, and they are more weakly influenced
by processes such as mergers, secular evolution, central black hole activity,
and supernova feedback on the ISM, which tend to level age and metallicity
gradients. The collection of a wide photometric dataset of a large number of
galaxies in various environmental conditions, may help to shed light on these
questions. To this end VEGAS exploits the potential of the VLT Survey Telescope
(VST) which provides high quality images of one square degree field of view in
order to satisfy both the requirement of high resolution data and the need of
studying nearby, and thus large, objects. We present a detailed study of the
surface photometry of the elliptical galaxy NGC4472 and of smaller ETGs in its
field, performed by using new g and i bands images to constrain the formation
history of this nearby giant galaxy, and to investigate the presence of very
faint substructures in its surroundings.
