ON GALACTIC ABSORPTION

We show that the stellar photored magnitude, m 10, of the 10th by brightness galaxy in an Abell cluster is not a good indicator of the cluster distance. We find that the values of m 10 for clusters in the southern Galactic hemisphere are systematically fainter by about 017 than those in the northern hemisphere. This may be due to higher absorption of objects in the south Galactic hemisphere or to atmospheric extinction in observations of clusters in high zenith angles.