Abstract

BCGs are often located close to their cluster center and are surrounded by a faint sea of intracluster stars, usually referred to as intracluster light (ICL). It is believed to have formed "recently" by tidal accretion of stars from satellite galaxies. We are performing a deep imaging survey of a statistical sample of 150 local (z<0.08) galaxy clusters with the new Wendelstein Wide Field Imager and measure the radial surface brightness profile of each BCG down to a limiting g'-band magnitude of 30mag/arcsec**2. We find that the ICL entends on average at least 500kpc in radius and the isophotes are heavily distorted for ~1/4th of the sample, indicating recent accretion processes. I will present the current status of the project and preliminary results.