Acknowledgements

Valentina E. Karachentseva, Igor D. Karachentsev, and Helmut Jerjen participated in this project. The Australia Telescope is funded by the Commonwealth of Australia for operation as a National Facility managed by CSIRO. The Nançay Radio Observatory is the Unité Scientifique de Nançay of the Observatoire de Paris, associated as Unité de Service et de Recherche (USR) N0. B704 to the French Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). The Nançay Observatory also gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Conseil Régional of the Région Centre in France. This work has been partially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under project no. 436 RUS 113/470/0 (R). M.E. acknowledges financial support from DFG grant no. EH 154/1-1.