In this paper we identify and study the properties of low mass dwarf satellites of a nearby Local Group analogue - the NGC-3175 galaxy group with the goal of investigating the nature of the lowest mass galaxies and the ‘ Missing Satellites ’ problem .
Deep imaging of nearby groups such as NGC-3175 are one of the only ways to probe these low mass galaxies which are important for problems in cosmology , dark matter and galaxy formation .
We discover 553 candidate dwarf galaxies in the group , the vast majority of which have never been studied before .
We obtained R and B band imaging , with the ESO 2.2m , around the central \sim 500kpc region of NGC-3175 , allowing us to detect galaxies down to \sim 23 mag ( M \textsubscript B \sim -7.7 mag ) in the B band .
In the absence of spectroscopic information , dwarf members and likely background galaxies are separated using colour , morphology and surface brightness criteria .
We compare the observed size , surface brightness and mass scaling relations to literature data .
The luminosity function with a faint end slope of \alpha = -1.31 , is steeper than that observed in the Local Group .
In comparison with simulations , we find that our observations are between a pure \Lambda CDM model and one involving baryonic effects , removing the apparent problem of finding too few satellites as seen around the Milky Way .