English

Measuring Galaxy Disk Mass with the SparsePak Integral Field Unit on WIYN

Astrophysics 2009-11-07 v1

Abstract

We present first results from commissioning data of the SparsePak Integral Field Unit on the WIYN telescope. SparsePak is a bundle of 82 fibers, each 5 arcsec in diameter and arranged in a sparsely filled, 76x77 arcsec hexagonal grid. NGC 3982, a nearly face-on, blue and very high surface brightness galaxy, was mapped in three spectral regions; around 5130A (MgI), 6680A (H-alpha) and 8660A (CaII-triplet) with FWHM spectral resolutions of 24, 16 and 37 km/s respectively. At 3.5 disk scale lengths, the spectra of 18 fibers were averaged after deprojection of the rotation curve. Stellar velocity dispersions were determined in the CaII region by convolving the spectrum of a K0.5-III template star with a Gaussian of varying FWHM and finding the best match to the azimuthally avaraged galaxy spectra. A radial mass surface density profile has been derived for a variety of scale heights assuming an isothermal vertical density profile. At two disk scale lengths, the mass surface density of N3982 is ~3 times higher than that of the Milky Way in the solar neighborhood. Surprisingly, the stellar rotation curve of this compact and high surface brightness galaxy is substantially sub-maximum.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0201354,
  title  = {Measuring Galaxy Disk Mass with the SparsePak Integral Field Unit on WIYN},
  author = {Marc Verheijen and Matthew Bershady and David Andersen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0201354},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

Short contribution (3 pages, 2 figures) to ESO workshop "Mass of Galaxies at Low and High Redshift", 24-26 October 2001, Venice, Italy

R2 v1 2026-07-22T08:07:07.969Z