Related papers: Accurate masses for dispersion-supported galaxies
By manipulating the spherical Jeans equation, Wolf et al. (2010) show that the mass enclosed within the 3D deprojected half-light radius r_1/2 can be determined with only mild assumptions about the spatial variation of the stellar velocity…
The observed stellar kinematics of dispersion-supported galaxies are often used to measure dynamical masses. Recently, several analytical relationships between the stellar line-of-sight velocity dispersion, the projected (2D) or deprojected…
Starting with the spherical Jeans equation, we show that there exists a radius where the mass enclosed depends only on the projected tangential velocity dispersion, assuming that the anisotropy profile slowly varies. This is…
We present the recently derived Wolf et al. (2009) mass estimator, which is applicable for spherical pressure-supported stellar systems spanning over ten orders of magnitude in luminosity, as a tool to test galaxy formation theories. We…
Using collisionless N-body simulations of dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way (MW) we construct realistic models of dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies of the Local Group. The dwarfs are initially composed of stellar disks embedded in dark…
(abridged) We apply the Jeans equation to estimate masses for eight of the brightest dSph galaxies. For Fornax we obtain a model-independent constraint on the maximum-circular velocity, Vmax=18_{-3}^{+5} km/s. Although we obtain only…
We introduce a method for measuring the slopes of mass profiles within dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies directly from stellar spectroscopic data and without adopting a dark matter halo model. Our method combines two recent results: 1)…
Mass estimators are a key tool to infer the dark matter content in pressure-supported systems like dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs). We construct an estimator for enclosed masses based on the virial theorem which is insensitive to…
Precise measurements of mass in dark matter dominated dwarf spheroidal galaxies are of great importance for testing the theories of structure formation. We use $N$-body simulations of the tidal evolution of a dwarf galaxy orbiting the Milky…
We construct axisymmetric mass models for dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies in the Milky Way to obtain plausible limits on the non-spherical structure of their dark halos. This is motivated by the fact that the observed luminous parts of the…
We investigate the reliability of mass estimators based on the observable velocity dispersion and half-light radius $R_\mathrm{h}$ for dispersion-supported galaxies. We show how to extend them to flattened systems and provide simple…
Thanks to instrumental advances, new, very large kinematic datasets for nearby dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies are on the horizon. A key aim of these datasets is to help determine the distribution of dark matter in these galaxies. Past…
The observed velocity dispersion of the classical dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies of the Milky Way (MW) requires the Newtonian stellar mass-to-light ($M_*/L$) ratios in the range of about 10 to more than 100 solar units that are well…
The Galactic dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) provide valuable insight into dark matter (DM) properties and its role in galaxy formation. Their close proximity enables the measurement of line-of-sight velocities for resolved stars, which…
We examine scaling relations of dispersion-supported galaxies over more than eight orders of magnitude in luminosity by transforming standard fundamental plane parameters into a space of mass (M1/2), radius (r1/2), and luminosity (L1/2). We…
Assuming spherical symmetry and dynamical equilibrium within a given gravitational potential, a dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxy's globally averaged stellar velocity dispersion depends entirely on the shape of its stellar density profile.…
We use a suite of high-resolution cosmological dwarf galaxy simulations to test the accuracy of commonly-used mass estimators from Walker et al.(2009) and Wolf et al.(2010), both of which depend on the observed line-of-sight velocity…
The spherical Jeans equation is a widely used tool for dynamical study of gravitating systems in astronomy. Here we test its efficacy in robustly weighing the mass of Milky Way analogues, given they need not be in equilibrium or even…
We identify a large sample of isolated bright galaxies and their fainter satellites in the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS). We analyse the dynamics of ensembles of these galaxies selected according to luminosity and morphological type…
We forecast parameter uncertainties on the mass profile of a typical Milky Way dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxy using the spherical Jeans Equation and Fisher matrix formalism. We show that radial velocity measurements for 1000 individual…