Related papers: Accuracy and precision of triaxial orbit models II…
We present SMART, a new 3D implementation of the Schwarzschild Method and its application to a triaxial N-body merger simulation. SMART fits full line-of-sight velocity distributions (LOSVDs) to determine the viewing angles, black hole,…
We review the methods used to study the orbital structure and chaotic properties of various galactic models and to construct self-consistent equilibrium solutions by Schwarzschild's orbit superposition technique. These methods are…
We present Forstand, a new code for constructing dynamical models of galaxies with the Schwarzschild orbit-superposition method. These models are constrained by line-of-sight kinematic observations and applicable to galaxies of all…
We construct axisymmetric and triaxial galaxy models with a phase-space distribution function that depends on linear combinations of the three exact integrals of motion for a separable potential. These Abel models, first introduced by…
Barred structures are important in understanding galaxy evolution, but they were not included explicitly in most dynamical models for nearby galaxies due to their complicated morphological and kinematic properties. We modify the triaxial…
We describe an improved, practical method for constructing galaxy models that match an arbitrary set of observational constraints, without prior assumptions about the phase-space distribution function (DF). Our method is an extension of…
We present a new method to infer the 3D dimensional luminosity distributions of edge-on barred galaxies with boxy-peanut/X (BP/X) shaped structures from their 2D surface brightness distributions. Our method relies on forward modeling of…
We review the Schwarzschild orbit-superposition approach and present a new implementation of this method, which can deal with a large class of systems, including rotating barred disk galaxies. We discuss two conceptuals problems in this…
We model mock observations of collisionless N-body disc-disc mergers with an axisymmetric orbit superposition program that has been used to model Coma ellipticals. The remnants sample representatively the shapes of disc-disc mergers…
We evaluate the capabilities of Schwarzschild's orbit-superposition method by applying it to galaxies from the large scale, high resolution Illustris simulation. Nine early-type galaxies with a range of triaxiality are selected, and we…
Because of the 3D nature of galaxies, an algorithm for constructing spatial density distribution models of galaxies on the basis of galaxy images has many advantages over surface density distribution approximations. We present a method for…
We have developed a new geometrical method for identifying and reconstructing a homogeneous and highly complete set of galaxy groups in the next generation of deep, flux-limited redshift surveys. Our method combines information from the…
Evidence for the majority of the supermassive black holes in the local universe has been obtained dynamically from stellar motions with the Schwarzschild orbit superposition method. However, there have been only a handful of studies using…
We present a new study concerning the application of the Schwarzschild orbit superposition method to model spherical galaxies. The method aims to recover the mass and the orbit anisotropy parameter profiles of the objects using measurements…
We investigate how well the intrinsic shape of early-type galaxies can be recovered when both photometric and two-dimensional stellar kinematic observations are available. We simulate these observations with galaxy models that are…
An extension of Schwarzschild's galaxy-building technique is presented that, for the first time, enables one to build Schwarzschild models with known distribution functions (DFs). The new extension makes it possible to combine a DF that…
We present a flexible and efficient method to construct triaxial dynamical models of galaxies with a central black hole, using Schwarzschild's orbital superposition approach. Our method is general and can deal with realistic luminosity…
(ABRIDGED) We present a new Schwarzschild orbit-superposition code designed to model discrete datasets composed of velocities of individual kinematic tracers in a dynamical system. This constitutes an extension of previous implementations…
Since the turn of the century, astronomers have been exploiting the rich information afforded by combining stellar kinematic maps and imaging in an attempt to recover the intrinsic, three-dimensional (3D) shape of a galaxy. A common…
Combining redshift and galaxy shape information offers new exciting ways of exploiting the gravitational lensing effect for studying the large scales of the cosmos. One application is the three-dimensional reconstruction of the matter…