Related papers: From kinematics to dynamics in thin galactic disk
The standard method of modelling axisymmetric stellar systems begins from the assumption that mass follows light. The gravitational potential is then derived from the luminosity distribution, and a unique two-integral distribution function…
We develop a method for reconstructing the two-dimensional, projected gravitational potential of galaxy clusters from observed line-of-sight velocity dispersions of cluster galaxies. It is the third of an intended series of papers aiming at…
A general inversion technique for the recovery of the underlying distribution function for observed galactic disks is presented and illustrated. Under the assumption that these disks are axi-symmetric and thin, the proposed method yields…
We present deep optical long-slit spectra of 17 edge-on spiral galaxies of intermediate to late morphological type, mostly parallel to their major axes and in a few cases parallel to the minor axes.The line-of-sight stellar kinematics are…
The deprojection of the surface brightness distribution of an axisymmetric galaxy does not have a unique solution unless the galaxy is viewed precisely edge-on. I present an algorithm that finds the full range of smooth axisymmetric density…
The gravitational potential and the gravitational rotation field generated by a thin-disk mass distribution with exponential density are considered in the case when the force between any two mass elements is not the usual Newtonian one, but…
The measured rotation velocity profiles of mature spiral galaxies are successfully described with a gravitational model consisting of a thin axisymmetric disk of finte radius. The disk is assumed uniformly thin but with variable radial mass…
We explored a method to reconstruct the distribution function of the Galactic thick disc within the action space where nearby thick-disc stars are distributed. By applying this method to 127 chemically-selected thick-disc stars in the Solar…
Galactic disks lie at the heart of many of the most pressing astrophysical puzzles. There are sophisticated kinetic theories that describe some aspects of galaxy disk dynamics, but extracting quantitative predictions from those theories has…
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…
In a disc galaxy the distribution of azimuthal components of velocity is very skew. In the past this skewness has been modelled by superposed Gaussians. We use dynamical arguments to derive an analytic formula that can be fitted to observed…
The stellar disc kinematics in a sample of fifteen intermediate- to late-type edge-on spiral galaxies are studied using a dynamical modeling technique. The sample covers a substantial range in maximum rotation velocity and deprojected…
We show that the kinematics of the shells seen around some elliptical galaxies provide a new, independent means for measuring the gravitational potentials of elliptical galaxies out to large radii. A numerical simulation of a set of shells…
We study the kinematics of a local sample of stars, located within a cylinder of 500 pc radius centered on the Sun, in the RAVE dataset. We find clear asymmetries in the $v_R$-$v_\phi$ velocity distributions of thin and thick disk stars:…
We present preliminary results on a new family of distribution functions that are able to generate axisymmetric, truncated (i.e., finite size) stellar dynamical models characterized by toroidal shapes. The relevant distribution functions…
A new method is developed which permits the reconstruction of the surface-density distribution in the galactic disk of finite radius from an arbitrary smooth distribution of the angular velocity via two simple quadratures. The existence of…
In this work, two new axisymmetric models for the Galactic mass distribution are presented. Motivated by recent results, these two models include the contribution of a stellar thin disc and of a thick disc, as massive as the thin…
We analyze the distribution of G and K type stars towards the Galactic poles using RAVE and ELODIE radial velocities, 2MASS photometric star counts, and UCAC2 proper motions. The combination of photometric and 3D kinematic data allows us to…
One of the major goals of the field of Milky Way dynamics is to recover the gravitational potential field. Mapping the potential would allow us to determine the spatial distribution of matter - both baryonic and dark - throughout the…
We calculate the distribution function of astronomical objects (like galaxies and/or smooth halos of different kinds) gravitational fields due to their tidal in- teraction. For that we apply the statistical method of Chandrasekhar (1943),…