Related papers: Dynamical Mass Determination for Elliptical Galaxi…
A method is presented for finding anisotropic distribution functions for stellar systems with known, spherically symmetric, densities, which depends only on the two classical integrals of the energy and the magnitude of the angular…
We argue that combined observations of galaxy rotation curves and gravitational lensing not only allow the deduction of a galaxy's mass profile, but also yield information about the pressure in the galactic fluid. We quantify this statement…
We derive the average mass profile of elliptical galaxies from the ensemble of 161 strong gravitational lens systems selected from several surveys, assuming that the mass profile scales with the stellar mass and effective radius of each…
I present various projects to study the halo dynamics of elliptical galaxies. This allows one to study the outer mass and orbital distributions of ellipticals in different environments, and the inner distributions of groups and clusters…
Quantitative dynamical models of galaxies require deprojecting the observed surface brightness to determine the luminosity density of the galaxy. Existing deprojection methods for axisymmetric galaxies assume that a unique deprojection…
It is generally agreed that the rotational velocities of spiral galaxies indicate that a lot of matter is unseen. Hitherto, the majority of these mass models are all based on spherical symmetry, although this assumption is obviously not the…
It has recently been argued that the observed ellipticities of galaxies may be determined at least in part by the primordial tidal gravitational field in which the galaxy formed. Long-range correlations in the tidal field could thus lead to…
The information contained in galactic rotation curves is examined under a minimal set of assumptions. If emission occurs from stable circular geodesic orbits of a static spherically symmetric field, with information propagated to us along…
We present a systematic overview of granular deposits composed of ellipsoidal particles with different particle shapes and size polydispersities. We study the density and anisotropy of such deposits as functions of size polydispersity and…
A dynamic model of the Galaxy is constructed based on kinematic data for masers with trigonometric parallaxes. Maser data is used to compute the model potential in the Galactic plane. The potential is then generalized to three dimensions…
The integrated 21 cm H I emission profile of a galaxy encodes valuable information on the kinematics, spatial distribution, and dynamical state of its cold interstellar medium. The line width, in particular, reflects the rotation velocity…
The mass of a star is the most fundamental parameter for its structure, evolution, and final fate. It is particularly important for any kind of stellar archaeology and characterization of exoplanets. There exists a variety of methods in…
We take a sample of 24 elliptical and lenticular galaxies previously analysed by the SAURON project using three-integral dynamical models created with Schwarzschild's method, and re-analyse them using the made-to-measure (M2M) method of…
The last decade of research on elliptical galaxies has produced a wealth of new information concerning both their detailed structure and their global scaling relations. We review the old and new results about isophote shapes and…
(shortened for babbage) We describe (1) a new test for dark matter and alternate theories of gravitation based on the relative geometries of the X-ray and optical surface brightness distributions and an assumed form for the potential of the…
The dynamics of an elliptical galaxy within a couple of effective radii can be probed effectively by stars. However, at larger distances planetary nebulae (PNe) replace stars as the tracer of the dynamics. Making use of the motion of PNe,…
We have selected 42 elliptical galaxies from the literature and estimated their velocity dispersions at the effective radius ($\sigma_{\re}$) and at 0.54 effective radii ($\vff$). We find by a dynamical analysis that the normalized velocity…
We suggest the radii and luminosities of the X-ray emitting halos of elliptical galaxies define a fundamental plane with the star velocity dispersions, as for the corresponding optical observables. Since the X-ray emitting material usually…
We analyze two volume limited galaxy samples from the SDSS photometric and spectroscopic data to test the isotropy in the local Universe. We use information entropy to quantify the global anisotropy in the galaxy distribution at different…
Massive galaxies, such as nearby ellipticals, have relatively low number densities, yet they host the majority of the stellar mass in the universe. Understanding their origin is a central problem of galaxy formation. Age dating of stellar…