Related papers: Measuring Galaxy Potentials using Shell Kinematics
The class of tidal features around galaxies known variously as "shells" or "umbrellas" comprises debris that has arisen from high-mass-ratio mergers with low impact parameter; the nearly radial orbits of the debris give rise to a unique…
We present a new deep optical study of a luminosity limited sample of nearby elliptical galaxies, attempting to observe the effects of gravitational interactions on the ISM of these objects. This study is motivated by recent observations of…
Gravitational lensing has now become a popular tool to measure the mass distribution of structures in the Universe on various scales. Here we focus on the study of galaxy's scale dark matter halos with galaxy-galaxy lensing techniques:…
We analyze six X-ray bright elliptical galaxies, observed with Chandra and XMM-Newton, and approximate their gravitational potentials by isothermal spheres phi(r)=v_c^2 ln(r) over a range of radii from ~0.5 to ~25 kpc. We then compare the…
We explore the possibility that an intrinsic correlation between galaxy ellipticities arising during the galaxy formation process may account for part of the shear signal recently reported by several groups engaged in weak lensing surveys.…
Recent spectroscopic observations of planetary nebulae (PNe) in several elliptical galaxies have revealed structural and kinematical properties of the outer stellar halo regions. In order to elucidate the origin of the properties of these…
Context. Stellar shells, which form axially symmetric systems of arcs in some elliptical galaxies, are most likely remnants of radial minor mergers. They are observed up a radius of $\sim$100 kpc. The stars in them oscillate in radial…
I set the stage for discussion of the stellar populations in interacting galaxies by looking back over the slow development of our understanding of these systems. From early anecdotal collections, to systematic cataloging, and finally to…
Galaxy spectra are a rich source of kinematical information since the shapes of the absorption lines reflect the movement of stars along the line-of-sight. We present a technique to directly build a dynamical model for a galaxy by fitting…
If properly calibrated, the shapes of galaxy clusters can be used to investigate many physical processes: from feedback and quenching of star formation, to the nature of dark matter. Theorists frequently measure shapes using moments 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…
The combination of strong gravitational lensing and stellar kinematics provides a powerful and robust method to investigate the mass and dynamical structure of early-type galaxies. We demonstrate this approach by analysing two massive…
The Galaxy inner parts are generally considered to be optically symmetric, as well as kinematically symmetric for most massive early-type galaxies. At the lower-mass end, many galaxies contain lots of small patches in their velocity maps,…
We study dynamical models for elliptical galaxies, deriving the projected kinematic profiles in a form that is valid for general surface-brightness profiles and (spherical) total mass profiles, without the need for any explicit…
These lectures are intended to provide an introduction to the rich interplay between N-body simulations and stellar-kinematic observations of galaxies. The first section describes the kinematic properties of galaxies that are accessible to…
Observations show that early-type galaxies contain a considerable amount of interstellar dust, most of which is believed to exist as a diffusely distributed component. We construct a four-parameter elliptical galaxy model in order to…
The parameters of an axisymmetric model for the gravitational potential of the Galaxy have been refined. The basic curve of the Galaxy's rotation in a distance interval of $R:0-190$ kpc was constructed using the velocities of masers,…
Using a population of large-scale filaments extracted from an AREPO simulation of a Milky Way-like galaxy, we seek to understand the extent to which observed large-scale filament properties (with lengths $\gtrsim 100$ pc) can be explained…
We present an analytic method for rapidly forecasting the accuracy of gravitational potential reconstruction possible from measurement of radial peculiar velocities of every galaxy cluster with M > M_th in solid angle \theta^2 and over…
The morphology of a disk galaxy is closely linked to its kinematic state. This is because density wave features are likely made of spontaneously-formed modes which are allowed to arise in the galactic resonant cavity of a particular basic…