John Magorrian

Abstract:

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 distributions consistent with a given surface brightness distribution and inclination angle, and use it to investigate the effects of this non-uniqueness on the line-of-sight velocity profiles (VPs) of two-integral models of both real and toy discy galaxies viewed at a range of inclination angles. Photometrically invisible face-on discs leave very clear signatures in the minor-axis VPs of the models (Gauss-Hermite coefficients h4 ≳ 0.1), provided the disc-to-bulge ratio is greater than about 3 per cent. I discuss the implications of these hitherto neglected discs for dynamical modelling.

Abstract:

We construct dynamical models for a sample of 36 nearby galaxies with Hubble Space Telescope (HST) photometry and ground-based kinematics. The models assume that each galaxy is axisymmetric, with a two-integral distribution function, arbitrary inclination angle, a position-independent stellar mass-to-light ratio Y, and a central massive dark object (MDO) of arbitrary mass M•. They provide acceptable fits to 32 of the galaxies for some value of M• and Y; the four galaxies that cannot be fitted have kinematically decoupled cores. The mass-to-light ratios inferred for the 32 well-fitted galaxies are consistent with the fundamental-plane correlation Y ∝ L0.2, where L is galaxy luminosity. In all but six galaxies the models require at the 95% confidence level an MDO of mass M• ∼ 0.006Mbulge ≡ 0.006YL. Five of the six galaxies consistent with M• = 0 are also consistent with this correlation. The other (NGC 7332) has a much stronger upper limit on M•. We predict the second-moment profiles that should be observed at HST resolution for the 32 galaxies that our models describe well. We consider various parameterizations for the probability distribution describing the correlation of the masses of these MDOs with other galaxy properties. One of the best models can be summarized thus: a fraction f ≃ 0.97 of early-type galaxies have MDOs, whose masses are well described by a Gaussian distribution in log (M•/Mbulge) of mean -2.28 and standard deviation ∼0.51. There is also marginal evidence that M• is distributed differently for "core" and "power law" galaxies, with core galaxies having a somewhat steeper dependence on Mbulge.