WISDOM project -- XVIII. Molecular gas distributions and kinematics of three megamaser galaxies

(2023)

Authors:

Fu-Heng Liang, Mark D Smith, Martin Bureau, Feng Gao, Timothy A Davis, Michele Cappellari, Jacob S Elford, Jenny E Greene, Satoru Iguchi, Federico Lelli, Anan Lu, Ilaria Ruffa, Thomas G Williams, Hengyue Zhang

Supermassive black hole mass in the massive elliptical galaxy M87 from integral-field stellar dynamics using OASIS and MUSE with adaptive optics: assessing systematic uncertainties

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) 527:2 (2023) 2341-2361

Authors:

David A Simon, Michele Cappellari, Johanna Hartke

Bright-Moon sky as a wide-field linear Polarimetric flat source for calibration

Astronomy & Astrophysics EDP Sciences 679 (2023) A68-A68

Authors:

S Maharana, S Kiehlmann, D Blinov, V Pelgrims, V Pavlidou, K Tassis, JA Kypriotakis, AN Ramaprakash, RM Anche, A Basyrov, K Deka, HK Eriksen, T Ghosh, E Gjerløw, N Mandarakas, E Ntormousi, GV Panopoulou, A Papadaki, T Pearson, SB Potter, ACS Readhead, R Skalidis, IK Wehus

Abstract:

Context. Next-generation wide-field optical polarimeters such as Wide-Area Linear Optical Polarimeters (WALOPs) have a field of view (FoV) of tens of arcminutes. Wide-field polarimetric flat sources are essential to the efficient and accurate calibration of these instruments. However, no established wide-field polarimetric standard or flat sources exist at present. Aims. This study tests the feasibility of using the polarized sky patches of the size of around 10 × 10 arcminutes2, at a distance of up to 20° from the Moon, on bright-Moon nights as a wide-field linear polarimetric flat source. Methods. We observed 19 patches of the sky adjacent to the bright-Moon with the RoboPol instrument in the SDSS-r broadband filter. These patches were observed on five nights within two days of the full-Moon across two RoboPol observing seasons. Results. We find that for 18 of the 19 patches, the uniformity in the measured normalized Stokes parameters q and u is within 0.2%, with 12 patches exhibiting uniformity within 0.07% or better for both q and u simultaneously, making them reliable and stable wide-field linear polarization flats. Conclusions. We demonstrate that the sky on bright-Moon nights is an excellent wide-field linear polarization flat source. Various combinations of the normalized Stokes parameters q and u can be obtained by choosing suitable locations of the sky patch with respect to the Moon.

MaNGA DynPop – IV. Stacked total density profile of galaxy groups and clusters from combining dynamical models of integral-field stellar kinematics and galaxy–galaxy lensing

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) 527:1 (2023) 1580-1593

Authors:

Chunxiang Wang, Ran Li, Kai Zhu, Huanyuan Shan, Weiwei Xu, Michele Cappellari, Liang Gao, Nan Li, Shengdong Lu, Shude Mao, Ji Yao, Yushan Xie

MaNGA DynPop – III. Stellar dynamics vs. stellar population relations in 6000 early-type and spiral galaxies: fundamental plane, mass-to-light ratios, total density slopes, and dark matter fractions

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press 527:1 (2023) 706-730

Authors:

Kai Zhu, Shengdong Lu, Michele Cappellari, Ran Li, Shude Mao, Liang Gao, Junqiang Ge

Abstract:

We present dynamical scaling relations, combined with the stellar population properties, for a subsample of about 6000 nearby galaxies with the most reliable dynamical models extracted from the full Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) sample of 10 000 galaxies. We show that the inclination-corrected mass plane for both early-type galaxies (ETGs) and late-type galaxies (LTGs), which links dynamical mass, projected half-light radius Re, and the second stellar velocity moment σe within Re, satisfies the virial theorem and is even tighter than the uncorrected one. We find a clear parabolic relation between lg(M/L)e, the total mass-to-light ratio (M/L) within a sphere of radius Re, and lg σe, with the M/L increasing with σe and for older stellar populations. However, the relation for ETGs is linear and the one for the youngest galaxies is constant. We confirm and improve the relation between mass-weighted total density slopes γT and σe: γT become steeper with increasing σe until lg(σe/km s−1) ≈ 2.2 and then remain constant around γT ≈ 2.2. The γT –σe variation is larger for LTGs than ETGs. At fixed σe the total density profiles steepen with galaxy age and for ETGs. We find generally low dark matter fractions, median fDM(