Work

Triaxial orbit based galaxy models with an application to the (apparent) decoupled core galaxy NGC 4365

Year: 2008

Type: article

Abstract: We present a flexible and efficient method to construct triaxial dynamical models of galaxies with a central black hole, using Schwarzschild's orbital superposition approach. Our method is general and can deal with realistic luminosity distributions, which project to surface brightness distributions that may show position angle twists and ellipticity variations. The models are fit to measurements of the full line-of-sight velocity distribution (wherever available). We verify that our method is able to reproduce theoretical predictions of a three-integral triaxial Abel model. In a companion paper by Ven, de Zeeuw & van den Bosch, we demonstrate that the method recovers the phase-space distribution function. We apply our method to two-dimensional observations of the E3 galaxy NGC 4365, obtained with the integral-field spectrograph SAURON, and study its internal structure, showing that the observed kinematically decoupled core is not physically distinct from the main body and the inner region is close to oblate axisymmetric.

Source: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.12874.x

Authors: R. C. E. van den Bosch, G. van de Ven, E. K. Verolme, M. Cappellari, P. T. de Zeeuw

Institutions: Leiden University, Leiden Observatory, Institute for Advanced Study, University of Oxford, European Southern Observatory

Language: English

Topic: Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena

Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green