The Shape of Dark Matter Haloes IV. The Structure of Stellar Discs in Edge-on Galaxies

We present optical and near-infrared archival observations of eight edge-on galaxies. These observations are used to model the stellar content of each galaxy using the FitSKIRT software package. Using FitSKIRT, we can self-consistently model a galaxy in each band simultaneously while treating for du...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2016-08
Main Authors: Peters, S P C, de Geyter, G, P C van der Kruit, Freeman, K C
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cosmic dust
Dark matter
Galactic rotation
Galaxies
Scale height
Stars & galaxies
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We present optical and near-infrared archival observations of eight edge-on galaxies. These observations are used to model the stellar content of each galaxy using the FitSKIRT software package. Using FitSKIRT, we can self-consistently model a galaxy in each band simultaneously while treating for dust. This allows us to accurately measure both the scale length and scale height of the stellar disc, plus the shape parameters of the bulge. By combining this data with the previously reported integrated magnitudes of each galaxy, we can infer their true luminosities. We have successfully modelled seven out of the eight galaxies in our sample. We find that stellar discs can be modelled correctly, but have not been able to model the stellar bulge reliably. Our sample consists for the most part of slow rotating galaxies, and we find that the average dust layer is much thicker than what is reported for faster rotating galaxies.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1608.05563