Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Dec 1999
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1999newa....4..543w&link_type=abstract
New Astronomy, vol. 4, no. 7, p. 543-555.
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Galaxies: Fundamental Parameters, Galaxies: Kinematics And Dynamics, Galaxies: Nuclei, Galaxies: Structure
Scientific paper
We investigate how well one can determine the gravitational potential in galactic centers from an analysis of the observed line-of-sight velocities of interstellar material, e.g. (giant) molecular clouds. In this paper, we aim to demonstrate the principle of our approach. Therefore, we use simulated sets of data. We model the mass distribution as a combination of a point-like central mass and an extended component. We calculate the observable distribution of line-of-sight velocities in the corresponding gravitational potential for different global flow patterns (purely circular motion, accretion disks, in- and outflows). We fit this data to previously unknown flow patterns and determine the degree of accuracy of the mass parameters by means of a Monte Carlo technique. We find that the best fit mass parameters typically differ from the true parameters by factors of 1 to 5 (with mass-parameters as expected for Seyfert Galaxies, a spectral resolution of 20 km/s, and a spatial distribution of 50 observed clouds within 300 pc), in some cases even more. This implies that, in addition to purely circular motion, other flow patterns should be considered when interpreting real data.
Duschl Wolfgang J.
Wittkowski Markus
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