The statistical distribution of the neutral-hydrogen content of elliptical galaxies

Details The statistical distribution of the neutral-hydrogen content of elliptical galaxies The statistical distribution of the neutral-hydrogen content of elliptical galaxies

Mar 1985

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1985aj.....90..454k&link_type=abstract

Astronomical Journal (ISSN 0004-6256), vol. 90, March 1985, p. 454-468.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

175

Astronomical Catalogs, Elliptical Galaxies, Hydrogen Clouds, Neutral Gases, Statistical Distributions, Distribution Functions, Histograms

Scientific paper

An examination has been conducted of the form of the distribution function for the relative H I content, MH I/LB, of elliptical galaxies, using a data set derived from all recent H I observations of ellipticals in the literature. The characteristics of this combined data set are poorly defined, but upon examination it appears to be reassuringly free of built-in biases and correlations. The data set contains 152 galaxies; 23 of these have been detected in the H I line. The detected galaxies are shown to be more H I rich on average than the galaxies in the whole sample. A method for recovering the intrinsic distribution of MH I/LB, using both detection and upper-limit data, is described, and the data are shown to be consistent with a shallow power-law differential distribution N approximately (MH I/LB) to the -1.5th. This distribution is quite different from that for spirals, where N(MH I/LB) has a well-defined mean value and a small dispersion. This result strongly suggests that the gas and star contents of ellipticals are decoupled, i.e., the gas has an external origin.

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