Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2012
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21910205m&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #102.05
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Dark matter is now ubiquitous in galactic astronomy, yet our understanding of both its extent, shape, and influence on the evolution of galaxies remains poorly understood. In the case of giant elliptical galaxies, which typically reside in dense environments and accumulate their mass via a range of processes, yet maintain tight scaling relations between a wide variety of their parameters, our understanding of the dizzying variety of mechanisms involved is a work in progress. To this end I will discuss an ongoing project being carried out at McDonald Observatory using the VIRUS-P integral field spectrograph to characterize the dark matter halos, stellar anisotropy and stellar abundance patterns of the most massive galaxies in the local universe from measurements of integrated stellar light. We have observed 23 giant elliptical galaxies over a range of environments. Seven of the 23 galaxies in our data set our Brightest Cluster Galaxies (BCG). I will present spectra and kinematics for a subsample of the survey. Three-integral axisymmetric dynamical modeling, based on Schwarzschild's method of orbit-superposition, will be presented for 3 BCGs in our sample (NGC 4472, M87 and NGC 2832). For the case of M87 we have data extending to 5 effective radii which allows for a direct comparison between stellar kinematics and other mass tracers typically used at large radial distances where the stellar light has historically been too faint to extract reliable kinematics. The mass distribution of all 3 of these galaxies is dominated by their dark matter halo at large radii. The degree of stellar radial and tangential anisotropy of the stars is returned from the modeling process. I will discuss how the stellar anisotropy, combined with stellar abundance patterns from measurements of the Lick indices, can be used to infer how the most massive galaxies accumulated their mass over time.
Gebhardt Karl
Graves Genevieve
Greene Jenny E.
Murphy Jeremy
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