Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Sep 1993
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1993pasp..105..999r&link_type=abstract
Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Publications (ISSN 0004-6280), vol. 105, no. 691, p. 999-1005.
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
19
Cosmic Dust, Early Stars, Infrared Photometry, Interstellar Extinction, Spiral Galaxies, Stellar Luminosity, Extremely High Frequencies, Optical Thickness, Stellar Color
Scientific paper
We present optical and IR surface photometry of M51 (NGC 5194) at B, V, R, I, J, K, and CO. These data are used to establish whether K-band images of spiral galaxies provide reliable maps of stellar surface mass density features such as massive spiral arms or bars. The main distorting agents in the mapping at shorter wavelengths are dust extinction and luminous young stars. From modeling the color changes across the main dust lanes in M51, we find the optical depths to be about 0.5 in the K band. For these optical depths the K-band flux is attenuated by only less than 10 percent even in the dust lanes. From monitoring the gravity-sensitive CO index across the spiral arms we find that young red supergiants do not significantly distort the K-band image. On this basis, we conclude that K-band images do trace the massive disk star population and allow to map azimuthal variation in the surface mass density of the stellar disk. In M51 we find the surface mass density contrast to range from 1.8 to 3, as expected from N-body simulations of the galaxy's tidal encounter with NGC 5195. The spiral arm amplitude in M51 clearly shows smooth, strong radial variations, with a maximum at about 130 arcsec and minima at 45 and 170 arcsec.
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