Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2012
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21944121g&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #441.21
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Planetary Nebulae (PNe) are excellent kinematic probes of old stars in nearby galaxies. They are extremely bright in [O III], present in stellar populations with ages between 0.1 and 10 Gyr, and their radial velocities can be measured to 3 km/s precision with fiber-fed spectrographs. Narrow-band imaging has been used to identify between 40 and 500 PN candidates in six nearby spirals (IC 342, M74, M94, M101, NGC 2403, and NGC 6946), as well as >640 possible PNe in the Virgo Cluster. We have recently obtained spectra of a large sample of these extragalactic PN candidates using the Hydra multi-fiber spectrograph on the WIYN telescope. Here we describe the details of applying various IRAF tasks to reduce more than 10,100 spectra (including sky spectra and objects targeted multiple times) and to measure radial velocities and uncertainties. In each of the spirals, the PN velocities clearly show rotation at a speed slightly less than the gas, demonstrating the presence of asymmetric drift. The spectra from the targets in the Virgo Cluster fields are a mixture of true PNe and background Lyman Alpha Emitting galaxies (LAEs). The PN velocities and LAE galaxy spectra will be further analyzed elsewhere.
This research was part of the NAU summer REU program and we gratefully acknowledge funding from the National Science Foundation (AST-1004107).
Ciardullo Robin
Gillman Farris
Herrmann Kimberly A.
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Ragonee Silmam
Paper is very well done and informative.
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