Introduction Recent results Publications MPE OPINAS Dynamics Group
INTRODUCTION
The study of kinematic properties, angular momentum and amount of dark matter in the halos of earlytype galaxies (ETGs) is limited by the rapid fall-off of the stellar surface brightness. This difficulty can be overcome by using radial velocities of Planetary Nebulae (PNe), which can be obtained much further out than traditional absorption-line kinematics, given their bright [OIII] emission lines. The use of PNe allowed us to measure for the very first time two-dimensional velocity and velocity dispersion fields out to ~6-9 effective radii in nearby ETGs.
RECENT RESULTS
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| Figure 1. DSS image of NGC 4474 with PNe data superimposed. Crosses represent the position of each PNe; colors indicate the mean value of the two-dimensional velocity field reconstructed from the PNe data. Iso-velocity contours are also shown. The field of view is 11'x11', North is up, East is left. | Figure 2. Radial
profile of the angular momentum proxy LR. Red and blue profiles are
taken from the SAURON sample (Emsellem et al. 2007) and represent slow
rotators (galaxies with LR < 0.1) and fast rotators (LR > 0.1),
respectively. Black profiles are computed using PNe radial velocity
measurements. |
Over the past years we conducted an observational campain with the Planetary Nebulae Spectrograph (Douglas et al. 2002) aimed to measure the radial velocities of PNe in the halos of ETGs (see Figure 1). In our first official data release (Coccato et al. 2009) we combined absorption line data and PNe radial velocity measurements in 16 ETGs. Our analysis showed that: i) PNe are good tracers of the mean stellar population kinematics, as their kinematics and number density agrees with the stellar absorption line kinematics and surface brightness; ii) outer halos have more complex radial profiles of the lR parameter (a proxy for the angular momentum, Emsellem et al. 2007) than observed within 1 Re. Interestingly, in the halo, some fast rotators have declining lR radial profiles, almost reaching the slow rotator regime, while some slow rotators have slowly increasing lR profiles, which reach the fast rotator regime (see Figure 2); iii) the velocity dispersion profiles fall into two groups, with part of the galaxies characterized by slowly decreasing profiles and the remainder having steeply falling profiles; iv) the halo kinematics are correlated with other galaxy properties, such as luminosity, shape, total stellar mass, V/s, and number of PNe per unit luminosity, with a clear distinction between fast and slow rotators.
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PUBLICATIONS
Coccato, L., Gerhard, O., Arnaboldi, M., Das, P., Douglas, N. G., Kuijken, K., et al. 2009, MNRAS, 394, 1249.
Kinematic properties of early-type galaxy haloes using planetary nebulae. 2009MNRAS.394.1249C
Coccato, L., Gerhard, O., Arnaboldi, M., Das, P., Douglas, N. G., Kuijken, K., et al. 2008, AN, 329, 912.
Probing the kinematics of early-type galaxy halos using planetary nebulae. 2008AN....329..912C
Noordermeer, E., Merrifield, M. R., Coccato, L., Arnaboldi, M., Capaccioli, M., Douglas, N. G., et al. 2008, MNRAS, 384, 943.
Testing the nature of S0 galaxies using planetary nebula kinematics in NGC 1023. 2008MNRAS.384..943N
Douglas, N. G., Napolitano, N. R., Romanowsky, A. J., Coccato, L., Kuijken, K., Merrifield, M. R., et al. 2007, ApJ, 664, 257.
The PN.S Elliptical Galaxy Survey: Data Reduction, Planetary Nebula Catalog, and Basic Dynamics for NGC 3379. 2007ApJ...664..257D
Merrett, H. R., Merrifield, M. R., Douglas, N. G., Kuijken, K., Romanowsky, A. J., Napolitano, N. R., et al. 2006, MNRAS, 369, 120.
A deep kinematic survey of planetary nebulae in the Andromeda galaxy using the Planetary Nebula Spectrograph. 2006MNRAS.369..120M