Integral field spectroscopy of 23 spiral bulges

Journal article

We have obtained integral-field spectroscopy for 23 spiral bulges using INTEGRAL on the William Herschel Telescope and SPIRAL on the Anglo-Australian Telescope. This is the first two-dimensional survey directed solely at the bulges of spiral galaxies. Eleven galaxies of the sample do not have previous measurements of the stellar velocity dispersion (σ*). These data are designed to complement our Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph program for estimating black hole masses in the range 106-108 M ⊙ using gas kinematics from nucleated disks. These observations will serve to derive the stellar dynamical bulge properties using the traditional Mg b and Ca II triplets. We use both cross-correlation and maximum penalized likelihood to determine projected σ* in these systems and present radial velocity fields, major axis rotation curves, curves of growth, and σ* fields. Using cross-correlation to extract the low-order two-dimensional stellar dynamics we generally see coherent radial rotation and irregular velocity dispersion fields suggesting that is a nontrivial parameter to estimate. © 2005, The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

Authors: Batcheldor, D; Axon, D; Merritt, D; Hughes, M; Marconi, A

• Publication status: Published
• Journal: ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL SUPPLEMENT SERIES
• Volume: 160
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 76-86
• Publication date: 2005-09-01
• DOI: 10.1086/431483
• ISSN: 0067-0049
• Language: English
• Keywords: techniques : spectroscopic; stellar dynamics; galaxies : spiral; galaxies : kinematics and dynamics