THE MASS OF THE MILKY WAY AND M31 USING THE METHOD OF LEAST ACTION

Journal Article · Tue Oct 01 04:00:00 EDT 2013 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/775/2/102· OSTI ID:22270833

Phelps, Steven ^[1]; Nusser, Adi ^[2]; Desjacques, Vincent ^[3]

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1. Physics Department, Technion, Haifa 32000 (Israel)
2. Physics Department and the Asher Space Science Institute, Technion, Haifa 32000 (Israel)
3. Departement de Physique Theorique and Center for Astroparticle Physics, Universite de Geneva, CH-1211 Geneva (Switzerland)

We constrain the most likely range of masses for the Milky Way (MW) and M31 using an application of the numerical action method (NAM) that optimizes the fit to observed parameters over a large ensemble of NAM-generated solutions. Our 95% confidence level mass ranges, 1.5-4.5 × 10{sup 12} M{sub ☉} for MW and 1.5-5.5 × 10{sup 12} M{sub ☉} for M31, are consistent with the upper range of estimates from other methods and suggests that a larger proportion of the total mass becomes detectable when the peculiar motions of many nearby satellites are taken into account in the dynamical analysis. We test the method against simulated Local Group catalogs extracted from the Millennium Run to confirm that mass predictions are consistent with actual galaxy halo masses.

• OSTI ID: 22270833
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 775; ISSN ASJOAB; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
ASTRONOMY
ASTROPHYSICS
CALCULATION METHODS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
COSMOLOGY
MASS
MILKY WAY