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Title: The RINGS Survey. III. Medium-resolution Hα Fabry–Pérot Kinematic Data Set

Journal Article · · Astronomical Journal (New York, N.Y. Online)
; ;  [1];  [2];  [3];  [4]
  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, 136 Frelinghuysen Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854 (United States)
  2. Department of Physics, Royal Military College of Canada, P.O. Box 17000, Station Forces, Kingston, Ontario K7K 7B4 (Canada)
  3. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30302 (United States)
  4. Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory, The University Of Arizona, 933 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721 (United States)

The distributions of stars, gas, and dark matter in disk galaxies provide important constraints on galaxy formation models, particularly on small spatial scales (<1 kpc). We have designed the RSS Imaging spectroscopy Nearby Galaxy Survey (RINGS) to target a sample of 19 nearby spiral galaxies. For each of these galaxies, we obtain and model Hα and H i 21 cm spectroscopic data as well as multi-band photometric data. We intend to use these models to explore the underlying structure and evolution of these galaxies in a cosmological context, as well as whether the predictions of ΛCDM are consistent with the mass distributions of these galaxies. In this paper, we present spectroscopic imaging data for 14 of the RINGS galaxies observed with the medium spectral resolution Fabry–Pérot etalon on the Southern African Large Telescope. From these observations, we derive high spatial resolution line-of-sight velocity fields of the Hα line of excited hydrogen, as well as maps and azimuthally averaged profiles of the integrated Hα and [N ii] emission and oxygen abundances. We then model these kinematic maps with axisymmetric models, from which we extract rotation curves and projection geometries for these galaxies. We show that our derived rotation curves agree well with other determinations, and the similarity of the projection angles with those derived from our photometric images argues against these galaxies having intrinsically oval disks.

OSTI ID:
22897420
Journal Information:
Astronomical Journal (New York, N.Y. Online), Vol. 155, Issue 3; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1538-3881
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English