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Structure of Dark Halos: Model-independent Information from HI Rotation Curves

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2013

Penny D. Sackett
Penny D. Sackett*
Affiliation:
Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, 9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands; psackett@astro.rug.nl
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Abstract

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Although the approximately flat rotation curves of gas in the outskirts of spirals are generally taken as strong evidence for spherical, isothermal dark matter halos, this conclusion is often incorrect and always model-dependent. A re-examination of the old and (nearly) model-independent inversion technique for determining the surface mass density of galaxies from their kinematics is presented. The method is shown to be relatively insensitive to noise in the kinematics. Due to incomplete kinematical knowledge at large radius, however, the surface mass density is reliable only in the inner half of the galaxy, a result that also applies to traditional rotation curve fitting techniques.

Keywords

galaxies: kineticsdynamics
Type
Research Article
Information
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , 1997 , pp. 11 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of Australia 1997

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