Issue |
Astron. Astrophys. Suppl. Ser.
Volume 140, Number 2, December I 1999
|
|
---|---|---|
Page(s) | 247 - 260 | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/aas:1999421 | |
Published online | 15 December 1999 |
On the automatic folding of optical rotation curves
School of Mathematics, Sheffield University, Sheffield, S3 7RH, UK
Send offprint request to: D.F. Roscoe
Received:
7
June
1999
Accepted:
6
September
1999
Mathewson, Ford and Buchhorn (1992, MFB hereafter) published the
unreduced data for the optical rotation curves of 967 southern sky spiral
galaxies.
Recognizing that accurate dynamical modelling of spiral galaxies required the
availability of a large data-base of correspondingly accurately folded
rotation curves, Persic & Salucci (1995, PS hereafter) undertook to fold the
MFB sample in an appropriately meticulous way; of the 967 folded rotation
curves, 900 were judged by PS to be of moderate to excellent quality, whilst
67 were judged to be of poor quality and of very limited use for dynamical
studies.
The folding process used by PS was a time-consuming and labour-intensive one
in which the quality of each fold was judged "by eye”.
Subsequently, MFB (1996) published the unreduced optical rotation curves for
approximately another 1100 southern sky spirals and, undoubtedly, more will
follow from various sources.
For this reason, and because of the importance of having large numbers
of accurately folded rotation curves for dynamical studies, we have developed
the automatic folding algorithm described herein.
An uncompiled Fortran program (using NAG routines) and data files are available
via http://www.shef.ac.uk/ ap1dfr.
Download the text file "ReadMe” and follow instructions.
Key words: methods: numerical / galaxies: kinematics and dynamics
© European Southern Observatory (ESO), 1999