The ionized gas in the spiral galaxy NGC 3359

II. Kinematics

¹ Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, E-38200 La Laguna, Tenerife, Canarias, Spain
² Department of Physical Sciences, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, Herts, AL10 9AB, UK

Send offprint request to: J.E. Beckman

Received: 7 June 1999
Accepted: 2 December 1999

Abstract


The spiral galaxy NGC 3359 has been observed in the Hα line with the TAURUS II Fabry-Perot interferometer at the William Herschel Telescope within the BARS programme on the Canary Island telescopes in order to study the kinematics of the ionized gas.
We have produced maps of velocity and velocity dispersion, and computed the rotation curve out to ~ 3 scale lengths from the centre of the galaxy. From the map of the residual velocities, obtained after subtracting off the systemic rotation, we detected streaming motions in the gas across the spiral arms and the presence of non-circular motions of order 30-40 km s^-1 around the bar: the gas response to the gravitational potential. The velocity dispersion map shows typical values of order 15 km s^-1 for the Hii regions, but also reveals major wings of high dispersion associated with the most luminous, density-limited regions.