Morphological Properties of Elliptical Galaxies

Elliptical Galaxies

Morphological Evolution in High Redshift Radio Galaxies and the Formation of Giant Elliptical Galaxies

We present deep near–infrared images of high redshift radio galaxies (HzRGs) obtained with the Near Infrared Camera (NIRC) on the Keck I telescope. In most cases, the near–IR data sample rest wavelengths free of contamination from strong emission lines and at λrest > 4000Å, where older stellar populations, if present, might dominate the observed flux. At z > 3, the rest–frame optical morphologi...

Modes of Elliptical Galaxies

Long lived modes of elliptical galaxies can existà la van Kampen. Specific systems may possess long lived oscillations which Landau damp on time scales longer than a Hubble time. Some physical processes such as a close encounter, tidal forces from a cluster or an orbiting satellite could preferentially excite a coherent mode. These may relate to the observed faint structure in elliptical galaxi...

Prevalence and Properties of Dark Matter in Elliptical Galaxies

Given the recently deduced relationship between X-ray temperatures and stellar velocity dispersions (the “T–σ relation”) in an optically complete sample of elliptical galaxies (Davis & White 1996), we demonstrate that L > L∗ ellipticals contain substantial amounts of dark matter in general. We present constraints on the dark matter scale length and on the dark-to-luminous mass ratio within the ...

Gravo-thermal properties and formation of elliptical galaxies

We have analyzed a sample of galaxies belonging to three clusters: Coma, Abell 85, and Abell 496 (real galaxies) and a sample of simulated elliptical galaxies formed in a hierarchical merging scheme (virtual galaxies). We use the Sérsic law to describe their light profile. The specific entropy (BoltzmannGibbs definition) is then calculated supposing that the galaxies behave as spherical, isotro...