NGC 1300 dynamics - I. The gravitational potential as a tool for detailed stellar dynamics

Gas and stellar dynamics in NGC 1068. Probing the galactic gravitational potential

We present SAURON integral field spectrography of the central 1.5 kpc of the nearby Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 1068, encompassing the well-known near-infrared inner bar observed in the K band. We have successively disentangled the respective contributions of the ionized gas and stars, thus deriving their two-dimensional distribution and kinematics. The [Oiii] and Hβ emission lines exhibit very differ...

Gravitational Dynamics of Large Stellar Systems

Internal dynamical evolution can drive stellar systems into states of high central density. For many star clusters and galactic nuclei, the time scale on which this occurs is significantly less than the age of the universe. As a result, such systems are expected to be sites of frequent interactions among stars, binary systems, and stellar remnants, making them efficient factories for the produc...

Simple dynamics as a tool

a. Applications of the Contraction Principle. The collection of simple dynamical systems with complicated orbit structure presented in Chapter 7 and revisited in Section 8.3 is representative of hyperbolic dynamical systems. Much of the core theory of hyperbolic dynamics consists of results that are obtained (more or less) directly from the Contraction Principle, which first appeared as an exam...

Probing dark matter distribution with gravitational lensing and stellar dynamics

The Lenses Structure and Dynamics (LSD) Survey aims at measuring the luminous and dark matter distribution of high redshift early-type galaxies by combining gravitational lens analysis with newly determined velocity dispersion profiles. Here we describe the first results from the LSD survey, a measurement of the internal structure of the lens galaxy in MG2016+112 (z = 1.004). The relevance of t...

Adiabatic Invariants in Stellar Dynamics .2. Gravitational Shocking