Bibcode
Buta, Ronald J.; Laurikainen, Eija; Salo, Heikki; Knapen, Johan H.
Bibliographical reference
NOAO Proposal ID #2009A-0101
Advertised on:
2
2009
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
Angular momentum exchange between a bar and a massive halo is thought to
be responsible for producing strong bars in disk galaxies (Athanassoula,
2003), while gas transport to the center is believed to weaken or even
dissolve bars (Bournaud and Combes 2002). We are carrying out a
systematic survey of early-type disk galaxies with the main emphasis to
derive the distribution of their bar strengths and to examine their
Fourier amplitude properties. We propose to use FLAMINGOS with the KPNO
2.1m to obtain 2.2(micron) K_s-band observations of 16 galaxies for the
``Near-Infrared S0 Survey", a project already in progress to measure the
bulge, disk, and bar properties of a statistically well-defined sample
of 184 galaxies in the type range S0^- to Sa, including some possibly
mis-classified elliptical galaxies. The principal goals of the survey,
which was started 5 years ago and is now 90% completed, are to allow us
to (1) compare relative Fourier near- IR intensity profiles of observed
early-type galaxy bars with equivalent Fourier mass profiles of various
Athanassoula models; (2) derive the distribution of bar strengths for
the early-type sample and compare it with the known distribution for
spirals; and (3) examine the properties of bulges and disks in
early-type galaxies in order to better understand the origin of bulges
(classical verus pseudo) in such galaxies. Our study is the first
attempt to quantify bar strength in S0 galaxies. We are asking for
enough KPNO 2.1m time to help complete our survey.