Bibcode
Canzian, B.; Knapen, J. H.
Referencia bibliográfica
American Astronomical Society, 197th AAS Meeting, #37.11; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 32, p.1452
Fecha de publicación:
12
2000
Número de citas
0
Número de citas referidas
0
Descripción
NGC4321 is a two-armed grand design spiral galaxy in the Virgo Cluster.
HI emission line data with 15 arcsecond resolution from the VLA map the
velocity field of the hydrogen gas in the disk of NGC4321. In a grand
design spiral galaxy, the presence of a spiral density wave causes
deviations from circular rotation in the gas. The observed velocity
deviations owing to the spiral density wave can be resolved into a part
that varies sinusoidally with azimuth and a part that varies
trisinusoidally with azimuth. The strength of the trisinusoidal part
grows with radius relative to the strength of the sinusoidal part.
Knowing the amplitude of the velocity deviations due to the spiral
density wave provides a measurement of the pattern speed of that wave.
Circular motion in an inclined disk also has a sinusoidally varying
component. Partitioning the total sinusoidal component into the part due
to projected circular motion and the part due to the spiral density wave
is thus ambiguous without extra information. The ambiguity can be
resolved by considering the growth with radius of the trisinusoidal
component in the velocity perturbations due to the spiral density wave.
We use this approach to analyze the observed HI velocity field of
NGC4321 and thereby to discover the resonance structure of the two-armed
spiral pattern.