Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Structural Properties Of Discs And Bulges Of Early-Type Galaxies, Roelof S. De Jong, Luc Simard, Roger L. Davies, R. P. Saglia, David Burstein, Matthew Colless, Robert Mcmahan, Gary Wegner

Dartmouth Scholarship

We have used the EFAR sample of galaxies to investigate the light distributions of early-type galaxies. We decompose the two-dimensional light distribution of the galaxies in a flattened spheroidal component with a Sérsic radial light profile and an inclined disc component with an exponential light profile. We show that if we assume that all galaxies can have a spheroidal and a disc component, then the brightest, bulge-dominated elliptical galaxies have a fairly broad distribution in the Sérsic profile shape parameter n_B, with a median of approximately 3.7 and with σ∼ 0.9. Other galaxies have smaller n_B values. …