Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Structural And Dynamical Uncertainties In Modelling Axisymmetric Elliptical Galaxies, Aaron J. Romanowsky, C. S. Kochanek

Faculty Publications

Quantitative dynamical models of galaxies require deprojection of the observed surface brightness to determine the luminosity density of the galaxy. Existing deprojection methods for axisymmetric galaxies assume that a unique deprojection exists for any given inclination, even though the projected density is known to be degenerate to the addition of ‘konus densities’ that are invisible in projection. We develop a deprojection method based on linear regularization that can explore the range of luminosity densities that are statistically consistent with an observed surface brightness distribution. The luminosity density is poorly constrained at modest inclinations (i ≿ 30°), even in the limit …