Bibcode
Florido, E.; Battaner, E.; Guijarro, A.; Garzón, F.; Jiménez-Vicente, J.
Bibliographical reference
Astronomy and Astrophysics, v.378, p.82-96 (2001)
Advertised on:
10
2001
Journal
Citations
28
Refereed citations
24
Description
We present a first study of truncation of the stellar disks of spiral
galaxies in the near infrared. Observations of NGC 4013, NGC 4217, NGC
6504 and NGC 5981 were made with the CAIN NIR camera on the CST in
Tenerife. This wavelength range provides the best description of the
phenomenon, not only because extinction effects are minimized, but also
because the distribution of the old stellar population is directly
obtained. The four galaxies are edge-on and an inversion method was
developed to obtain the deprojected profiles. We did not assume any
model of the different galactic components. The ``truncation curve'',
i.e. T(R) = mu (R)- mu D(R), where mu is the actual surface
brightness in mag/arcsec2 and mu D the exponential
disk surface brightness, has been obtained with unprecedented precision.
It is suggested that T(R) is proportional to
(Rt-R)-1, where Rt is the truncation
radius, i.e. the radius beyond which no star is observed.