Bibcode
Font, J.; Beckman, J. E.; Epinat, Benoît; Fathi, K.; Gutiérrez, L.; Hernandez, Olivier
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Volume 741, Issue 1, article id. L14 (2011).
Advertised on:
11
2011
Citations
35
Refereed citations
33
Description
In this Letter, we introduce a technique for finding resonance radii in
a disk galaxy. We use a two-dimensional velocity field in Hα
emission obtained with Fabry-Perot interferometry, derive the classical
rotation curve, and subtract it off, leaving a residual velocity map. As
the streaming motions should reverse sign at corotation, we detect these
reversals and plot them in a histogram against galactocentric radius,
excluding points where the amplitude of the reversal is smaller than the
measurement uncertainty. The histograms show well-defined peaks which we
assume to occur at resonance radii, identifying corotations as the most
prominent peaks corresponding to the relevant morphological features of
the galaxy (notably bars and spiral arm systems). We compare our results
with published measurements on the same galaxies using other methods and
different types of data.