A Study of Bar Strengths in Early-Type Disk Galaxies

Buta, Ronald J.; Laurikainen, Eija; Salo, Heikki; Knapen, Johan H.
Bibliographical reference

NOAO Proposal ID #2009A-0101

Advertised on:
2
2009
Number of authors
4
IAC number of authors
0
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
Angular momentum exchange between a bar and a massive halo is thought to be responsible for producing strong bars in disk galaxies (Athanassoula, 2003), while gas transport to the center is believed to weaken or even dissolve bars (Bournaud and Combes 2002). We are carrying out a systematic survey of early-type disk galaxies with the main emphasis to derive the distribution of their bar strengths and to examine their Fourier amplitude properties. We propose to use FLAMINGOS with the KPNO 2.1m to obtain 2.2(micron) K_s-band observations of 16 galaxies for the ``Near-Infrared S0 Survey", a project already in progress to measure the bulge, disk, and bar properties of a statistically well-defined sample of 184 galaxies in the type range S0^- to Sa, including some possibly mis-classified elliptical galaxies. The principal goals of the survey, which was started 5 years ago and is now 90% completed, are to allow us to (1) compare relative Fourier near- IR intensity profiles of observed early-type galaxy bars with equivalent Fourier mass profiles of various Athanassoula models; (2) derive the distribution of bar strengths for the early-type sample and compare it with the known distribution for spirals; and (3) examine the properties of bulges and disks in early-type galaxies in order to better understand the origin of bulges (classical verus pseudo) in such galaxies. Our study is the first attempt to quantify bar strength in S0 galaxies. We are asking for enough KPNO 2.1m time to help complete our survey.