Bibcode
Florido, E.; Battaner, E.; Guijarro, A.; Garzón, F.; Jiménez-Vicente, J.
Referencia bibliográfica
Astronomy and Astrophysics, v.378, p.82-96 (2001)
Fecha de publicación:
10
2001
Revista
Número de citas
28
Número de citas referidas
24
Descripción
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.