1997/09/19 by Eon-Chang Sung, Eon‐Chang Sung, Cheongho Han +6
Environmental Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Dwarf galaxy #Dwarf spheroidal galaxy #Elliptical galaxy #Galaxy #Gaussian #Lenticular galaxy #Morphological variations and asymmetry #Oblate spheroid #Physics #Remote Sensing in Agriculture #Species Distribution and Climate Change #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/305633
total 23 pages, 9 figures, and 1 Table, submitted to ApJ on Sep 19 1997. Email addresses: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
arxiv created 1997/09/19 · openalex publication_date 1998/05/20 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We measure the apparent shapes for a sample of 62 blue compact dwarf galaxies (BCDs) and compare them with the apparent shapes for a sample of 80 dwarf elliptical galaxies (dEs). The BCDs are flatter, on average, than the dEs, but the difference is only marginally significant. We then use both nonparametric and parametric techniques to determine possible distributions of intrinsic shapes for the BCDs. The hypothesis that BCDs are oblate spheroids can be ruled out with a high confidence level (>99%), but the hypothesis that they are prolate spheroids cannot be excluded. The apparent shapes of BCDs are totally consistent with the hypothesis that they are triaxial ellipsoids. If the intrinsic axis ratios β and γ are distributed according to a Gaussian with means β 0 and γ 0 and standard deviation σ, we find that the best-fitting distribution for BCDs has (β 0 , γ 0 , σ) = (0.66, 0.55, 0.16), while that for dEs has (β 0 , γ 0 , σ) = (0.85, 0.64, 0.24). Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that BCDs have a close evolutionary relation with dEs.