1998/03/12 by S. E. Levine, Stephen Levine, Linda S. Sparke +1 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/311239
10 pages and 2 figures, AASTEX (aaspp4), to appear in ApJL
arxiv created 1998/03/12 · openalex publication_date 1998/03/20 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Many disk galaxies are lopsided; their brightest inner parts are displaced from the center of the outer isophotes or the outer contours of the H I disk. This asymmetry is particularly common in small, low-luminosity galaxies. We argue here that long-lived lopsidedness is a consequence of the disk lying off-center in the potential of the galaxy's extended dark halo and spinning in a sense retrograde to its orbit about the halo center. The stellar velocity field predicted by our gravitational N -body simulations is clearly asymmetric.