2001/10/30 by Luis C. Ho, M. Sarzi, Marc Sarzi +8 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Elliptical galaxy #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Hubble Deep Field #Hubble Deep Field South #Hubble sequence #Hubble space telescope #Physics #Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph #Spiral galaxy #Telescope #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/338546
To appear in PASP. 7 pages
arxiv created 2001/10/30 · openalex publication_date 2002/02/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Gasdynamical studies using the Hubble Space Telescope are an integral component for future progress in the search for massive black holes in galactic nuclei. Here we present an extensive set of gas rotation curves obtained with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph for the central regions of 23 disk galaxies. We find that the bulges of randomly selected, nearby spiral and S0 galaxies generally do not contain well‐defined gaseous disks. Only 15%–20% of disk galaxies have regular, symmetric velocity fields useful for dynamical analysis. Through comparison of the kinematics with Hubble Space Telescope images of the nuclear regions, we show that the probability of success can be significantly boosted by preselecting objects whose central dust lanes follow a well‐ordered, circularly symmetric pattern. The dust morphology can be ascertained efficiently by visual inspection of unsharp‐masked images.