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Session 83 - Elliptical Galaxies.
Display session, Wednesday, January 17
North Banquet Hall, Convention Center
We present a new observing technique for obtaining long-slit spectra of low surface brightness objects. We describe the observing strategy and instrumentation involved and compare the results with more traditional observing methods. In this presentation we emphasize the usefulness of the technique for obtaining information about the velocity dispersions and distributions of matter in the extended halos of early-type galaxies. By observing with a very long slit (\approx7 arc minutes), we have explored the properties of several galaxies out to very large distances. Using high-quality spectra obtained at the 2.4 meter Hiltner telescope at the Michigan-Dartmouth-MIT Observatory, we tabulate redshift and velocity dispersion results for the outer regions of M 87, Abell 2029, and NGC 5846 and compare them with the results of previous investigations.
