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Session 109 - Galaxies: Collisions, Counter-Rotating Disks.
Display session, Thursday, January 18
North Banquet Hall, Convention Center
Long-slit observations are presented of a sample of 10 ring galaxies based on data obtained with the 2.1-meter KPNO telescope and the GOLDCAM spectrograph. These data, which are supplimented with VLA HI observations in 2 cases, are used to determine global kinematics and elemental abundances in the galaxies, and the result are compared with expectations from simple models. In particular, the abundance of oxygen, nitrogen and sulphur are determine for rings of different radii in order to determine whether most gas-rich ring systems are of intrinsically low metallicity or whether the HII regions in the larger rings are simply sampling the outer disks of galaxies with normal radial abundance gradients. The spectra also explore the circumnuclear environment of AGNs in NGC 985 and Wakamatsu's ring (both Seyfert Galaxies). The metallicity measurements have implications for the interpretation of the color evolution of stellar populations in ring galaxies.
