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H. Kobulnicky, Karl Gebhardt (Lick Obs./UC Santa Cruz)
Kinematic studies of distant galaxies provide one window on understanding their structure at early times and their evolution to the present day. The new generation of large ground-based telescopes and spectrographs can measure velocity widths and rotation curves for galaxies at cosmologically significant distances. How accurately do the [O~II] \lambda3727 rotation curves reproduce the rotation curves seen in other emission lines? How well do global (i.e. spatially integrated) spectra reproduce the dynamical masses inferred from spatially-resolved rotation curves? In this poster we present kinematic measurements for 23 local galaxies covering a range of morphological types. We explore whether rotation curves derived from [O~II] \lambda\lambda3726,3729 emission lines yield the same results as H\alpha and other emission lines. We further investigate the effects of degraded spatial resolution on kinematic measurements in distant galaxies by comparing global (i.e., sptially integrated) galaxy spectra with spatially-resolved longslit spectra. Finally, we compare the dynamical masses derived from global emission line profiles with those derived from Ca H&K lines to explore the utility of stellar absorption features for measuring galaxy kinematics at large distances.
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