AAS 196th Meeting, June 2000
Session 55. Cosmology and Large-Scale Structure
Oral, Thursday, June 8, 2000, 10:00-11:30am, Lilac Ballroom

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[55.06] The Hubble Tensor: Velocity Anisotropy in the Local Volume

A. B. Whiting (U. S. Naval Academy)

Within the Local Volume of about 10 megaparsecs (Mpc) the galaxy distribution is strongly anisotropic. One would therefore expect the distribution of radial velocities to conform, showing a smaller increase with distance (component of the Hubble tensor) in the most flattened direction, to a degree which depends on the concentration of dark matter on this scale. A least-squares fit to data for 67 galaxies within this volume does indeed show anisotropic flow, with the largest Hubble component roughly four times the smallest. However, further analysis shows that this effect is largely or entirely due to anisotropic distribution of the galaxies themselves, along with noise in the data. A set of 25 galaxies chosen for better quality data shows a similar effect. A list of galaxies is presented for which good distance determinations would help the situation greatly.


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