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M.A. Pahre (CfA), C.S. Kochanek (CfA), E.E. Falco (SAO), J.P. Huchra (CfA)
While there has been vast progress in the past two decades in observational measurements of the galaxy luminosity function, the utility of such measurements is limited by the fundamental difficulty of matching the rapidly-evolving luminosity of a galaxy with the masses of galaxies in cosmological simulations. Luminosity is a difficult quantity to estimate in any model, due to its dependence on many different astrophysical processes. A dynamical redshift survey, in which the internal galaxy kinematics are measured, can address this challenge because the internal velocities are unique, nearly non-evolving quantities.
The MALIGN survey (Masses And Luminosities of Infrared Galaxies Nearby) is an investigation into the dynamics and other global properties of galaxies in the local universe. An all-sky subsample of ~500 galaxies, suitable for extensive dynamical study, is drawn from the 2MASS galaxy catalog with near-infrared apparent magnitudes 10.50 \leq Ks \leq 11.25~mag. Long-slit absorption-line (centered on Mg2 and ranging from H\delta through NaD) and emission-line (centered on H\alpha) spectra are obtained along the major-axes of the target galaxies. Rotation curves and velocity dispersion profiles are measured from the spectra for late- and early-type galaxies, respectively; both are obtained for intermediate morphological types. The velocity function and mass function of galaxies will be presented for the first set of data obtained in the survey; it will be compared with the equivalent functions derived from literature dynamical studies combined with 2MASS luminosities.
This work has been supported by NASA through Hubble Fellowship grant HF-01099.01-97A from STScI.
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The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: mpahre@cfa.harvard.edu