AAS 201st Meeting, January, 2003
Session 42. Galaxies and Clusters
Poster, Tuesday, January 7, 2003, 9:20am-6:30pm, Exhibit Hall AB

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[42.03] A Northern Survey of the Fundamental Plane of Elliptical Galaxies

M.J. Pierce (University of Wyoming), R.C. Berrington (ASEE/NRL)

We present preliminary results from an extensive survey of the fundamental plane of elliptical galaxies within northern Abell clusters. The internal velocity dispersions were measured using spectroscopy acquired with the multi-object spectrograph (Hydra) on the WIYN 3.5-m telescope. The spectra were obtained at a dispersion of 0.48 Å/pixel enabling high-precision velocity dispersion measurements. We also present I-band photometric data acquired using a variety of telescopes. These data are combined in order to form the Fundamental Plane of elliptical galaxies. Although our survey is still ongoing we present results for several clusters. Our goal is to obtain accurate redshift-independent distances for a complete sample of northern Abell clusters within z < 0.05 and characterize the velocity field within this volume.


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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 34, #4
© 2002. The American Astronomical Soceity.