The catalogue of internal stellar kinematics of galaxies

| HyperLeda home | Documentation | Search by name | Search near a position | Define a sample | SQL Search |

This Appendix presents our compilation of measurements of internal stellar kinematics of galaxies. The literature has been scanned with the scope of gathering the published measurements of the central velocity dispersion and the maximum rotational velocity. For the central velocity dispersion, we merged our initial compilation with that recently published by McElroy (1995: McE95), which allowed to correct some mistakes on both lists.

This list is substantially more complete and up-to-date than previously published compilations. In total, we have compiled 286 references, 253 containing central velocity dispersion measurements and 141 maximum rotation velocity.

The compilation of central velocity dispersion gather 3147 measurements of 1698 galaxies. It extends the McE95 catalogue by 115 new references; 37 of them appeared after the publication of McE95, and 29 concern the Milky Way and the dwarf spheroidal galaxies, not surveyed by McE95. For the maximum velocity of stellar rotation, our list is much more complete than those in Davies et al. (1981), Busarello et al. (1992), and Bender et al. (1993), which concerned specific target samples, while we searched the literature for any measurement, regardless of the morphological type or the belonging to our sample. We also checked the compilation of rotational velocity of spiral galaxies by Corradi and Capaccioli (1991) which allowed to add a few references we had missed. Our compilation gather 883 measurements on 401 galaxies.

Most of the measurements tabulated here resulted from the analysis of long-slit spectra. We did not record the instrumental parameters of the observations (slit width, resolution, ...) nor the reduction method (Fourier quotient, cross correlation, ...) but, for the references shared with McE95, these informations can be found there. A few measurements do not result from long-slit spectroscopy. These are: a) the central velocity dispersions of the dwarf spheroidal galaxies and the Milky Way, which were derived from redshifts of individual stars or star clusters, and b) the rotation velocities at large radius deduced from the observation of planetary nebulae, since, unlike the globular clusters, these objects appear kinematically coupled to the stellar population ( Capaccioli and Longo 1994 ).

A significant part of the work consisted in folding the identifiers given in the original publications into a global system. This was necessary, in order to compare and average measurements from different sources. For example, NGC 2832 appeared also with the identifiers A 779-BCG or TURNER 5B. The cross-identifications have been made using the LEDA database (operated by Observatoire de Lyon) and SIMBAD (operated by the CDS, Strasbourg). We adopted the `standard' name by descending a hierarchy of identifiers: (a) usual name of the dwarf spheroidal galaxies, (b) NCG name, (c) IC, (d) UGC or ESO, (e) PGC (Principal Galaxies Catalogue, Paturel et al. 1992 ), and (f) LEDA internal identifier. Finally, about 50 central velocity dispersion measurements could not be folded into that system. To complete the identification, we also tabulated the coordinates of the objects, and for the last two steps in the identifier hierarchy, we provided also the original identification given by the authors.

For each galaxy, we computed a mean central velocity dispersion following the precepts of McE95 for homogenizing the different sources. Internal comparisons lead us to adopt in some cases scaling factors slightly different than those found by McE95. These differences are minor, and our scaling factors are listed with the list of references.

The compilation is presented in three parts: (a) the central velocity dispersion catalogue, (b) the maximum rotational velocity catalogue, and (c) the bibliography.

(a) The central velocity dispersion catalogue (Table A1)

• Column 1: Standard identifier of the galaxy abbreviated as follows: N, I, U, E, PGC and L (in the order of the hierarchy enumerated above)
• Column 2: Equatorial coordinates (1950) in the format: hhmmss.s+ddmmss
• Column 3: Average central velocity dispersion (in km/sec)
• Column 4: Upper/lower limit flag ``<'' or ``>''
• Column 5: Original measurement of the central velocity dispersion (in km/sec)
• Column 6: Error on this measurement (in km/sec)
• Column 7: Code of the reference
• Column 8: Numerical code of the reference
• Column 9: Flag =1 for rejected measurements
• Column 10: Additional information for identification

• Column 1: Standard identifier
• Column 2: Slit direction: MJ = Major axis, MI = Minor axis, PA = Pair axis (for galaxies in pairs)
• Column 3: Peculiarities. Some galaxies present a complex kinematical structure: decoupled core, bulge+disk, bar ... We report in this field which component is concerned by the measurement.
• Column 4: Upper/lower limit flag ``<'' or ``>''
• Column 5: Value of the maximum velocity of rotation (in km/sec)
• Column 6: Error on this measurement (in km/sec)
• Column 7: Reference code

• Column 1: Numerical code of the reference
• Column 2: Code of the reference
• Column 3: Scaling factor f to be applied on the central velocity dispersion: sigma(corrected)= f sigma(raw).
• Column 4: Reference