The dark matter halo shape of edge-on disk galaxies - I. HI observations

TL;DR

This study presents HI observations of 8 edge-on disk galaxies to investigate the shape and flattening of their dark matter halos, aiming to constrain their three-dimensional structure.

Contribution

It introduces a new sample of HI-rich edge-on galaxies and provides initial observations crucial for analyzing dark halo shapes.

Findings

Sample of 8 suitable galaxies defined

HI observations obtained and presented

Foundation laid for future halo shape analysis

Abstract

This is the first paper of a series in which we will attempt to put constraints on the flattening of dark halos in disk galaxies. We observe for this purpose the HI in edge-on galaxies, where it is in principle possible to measure the force field in the halo vertically and radially from gas layer flaring and rotation curve decomposition respectively. In this paper, we define a sample of 8 HI-rich late-type galaxies suitable for this purpose and present the HI observations.