A tale of two galaxies: light and mass in NGC891 and NGC7814
Filippo Fraternali, Renzo Sancisi, Peter Kamphuis

TL;DR
This study compares the mass and light distributions in two edge-on galaxies, NGC891 and NGC7814, revealing that their rotation curves are closely related to their luminous matter, challenging the notion that dark matter dominates in these cases.
Contribution
The paper provides new rotation curves for NGC891 and NGC7814, demonstrating a close relationship between mass and light distributions in these galaxies.
Findings
NGC7814's mass is more centrally concentrated, matching its light distribution.
NGC891's rotation curve can be explained by luminous matter alone up to 15 kpc.
Dark matter is necessary in NGC7814's outer regions due to high M/L ratios.
Abstract
The two edge-on galaxies NGC891 and NGC7814 are representative of two extreme morphologies: the former is disk-dominated while the latter is almost entirely bulge-dominated. It has been argued (van der Kruit 1983) that since the two galaxies, which are optically so different, have similar rotation curves their total mass distributions cannot be related in any way to the light distributions. This would lead to the conclusion that dark matter is the dominating component of the mass. We have derived new rotation curves from recent, high-sensitivity HI observations and have found that the shapes of the rotation curves are significantly different for the two galaxies. They indicate that in NGC7814 the mass is more concentrated to the centre as compared to NGC891. This reflects the distribution of light which is more centrally concentrated in NGC7814 than in NGC891. Mass and light do seem to…
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