Ultra-Flat Galaxies Selected from RFGC Catalog. II. Orbital Estimates of Halo Masses

TL;DR

This study analyzes ultra-flat edge-on disk galaxies from the RFGC catalog, estimating their halo masses and comparing their properties to typical spiral galaxies, revealing similar halo-mass-to-stellar-mass ratios.

Contribution

The paper presents the first orbital mass estimates for a large sample of ultra-flat galaxies, showing their halo-mass-to-stellar-mass ratio is comparable to that of principal spiral galaxies.

Findings

Median orbital mass of about 5×10^{11} solar masses.

Halo-mass-to-stellar-mass ratio around 30.

Ultra-flat galaxies are less dusty than other spirals of similar luminosity.

Abstract

We used the Revised Flat Galaxy Catalog (RFGC) to select 817 ultra-flat (UF) edge-on disk galaxies with blue and red apparent axial ratios of $(a/b)_B > 10.0$ and $(a/b)_R > 8.5$. The sample covering the whole sky, except the Milky Way zone, contains 490 UF galaxies with measured radial velocities. Our inspection of the neighboring galaxies around them revealed only 30 companions with radial velocity difference of $\mid\Delta V\mid<500$ km s$^{-1}$ inside the projected separation of $R_p < 250$ kpc. Wherein, the wider area around the UF galaxy within $R_p < 750$ kpc contains no other neighbors brighter than the UF galaxy itself in the same velocity span. The resulting sample galaxies mostly belong to the morphological types Sc, Scd, Sd. They have a moderate rotation velocity curve amplitude of about $120$ km s$^{-1}$ and a moderate K-band luminosity of about $10^{10}L_{\odot}$. The median difference of radial velocities of their companions is $87$ km s$^{-1}$, yielding the median orbital mass estimate of about $5\times10^{11}M_{\odot}$. Excluding six probable non-isolated pairs, we obtained a typical halo-mass-to-stellar-mass of UF galaxies of about $30$, what is almost the same one as in the principal spiral galaxies, like M 31 and M 81 in the nearest groups. We also note that ultra-flat galaxies look two times less "dusty" than other spirals of the same luminosity.