Hello,
I would like to know how to calculate the mass of an elliptical galaxy. If someone could explain the commonly used methods and formulas, it would be greatly appreciated. Additionally, could anyone provide me with the masses of the following galaxies:
M87 (NGC 4486) , M86 (NGC 4406), M60 (NGC 4649), M49 (NGC 4472), NGC 1316, NGC1399 and NGC 4889?
Thank you in advance for your help.
Dear Melati Rabia ,
By mass of a galaxy do you mean all the mass or just the stellar mass?
Yes, I need to calculate the overall mass of the galaxy.
Thank you Jose Gaite
Dear Melati Rabia ,
It is more difficult to estimate the amount of dark matter, because dynamical considerations are necessary. Sorry for not being helpful.
Thank you for your response Jose Gaite.
I understand that estimating the amount of dark matter is complex and requires dynamical considerations. However, I am also interested in calculating the stellar mass of the galaxy. Could you provide me with the formula for calculating the stellar mass of a galaxy? If you have any specific formulas or methods for this calculation, I would greatly appreciate it if you could share them with me.
Thank you again for your assistance.
Good morning,
There is no single formula for stellar masses of galaxies that I know. I have employed the stellar masses of a sample of galaxies from the SDSS (Article Fractal analysis of the large-scale stellar mass distributio...
and later papers).You may have a look at the papers of Kauffmann et al that I cite. If you think that you may need the particular set of masses that I have employed, I can send them to you.
Best regards.
Dear Jose Gaite,
Thank you for your response and for pointing me to the relevant papers by Kauffmann et al. I have gone through some Kauffmann's articles, but I believe having access to the specific set of stellar masses you have employed would greatly benefit my research.
Could you kindly send me the particular set of masses from your sample of galaxies in the SDSS that you used in your analysis?
I appreciate your assistance.
Best regards
OK. I will put them where you can download them from and send you the link. I will send it by email. I suppose that the address here is all right.
Dear Jose Gaite,
Thank you very much for your help. I truly appreciate it.
Please feel free to send the download link to my email address: [email protected]
Thank you once again for your assistance.
Best regards,
MELATI Rabia
The total mass can be calculated from:
* dynamic - usually for ellipticals the velocity dispersion would give you the total mass. For rotation-dominated galaxies you could use the rotational velocity
* strong lensing - if your galaxy happen to have lensing arcs around it, you can model its total mass
Dear Michal Michalowski
Thank you very much for your helpful response. Your suggestions on using velocity dispersion for ellipticals and rotational velocity for rotation-dominated galaxies, as well as considering strong lensing for modeling total mass, are extremely helpful. I appreciate your time and expertise in addressing my question.
Best regards
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