用行星状星云光谱仪研究微弱恒星星族的动力学
Studying the Kinematics of Faint Stellar Populations with the Planetary Nebula Spectrograph
摘要：
当我们只观察星系的光分布时，星系是足够微弱的，但在研究它们的完整动力学结构时，恒星分布在相空间的六个维度上，而不仅仅是三个空间维度，这使得它们的密度非常低。这种低信号是不幸的，因为恒星动力学为这些系统的生活史提供了重要线索，而最有趣的信息来自星系最微弱的外部，那里的动力学时间尺度（以及对过去历史的记忆）最长。为了提取这一信息，我们建造了一个特殊用途的仪器，行星状星云摄谱仪，它观察行星状星云作为恒星星族的运动示踪剂，并使人们能够研究星系的恒星动力学，直到极低的表面亮度。在这里，我们提出的结果，从这个仪器，说明它如何可以揭示低表面亮度的功能，如厚磁盘的性质，通过研究他们的运动学，并跟踪微弱的运动人口是光度检测不到的。
英文摘要：
Galaxies are faint enough when one observes just their light distributions, but in studying their full dynamical structure the stars are spread over the six dimensions of phase space rather than just the three spatial dimensions, making their densities very low indeed. This low signal is unfortunate, as stellar dynamics hold important clues to these systems' life histories, and the issue is compounded by the fact that the most interesting information comes from the faintest outer parts of galaxies, where dynamical timescales (and hence memories of past history) are longest. To extract this information, we have constructed a special-purpose instrument, the Planetary Nebula Spectrograph, which observes planetary nebulae as kinematic tracers of the stellar population, and allows one to study the stellar dynamics of galaxies down to extremely low surface brightnesses. Here, we present results from this instrument that illustrate how it can uncover the nature of low surface-brightness features such as thick disks by studying their kinematics, and trace faint kinematic populations that are photometrically undetectable.
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