Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-mwx4w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-22T15:12:06.206Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Biases in Mass Estimates of Groups of Galaxies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2017

Gary A. Mamon*
Affiliation:
New York University

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The knowledge of the masses of small groups of galaxies is important, because the timescales for collapse and virialization of groups depend on their mass-density. While the large inefficiency of the virial mass statistic is well known (Bahcall and Tremaine 1981, hereafter BT, and references therein), biases in the virial mass may produce wrong evolution timescales for small groups. These biases originate from group contamination by interlopers, and from the different galaxy and dark matter distributions inside the groups (caused by mass segregation). This second bias was first studied by Smith (1980, 1984) although already implicit in the work of Limber (1959). It formally arises because the ratio 2T/C where C = ΣFα·Rα (the Clausius virial) is not the same for the luminous and global matter distributions. We illustrate here some quantitative aspects of this Limber bias from the output of N-body simulations of groups of 8 galaxies described elsewhere (Mamon 1986).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Reidel 1987 

References

Bahcall, J. N. and Tremaine, S. 1981, Ap. J., 244, 805.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heisler, J., Tremaine, S., and Bahcall, J. N. 1986, preprint, and in this volume.Google Scholar
Limber, , 1959, Ap. J., 130, 414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mamon, G. A. 1986, to be submitted to Ap. J. Google Scholar
Smith, H. 1980, Ap. J., 241, 63; 1984, in Clusters and Groups of Galaxies, p. 523.Google Scholar