The distribution of mass in a spiral galaxy is usually inferred from its rotation curve. The curve is most conveniently measured using part of its extreme population I such as HI or HII. This has a low velocity dispersion so that the observed tangential motion is in the absence of non-circular motions (van der Kruit and Allen 1978; Bosma 1981a, b) close to the circular velocity required to balance the gravitational force. The main difficulty is that for a detailed interpretation of the rotation curve one has to make assumptions on some general properties of the mass distribution, even though it is true that one can estimate the total mass within the last measured point to an accuracy of about a factor two. That of axial symmetry is only the simplest of assumptions. On the basis of the light distribution with a usually prominent disk component one often assumes that the mass distribution is also basically highly flattened.

We use ultra-deep imaging from the IAC Stripe 82 Legacy Project to study the surface photometry of 22 nearby, face-on to moderately inclined spiral galaxies. The reprocessed and co-added SDSS/Stripe 82 imaging allows us to probe down to 29–30 r′-mag/arcsec2 and thus reach into the very faint outskirts of the galaxies. We find extended stellar haloes in over half of our sample galaxies, and truncations in three of them. The presence of stellar haloes and truncations is mutually exclusive, and we argue that the presence of a stellar halo can hide a truncation. We find that the onset of the halo and the truncation scales tightly with galaxy size. We highlight the importance of a proper analysis of the extended wings of the point spread function (PSF), finding that around half the light at the faintest levels is from the inner regions of a galaxy, though not the nucleus, re-distributed to the outskirts by the PSF. We discuss implications of this effect for future deep imaging surveys, such as with the LSST.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2008 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, August 3 – August 7, 2008

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2005 in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, July 31--August 4, 2005

The IBM high resolution STEM project has now reached the point where integration of new subsystems into the instrument is the main activity. During the past three years, we have demonstrated a 50meV EELS resolution using a high brightness electron monochromator incorporated into the electron gun [1, 2, 3], and better than 0.14mn spatial resolution using spherical aberration correction at 120KeV. [4] Recent effort has been to identify and remove many sources of instabilities in the original instrument; to rebuild several existing subsidiary pieces of equipment such as the ADF detector, the EELS spectrometer electron optical coupling, and the EELS CCD detection system; and to set up software and hardware control of each system to allow routine operation.

The new STEM column is summarized in Fig. 1. Briefly, the original VG gun flange has been lowered about 4cm, using a spacer, to allow insertion of the Fringe Field monochromator.

The energy resolution which can be attained in electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) is determined by the energy spread of the electron source. The energy width of a high brightness electron gun (typically 0.4 to 0.8 eV) blurs the energy spectrum. A pre-specimen energy filter or monochromator must be used to reduce the energy width of the beam below 0.1 eV to allow detailed EELS analysis of the electronic band structures in materials. The monochromator can not only improve EELS, but it is also capable of improving the spatial resolution in low voltage SEM, which is limited by the chromatic blur of the objective lens. A new type of monochromator the Fringe Field Monochromator has been designed and experiments in an ultra high vacuum setup show the monochromatisation of a Schottky Field Emission Gun.

A general correlation between the radio and optical continuum surface brightness has been found in the edge-on galaxy NGC 891. This suggests that the relativistic electrons are produced/accelerated in the vicinity of evolved stars or stellar remnants which have a spatial distribution similar to old disk stars. In this picture, the magnetic field required for the synchrotron emission is carried up from the disk to high Z through instabilities and star-forming activity in the plane.

In this review I discuss some aspects of the luminosity distributions in our Galaxy and external spiral galaxies. The major conclusions are the following: (1) the radial scale length of the luminosity distribution in the disk of our Galaxy is 5.0 ± 0.5 kpc, (2) on this basis the Hubble constant needs to be at most 65 ± 10 km s−1 Mpc−1, if our Galaxy and M31 are among the largest spirals, as the Fisher-Tully relation suggests, (3) the probable Hubble type of the Galaxy is SbI–II, (4) the bi-modal distribution function of face-on, central surface brightness μ0 and radial scale length h of spirals shows a preferred value for μ0 of about 22 B-mag arcsec2 and a distribution of h that declines with one e-folding per kpc, (5) the Galaxy is a normal, fairly large Sb galaxy, and (6) galaxies similar to our own in terms of large-scale, nonmorphological properties are NGC 891 and NGC 5033.

This report covers the period 1 July 1984 to 30 June 1987 and - as usual - has been prepared by the President, Vice-President, members of the Organizing Committee and the chairpersons of the Working Groups. There has been emphasis on highlights rather than on completeness of references. In comparison with earlier reports one section (Galactic Dynamics) has been added, but otherwise the same line of reporting has been used. For readability and quick reference, in general abbreviated notation for literature references to major journals have been used; more complicated ones usually follow the code of Astronomy and Astrophysics Abstracts. The abbreviation et al. has been replaced by the symbol +.

The present Report covers the period 1982-1984. As with previous Reports, it has not been possible to cover all publications or even every field of research. Some subsections of this Report, the Magellanic Clouds for example, report a body of work as extensive as that in some commissions.

Most studies of the mass distribution in spiral galaxies have been based on the observed rotation curves. A serious ambiguity in this approach has always been that the rotation curve contains in itself no information on the mass distribution in the direction perpendicular to the galactic plane. The usual assumption has been that the mass in late type galaxies is distributed as the light, namely outside the central bulge in a highly flattened disk. In recent years it has been found that the rotation curves decline little or not at all, indicating large increases in the local value of M/L with increasing galactocentric radius (e.g. Bosma and van der Kruit, 1979). On the basis of dynamical arguments involving stability it has been suspected that the material giving rise to the large values of M/L - the “dark matter” - is distributed in the halos of these galaxies, so that the assumption of a flat mass distribution would have to be wrong.

The Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope was used to map the continuum radiation of M33 at 1415 MHz. Of 67 radio sources with fluxes S> 1.8 mJy (3σ), 60% coincide with Hα sources. These are all intrinsically stronger than 4 × the Orion nebula, i.e., they are giant Hiiregions. The two strongest sources, NGC 604 (58 mJy) and NGC 595 (20 mJy), are similar to W51.

Spectroscopic observations of the central part of NGC 4736 show strong noncircular motions connected with the triple radio source. It is also found that a central ring of H II regions is probably expanding at about 30 km s−1.