On the Mass of M31

Abstract

Recent work by several groups has established the properties of the dwarf satellites to M31. We reexamine the reported kinematics of this group employing a fresh technique we have developed previously. By calculating the distribution of a chi statistic (which we define in the paper) for the M31 system, we conclude that the total mass (disk plus halo) of the primary is unlikely to be as great as that of our own Milky Way. In fact the chi distribution for M31 indicates that, like NGC 3992, it does not have a massive halo. In contrast, the analysis of the satellites of NGC 1961 and NGC 5084 provides strong evidence for massive halos surrounding both spiral galaxies.

To appear in MNRAS, 10 pages with 6 figures

Cited by in corpus (11)

• The Masses of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies
• Detection of a Hot Gaseous Halo Around the Giant Spiral Galaxy NGC 1961
• The Geometric Distance and Proper Motion of the Triangulum Galaxy (M33)
• The Chemical Properties of Milky Way and M31 Globular Clusters: I. A Comparative Study
• M31's Heavy Element Distribution and Outer Disk
• Constraints on the Proper Motion of the Andromeda Galaxy Based on the Survival of Its Satellite M33
• Molecular Gas in NUclei of GAlaxies (NUGA): XII. The head-on collision in NGC1961
• A Keck/DEIMOS spectroscopic survey of the faint M31 satellites And XV and And XVI
• Constraining the mass of the Local Group
• Estimation of the masses in the Local Group by Gradient Boosted Decision Trees
• On the Adromeda to Milky Way mass-ratio