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The Stellar Dynamics of Omega Centauri
David Merritt, G. Meylan, M. Mayor
The stellar dynamics of Omega Centauri are inferred from the radial velocities of 469 stars measured with CORAVEL (Mayor et al. 1997). Rather than fit the data to a family of model…
Dynamics of Triaxial Stellar Systems
David Merritt
Recent work on the dynamics of triaxial stellar systems is reviewed. The motion of boxlike orbits in realistic triaxial potentials is generically stochastic. The degree to which th…
Searching for the Kinematical Signature of a Black Hole in M87
David Merritt, Siang Peng Oh
Many theories for the formation of massive black holes in galactic nuclei predict that the stellar motions should be anisotropic within the radius of influence of the black hole. W…
The Stellar Dynamics of M87
David Merritt, Siang Peng Oh
We extract the shape of the stellar velocity ellipsoid as a function of radius in M87 from van der Marel's (1994) velocity dispersion data. We include the gravitational force of a…
Recovering Velocity Distributions via Penalized Likelihood
David Merritt
Line-of-sight velocity distributions are crucial for unravelling the dynamics of hot stellar systems. We present a new formalism based on penalized likelihood for deriving such dis…
Evidence from Intrinsic Shapes for Two Families of Elliptical Galaxies
Benoit Tremblay, David Merritt
Bright elliptical galaxies have a markedly different distribution of Hubble types than faint ellipticals; the division occurs near M_B=-20 and bright ellipticals are rounder on ave…