| Frequency of Gas-Stellar Counterrotation (2007) | |||||||||||||||
Abstract | |||||||||||||||
| Abstract. We search for bulk counterrotation of the gas and stars in 67 galaxies of all types and a wide range of luminosities. Bulk counterrotation characterizes 25--30 % of E/S0's with extended gas, but at most a few percent of Sa--Sbc spirals. For S0's, the frequency of counterrotation we derive agrees with previous work, but we sample significantly fainter luminosities. Thus the agreement suggests that similar formation mechanisms may operate over a wide range of physical scales. 1. Sample The survey sample (Figure 1) consists of 67 galaxies drawn from the Nearby Field Galaxy Survey (NFGS), a survey of 200 galaxies including all morphological types in their natural abundance and spanning luminosities from MB \Gamma23 to \Gamma15 (Jansen et al. 2000). Our sample includes all of the NFGS E/S0's with extended gas emission, a representative majority of the Sa--Sbc spirals, and a few later types. Three S0's show minimal rotation with uncertain sense. 2. Results | |||||||||||||||
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