Dynamics of Galaxies

A major component of this workshop is a two-week meeting of the SAURON team of Bacon, Davies and de Zeeuw. The group is carrying out a systematic survey of a representative sample of 72 nearby elliptical and lenticular galaxies and Sa bulges with the custom-built panoramic integral-field spectrograph SAURON, which is used at the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope on La Palma.

SAURON provides maps of the stellar and gaseous kinematics and the linestrength distributions over the optical extent of the galaxies. Together with high-resolution imaging and spectroscopy of the nuclei, these maps are used to determine the intrinsic shapes, the internal dynamical structure, the mass of the central black hole, and the history of metal enrichment in these systems.

The SAURON project started in spring 1999, and to date 53 of the 72 objects have been observed, 28 of which during a run in March 2001. By the time of the workshop all this data will be reduced. A number of papers on individual galaxies are in progress already. This will be the first time that the properties of the ellipticals and lenticulars in the sample can be addressed as a group.

coordinator: P.T. de Zeeuw

tim@strw.leidenuniv.nl