Rotation in Elliptical Galaxies

Ratio of rotation to dispersion plotted against projected ellipticity, for various galaxies. Note that many Ellipticals have very little rotation, even though they are quite flattened.

 

The normalized ratio (Vrot / )* is roughly unity for low to mid-luminosity Ellipticals, but drops well below unity for the most luminous (i.e. massive) ellipticals.

 

The normalized ratio (Vrot / )* is roughly unity for disky galaxies with positive values of a4, but falls well below unity for the boxy (high luminosity) ellipticals with negative values of a4.