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The Surface Brightness of Our Galaxy and Other Spirals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2017

P. C. van der Kruit*
Affiliation:
Kapteyn Astronomical Institute P.O. Box 800 9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands

Abstract

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In this review I discuss some aspects of the luminosity distributions in our Galaxy and external spiral galaxies. The major conclusions are the following: (1) the radial scale length of the luminosity distribution in the disk of our Galaxy is 5.0 ± 0.5 kpc, (2) on this basis the Hubble constant needs to be at most 65 ± 10 km s−1 Mpc−1, if our Galaxy and M31 are among the largest spirals, as the Fisher-Tully relation suggests, (3) the probable Hubble type of the Galaxy is SbI–II, (4) the bi-modal distribution function of face-on, central surface brightness μ0 and radial scale length h of spirals shows a preferred value for μ0 of about 22 B-mag arcsec2 and a distribution of h that declines with one e-folding per kpc, (5) the Galaxy is a normal, fairly large Sb galaxy, and (6) galaxies similar to our own in terms of large-scale, nonmorphological properties are NGC 891 and NGC 5033.

Type
II. Galactic Background Starlight from UV to IR: Observations and Models
Copyright
Copyright © Kluwer 1990 

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