METODO DE DEPROYECCIÓN Y ESTRUCTURA DE BRAZOS DE GALAXIAS ESPIRALES. RESULTADOS PARA NGC 4939, NGC 5247 Y NGC 157

Abstract

A numerical method is presented for the deprojection of disk images of normal spiral galaxies and for obtaining their arm structure using the logarithmic spiral model. The method is based on obtaining the points of local maxima and minima of the galactic image intensity fluctuations through a smoothing process with the Savitzky-Golay filter. These points then serve to determine the galactic disk inclination angles as well as the pitch angle of its spiral arms. The method is applied to three galaxies: NGC 4939, NGC 5247 and NGC 157, finding reasonable agreement with other results from the literature