Testing the Snickers${}^{\bf TM}$ Hypothesis: Is Every Peanut to be Found in a Galaxy Bar?
Session 105 -- Barred Spirals
Display presentation, Thursday, 12, 1995, 9:20am - 6:30pm

## [105.06] Testing the Snickers${}^{\bf TM}$ Hypothesis: Is Every Peanut to be Found in a Galaxy Bar?

M.R. Merrifield (Southampton U.), K. Kuijken (Kapteyn Instituut)

It has been suggested that the peanut-shaped bulges seen in some edge-on disk galaxies are produced by central bars in these systems. Unfortunately, this association has proved difficult to establish observationally: peanut distortions in bulge isophotes are only measurable if a galaxy is viewed close to edge-on, whereas galactic bars can only be detected photometrically in more face-on systems. However, orbital motions in edge-on barred potentials produce a strong kinematic signature in the form of double-peaked line-of-sight velocity distributions with a characteristic figure-of-eight'' variation with radius. We have made spectroscopic observations of two edge-on galaxies with peanut-shaped bulges (NGC~5746 and NGC~5965), and they reveal exactly such line-of-sight velocity distributions in both their gaseous (emission line) and their stellar (absorption line) components. These data provide strong observational evidence that peanut-shaped bulges are a by-product of bar formation.

This research has been supported by a PPARC Advanced Fellowship (MM) and a Hubble Fellowship (KK).