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When astronomers study the dark matter halos of spiral galaxies, they normally assume that the disk mass-to-light ratio is *constant*. We describe a method of analyzing the kinematics of planetary nebulae (PNe) in nearby face-on spiral galaxies to test this assumption. Since the restoring force for stellar motions perpendicular to the galactic disk is proportional to the disk mass surface density, measurements of the vertical velocity dispersion can be used to produce an independent measure of the total amount of matter in the disk. Our steps are: (1) to identify a population of PNe by imaging the host spiral in several filters, and (2) to isolate the vertical velocity dispersion from spectroscopic observations of the PNe. Our first results for the PNe of M33 indicate that the mass-to-light ratio of the galaxys disk actually *increases* by more than a factor of 5 over the inner 6 disk scale lengths. We have begun similar studies of the PNe in five more face-on galaxies: M83, M101, M94, NGC 6946, and M74. These data will also produce additional science such as galaxy distances and constraints on the disk transparency.
We combine Spitzer $3.6mu$ observations of a sample of disk galaxies spanning over 10 magnitudes in luminosity with optical luminosities and colors to test population synthesis prescriptions for computing stellar mass. Many commonly employed models f
We present new Spitzer 3.6 micron observations of a sample of disk galaxies spanning over 10 magnitudes in luminosity and ranging in gas fraction from ~10% to over 90%. We use these data to test population synthesis prescriptions for computing stella
We present deep optical imaging of three face-on disk galaxies together with a detailed description of the reduction and calibration methods used, in order to measure the intrinsic shape of their outer stellar edges. Whereas it is now well accepted t
We analyze the stellar mass-to-light ratio (M/L) gradients in a large sample of local galaxies taken from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, spanning a wide range of stellar masses and morphological types. As suggested by the well known relationship betwe
We perform numerical simulations of dusty, supersonic turbulence in molecular clouds. We model 0.1, 1 and 10 {mu}m sized dust grains at an initial dust-to-gas mass ratio of 1:100, solving the equations of combined gas and dust dynamics where the dust