Title:

Morphology & Kinematics of the Ionized gas in Early-type Galaxies

Authors:

Jesus Falcon-Barroso and the SAURON Team

Abstract:

In this talk I will present results of the emission-line fluxes and kinematics of the representative elliptical and lenticular galaxies in the SAURON survey. I will show a new emission line-fitting tool to decouple the stellar from the gaseous contribution on SAURON spectra, that has been succesfully applied to the sample of 48 galaxies. Our results show that, in general, the ionized gas maps display regular motions with smooth variations in angular momentum. In the majority of the galaxies, the gas kinematics is decoupled from the stellar counterpart, and in less than half we find signatures of recent acquisition of gaseous material. The presence of dust features is always accompained by gas emission while the converse is not always true. Finally, a considerable range of values for the [OIII]/Hbeta ratio is found both across the whole sample and within single galaxies, suggesting different mechanisms as triggers for the ionization of the gas.