Joint Astrophysics Colloquium

Joint Astrophysics Seminar

Puzzles in the Structure of Spiral Galaxies

Stéphane Courteau

Queen's University

Spiral galaxies exhibit tight correlations between their total luminosity, maximum circular velocity, and disk scale length that arise naturally from the basic elements of the standard scenario of structure formation. However, the understanding of the scatter of galaxy scaling relations requires a sophisticated modeling of the dark and visible components, including stellar population variations and constraints about the shape of dark matter haloes. I will review the status of our current (limited) knowledge of the structure of spiral galaxies and what this entails for the mapping of luminous and dark matter in galaxies.