Radially truncated galactic discs

Abstract

We present the first results of a systematic analysis of radially truncated exponential discs for four galaxies of a complete sample of disc-dominated edge-on spiral galaxies. The discs of our sample galaxies are truncated at similar radii on either side of their centres. With possible the exception of the disc of ESO 416-G25, it appears that the truncations in our sample galaxies are closely symmetric, in terms of both their sharpness and the truncation length. However, the truncations occur over a larger region and not as abruptly as found in previous studies. We show that the truncated luminosity distributions of our sample galaxies, if also present in the mass distributions, comfortably meet the requirements for longevity. The formation and maintenance of disc truncations are likely closely related to stability requirements for galactic discs.