Dark Halos of Spiral galaxies

Rob Swaters carries out a PhD project which studies the dark matter content of about 80 WHISP dwarf galaxies. The observations will provide rotation curves which will be analysed with the R-band luminosity profiles to determine the properties of the dark matter component in dwarf galaxies. The sample has sufficient spread in galaxy luminosities to make it possible to examine the systematics of the mass distributions as a function of luminosity.