Determination of Galaxy Spin Vectors in the Pisces-Perseus Supercluster with the Arecibo Telescope

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Abstract
We use H I observations made with the upgraded Arecibo 305 m telescope in 1998 August to obtain accurate spin vector determinations for 54 nearly edge-on galaxies in the Minnesota Automated Plate Scanner Pisces-Perseus Survey. We introduce a simple observational technique for determining the sense of rotation for galaxies even when their H I disks are not fully resolved. We examined the spin vector distribution of these 54 galaxies for evidence of preferential galaxy alignments. We use the Kuiper statistic, a variant of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic, to determine the significance of any anisotropies in the distribution of galaxy spin vectors. The possibility of "spin vector domains" is also investigated. We find no significant evidence of preferential galaxy alignments in this sample. However, we show that the small sample size places weak limits on the level of galaxy alignments.
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