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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2016
Many barred spiral galaxies have an outer ring (R) or a pseudoring (R') in their outer disk. R. Buta (e.g. Buta 1995) has developed a detailed classification for different types of outer rings. Two main families of outer rings are recognized. In R1 family the major axis of the ring is perpendicular to the bar and the spiral arms wind 180° before meeting the other arm. In R2 family the major axis of the ring is parallel to the bar and the spiral arms wind 270°.
The outer rings are usually considered to be related to the outer Lindblad resonance (OLR) of a rotating stellar bar. The ring shapes correspond to families of closed orbits in the vicinity of this resonance (e.g. Contopoulos & Grosbøl 1989), and also the sizes of the outer rings relative to the bar component fit to this suggestion. Furthermore, test-particle simulations which use analytical bar potentials can produce different types of outer rings near the OLR (Schwarz 1981; Byrd et al. 1994). We have obtained similar results when we modelled ringed galaxy IC 4214 by constructing the gravitational potential from near-IR observations (Buta et al. 1999; Salo et al. 1999).