Description
We present new long-slit H{alpha} spectroscopy for 403 non-interacting spiral galaxies, obtained at the Palomar Observatory 5m Hale telescope, which is used to derive well-sampled optical rotation curves. Because many of the galaxies show optical emission features that are significantly extended along the spectrograph slit, a technique was devised to separate and subtract the night sky lines from the galaxy emission. We exploit a functional fit to the rotation curve to identify its center of symmetry; this method minimizes the asymmetry in the final, folded rotation curve. We derive rotational widths using both velocity histograms and the Polyex model fit. The final rotational width is measured at a radius containing 83% of the total light as derived from I-band images.
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