Title:
"Constraining the Angular Distribution of Satellite Galaxies Surrounding Disk-like Host Galaxies"
Abstract:
Recent studies of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)
show that small satellite galaxies are not distributed isotropically about
their hosts. The standard practice of measuring the angular
distribution of the satellites is limited by projection effects. I present a method
that can overcome the effects of projection and can therefore identify
the
actual angular distribution of satellite galaxies. I apply this method
to
disk galaxies selected from the SDSS catalog and constrain the allowed
angular distribution of satellite galaxies orbiting disk-like hosts.
These results may be used to constrain the shapes of galactic dark
matter
halos if the distribution of satellite galaxies is correlated with the
distribution of the dark matter.