{
  "id": "1712.08794",
  "version": "v1",
  "published": "2017-12-23T15:58:42.000Z",
  "updated": "2017-12-23T15:58:42.000Z",
  "title": "Measuring the mass distribution in stellar systems",
  "authors": [
    "Scott Tremaine"
  ],
  "comment": "11 pages, 4 figures",
  "categories": [
    "astro-ph.GA",
    "astro-ph.IM"
  ],
  "abstract": "One of the fundamental tasks of dynamical astronomy is to infer the distribution of mass in a stellar system from a snapshot of the positions and velocities of its stars. The usual approach to this task (e.g., Schwarzschild's method) involves fitting parametrized forms of the gravitational potential and the phase-space distribution to the data. We review the practical and conceptual difficulties with this approach and describe a novel statistical method for determining the mass distribution that does not require determining the phase-space distribution of the stars. We show that this new estimator out-performs other distribution-free estimators for the harmonic and Kepler potentials.",
  "revisions": [
    {
      "version": "v1",
      "updated": "2017-12-23T15:58:42.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "analyses": {
    "keywords": [
      "mass distribution",
      "stellar system",
      "phase-space distribution",
      "novel statistical method",
      "kepler potentials"
    ],
    "note": {
      "typesetting": "TeX",
      "pages": 11,
      "language": "en",
      "license": "arXiv",
      "status": "editable"
    }
  }
}