Towards a New Classification of Early-type Galaxies: An Integral-field View

Abstract

In this proceedings paper we make use of the two-dimensional stel- lar kinematics of a representative sample of E and S0 galaxies obtained with the SAURON integral-field spectrograph to reveal that early-type galaxies appear in two broad flavors, depending on whether they exhibit clear large-scale rotation or not. We measure the level of rotation via a new parameter (λR) and use it as a basis for a new kinematic classification that separates early-type galaxies into slow and fast rotators. With the aid of broad-band imaging we will reinforce this finding by comparing our kinematic results to the photometric properties of these two classes.