Unveiling Dark Matter in a Galaxy: A Case Study of NGC 1068

Abstract

The dark matter distribution in NGC 1068 is analyzed by determining its mass using dynamical mass from HI-based rotation curves and stellar mass from spectral energy distribution fitting of ugriz photometric data. High-precision photometry was achieved through Gaussian fitting, star masking, 3-sigma clipping, and error propagation, enabling robust flux measurements for spectral energy distribution analysis with CIGALE. Beyond 1.5 kpc, the dynamical mass begins to exceed the stellar mass. As the error bars do not overlap, the presence of dark matter is confirmed. The difference between the two masses is used to map the dark matter distribution from 1.5 kpc to 13 kpc. This study reproduces earlier findings using high-resolution data. Furthermore, the method for constraining dark matter distributions in individual galaxies and provides detailed spectral energy distribution results with uncertainties is refined.