Abstract

We study the projected properties of some triaxial mass models. We develop a methodology to use ensemble of mass models to study the orientations of elliptical galaxies and intrinsic shapes of very flat elliptical galaxies. We attempt the orientation and shape estimates using photometric data alone. The orientations and intrinsic shapes are given by a Bayesian probability distribution. We apply the method to infer the orientation and shape of a galaxy, using the ellipticities and the difference in the position angles at two suitably chosen points from the profiles of the photometric data. We find the expectation values and most probable values constitute a summary of the shape of galaxies. The expected as well as most probable values of the short to long axial ratios of our calculation agree extremely well with the values reported by other workers.