FIG. 7. Top: Variation of the "total" V-band mass-to-light ratio of Galactic and M31 dSph systems as a function of visual absolute magnitude. The data for the other galaxies are taken from Mateo (1998) and Kleyna et al. (1998). Bottom: Same plot but now where the M/L ratios and absolute magnitudes have been corrected for stellar evolutionary effects as described in § 5.1 and using the SFHs plotted in Fig. 6. We have applied no corrections in this panel for the three M31 satellites NGC 147, 185, and 205. In both plots the dashed lines correspond to eq. (7) with (M/L)s = 1.5 and M0 = 2.0 × 107 M . We have adopted the results of Ibata et al. (1997) for Sgr; their analysis assumes that Sgr is in dynamical equilibrium despite some evidence to the contrary (Bellazzini et al. 1996; Mateo 1998). The points for Sgr should be regarded as upper limits to the true M/L ratio of that galaxy. Discussion in text | Previous figure | 
