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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2016
Many barred spiral galaxies have an outer ring (R) or a pseudoring (R') in their outer disk. R. Buta (e.g. Buta 1995) has developed a detailed classification for different types of outer rings. Two main families of outer rings are recognized. In R 1 family the major axis of the ring is perpendicular to the bar and the spiral arms wind 180° before meeting the other arm. In R 2 family the major axis of the ring is parallel to the bar and the spiral arms wind 270°.
The outer rings are usually considered to be related to the outer Lindblad resonance (OLR) of a rotating stellar bar. The ring shapes correspond to families of closed orbits in the vicinity of this resonance (e.g. Contopoulos & Grosbøl 1989), and also the sizes of the outer rings relative to the bar component fit to this suggestion. Furthermore, test-particle simulations which use analytical bar potentials can produce different types of outer rings near the OLR (Schwarz 1981; Byrd et al. 1994). We have obtained similar results when we modelled ringed galaxy IC 4214 by constructing the gravitational potential from near-IR observations (Buta et al. 1999; Salo et al. 1999).