ESTABLISHING THE CONNECTION BETWEEN PEANUT-SHAPED BULGES AND GALACTICBARS

It has been suggested that the peanut-shaped bulges seen in some edge- on disk galaxies are due to the presence of a central bar. Although ba rs cannot be detected photometrically in edge-on galaxies, we show tha t barred potentials produce a strong kinematic signature in the form o f double-peaked line-of-sight velocity distributions with a characteri stic ''figure-of-eight'' variation with radius. We have obtained spect roscopic observations of two edge-on galaxies with peanut-shaped bulge s (NGC 5746 and NGC 5965), and they reveal exactly such line-of-sight velocity distributions in both their gaseous (emission line) and their stellar (absorption line) components. These observations provide stro ng observational evidence that peanut-shaped bulges are a by-product o f bar formation.