Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 1991. 29: 239-274 Copyright © 1991 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved

2.8 Conclusions

The most important result of the work done in the past decade on the construction of equilibrium models is that many triaxial equilibria exist with a large variety of shapes and internal velocity structures. In particular, for a given shape there is freedom in the value of the (central) velocity dispersion, freedom in the direction of the total angular momentum, and freedom in the rate of figure rotation. Much work remains to be done on the construction of triaxial models, however - especially for those with tumbling figures - and on the study of their stability characteristics and observable properties.