The Astron Astrophys Rev (1994) 5:293-331 THE ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS REVIEW 9 Springer-Verlag 1994 Kinematical properties of early-type galaxies Massimo Capaccioli 1,2 and Giuseppe Longo 1 10sservatorio Astronomicodi Capodimonte,via Moiariello 16, 1-80131 Napoli, Italy 2 Dipartimentodi Astronomia, Universithdi Padova, Vicolo dell'Osservatorio5, 1-35122 Padova, Italy Received April 19, 1994 Summary. In the last decade, our understanding of early-type galaxies has greatly changed: from rather uninteresting oblate spheroids flattened by rotation to multicom- ponent stellar systems whose structure, formation mechanisms, and evolution, are far from being understood. This new scenario is mainly the consequence of the huge growth, in quantity and in quality, of kinematical data obtained from high signal to noise spectral data. Rotation curves and velocity dispersion profiles extending out to almost 2 effective radii are now available, together with line asymmetry measure- ments, for the stellar components of a fairly large sample of galaxies. For a few galaxies, outer halo tracers such as globular clusters and/or planetary nebulae allow to explore the kinematics out at 4 ~ 6re. In this article we focus on these data giving particular emphasis on the most recent results. Reference is given to other review articles complementing the approach presented here. Key words: Galaxies: elliptical - Galaxies: kinematics and dynamics of- Galaxies: structure of Preamble It is common practice to name early-types a heterogeneous collection of galaxy-types comprising ellipticals, lenticulars, and, by an un-written rule, also bulges of spirals. Such a convention, inspired by morphological analogies and by similarities in the shapes of the surface brightness profiles, is now shaking under new photometric and kinematical evidence at all wavelengths. For this reason, and unless explicitly noted, all results presented here refer to ellipticals and are not necessarily applicable to bulges too. Correspondence to: M. Capaccioli