Nevertheless, some personal judgement is still required as significant variations in ellipticity with radius are often present in typical galaxies. An alternative, and promising technique makes use of the two dimensional velocity field of the galaxy to constrain its inclination. While this requires considerably more effort, the technique offers real promise for improving inclination estimates. In this approach the gas is assumed to be rotating in circular motion and the velocity field defines the inclination. Work currently underway by Schommer et al.
Initial results indicate good agreement between the kinematic and photometric inclination estimates.