The distribution of the mass-to-luminosity ratio of spiral and irregular galaxies.

The ratio of total mass to photographic luminosity M/L of spiral and irregular galaxies contained in the compilation of Roberts (1972) is analysed statistically. Although this homogeneous and large sample suffers from selection effects with respect to luminosity and type, it nevertheless forms a representative distribution of M/L, because it is shown that M/L is independent of luminosity, mass, distance, hydrogen content, color, type and inclination. The properties of the distribution of M/L are investigated in detail, and an analytic fit is given. One striking result of this analytic fit is that the distribution of log (M/L) is to a good approximation Gaussian.