NGC 4636 stellar mass profile. The thin solid curve is Eq. (10) for Υ _⋆ ,R = 5.8 (obtained through numerical integration). The thick dotted curve is the piecewise approximation used in our modelling. The radial range of the respective pieces is indicated by the bars, and the functions and coefficients are given in Appendix B. The vertical dashed lines indicate the radial range of the photometric data by D+05. The horizontal line at 6.15  ×  10¹¹   M_⊙ shows the asymptotic value, i.e. M(r = ∞).