Molecular clouds towards RCW 49 and Westerlund 2; Evidence for cluster formation triggered by cloud-cloud collision

We have made CO(J=2-1) observations towards the HII region RCW 49 and its ionizing source, the rich stellar cluster Westerlund 2 (hereafter Wd2), with the NANTEN2 sub-mm telescope. These observations have revealed that two molecular clouds in velocity ranges of -11 to +9 km/s and 11 to 21 km/s respectively, show remarkably good spatial correlations with the Spitzer IRAC mid-infrared image of RCW 49, as well a velocity structures indicative of localized expansion around the bright central regions and stellar cluster. This strongly argues that the two clouds are physically associated with RCW 49. We obtain a new kinematic distance estimate to RCW 49 and Wd2 of 5.4^{+ 1.1}_{- 1.4} kpc, based on the mean velocity and velocity spread of the associated gas. We argue that acceleration of the gas by stellar winds from Wd2 is insufficient to explain the entire observed velocity dispersion of the molecular gas, and suggest a scenario in which a collision between the two clouds ~4 Myrs ago may have triggered the formation of the stellar cluster.Comment: A version with higher resolution figures is available from http://www.a.phys.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~naoko/research/apjl2009/fur09_rev_highreso.pd

Numerical simulation of interaction between two Savonius turbines aimed at practical application of ocean current power generation

One of the vertical axis wind turbines that utilize drag force is the Savonius wind turbine. Savonius wind turbines are characterized by low speed rotation and high torque, so they are rarely used for wind power generation but have possibility to apply to ocean current power generation, which has been attracting attention recently. In this report, we actually performed a numerical simulation of the flow using suitable grid, focusing mainly on the case where two wind turbines are rotating in reverse at a constant speed, and investigated the state of the flow field. Two-dimensional incompressible Navier-Stokes equations are adopted as the basic equation and solved numerically using the finite difference method. In addition, in order to enable calculation even in a high Reynolds number flow, the nonlinear term of the equations are approximated by using the third-order accuracy upstream difference method. The simulation is performed under the condition that the flow corresponds to three types of angles of 90 degrees, 45 degrees, and 0 degrees with respect to the line connecting the centers of the two wind turbines. The flow field differs greatly depending on each angle, and the interaction between the two wind turbines has been clarified

Slow-scan Observations with the Infrared Camera (IRC) on-board AKARI

We present the characterization and calibration of the slow-scan observation mode of the Infrared Camera (IRC) on-board AKARI. The IRC slow-scan observations were operated at the S9W (9 $\mu$m) and L18W (18 $\mu$m) bands. We have developed a toolkit for data reduction of the IRC slow-scan observations. We introduced a "self-pointing reconstruction" method to improve the positional accuracy to as good as 1". The sizes of the point spread functions were derived to be $\sim6"$ at the S9W band and $\sim7"$ at the L18W bands in full width at half maximum. The flux calibrations were achieved with the observations of 3 and 4 infrared standard stars at the S9W and L18W bands, respectively. The flux uncertainties are estimated to be better than 20% from comparisons with the AKARI IRC PSC and the WISE preliminary catalog.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in PAS

Extinction map of the Small Magellanic Cloud based on SIRIUS and 6X 2MASS point source catalogs

In this paper, we present the first extinction map of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) constructed using the color excess at near-infrared wavelengths. Using a new technique named "X percentile method", which we developed recently to measure the color excess of dark clouds embedded within a star distribution, we have derived an E(J – H) map based on the SIRIUS and 6X Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) star catalogs. Several dark clouds are detected in the map derived from the SIRIUS star catalog, which is deeper than the 6X 2MASS catalog. We have compared the E(J – H) map with a model calculation in order to infer the locations of the clouds along the line of sight, and found that many of them are likely to be located in or elongated toward the far side of the SMC. Most of the dark clouds found in the E(J – H) map have counterparts in the CO clouds detected by Mizuno et al. with the NANTEN telescope. A comparison of the E(J – H) map with the virial mass derived from the CO data indicates that the dust-to-gas ratio in the SMC varies in the range A_V /N_H = 1-2 × 10^(–22) mag H^-1 cm^2 with a mean value of ~1.5 × 10^(–22) mag H^-1 cm^2. If the virial mass underestimates the true cloud mass by a factor of ~2, as recently suggested by Bot et al., the mean value would decrease to ~8×10^(–23) mag H^-1 cm^2, in good agreement with the value reported by Gordon et al., 7.59 × 10^(–23) mag H^-1 cm^2

Molecular-Cloud-Scale Chemical Composition I: Mapping Spectral Line Survey toward W51 in the 3 mm Band

We have conducted a mapping spectral line survey toward the Galactic giant molecular cloud W51 in the 3 mm band with the Mopra 22 m telescope in order to study an averaged chemical composition of the gas extended over a molecular cloud scale in our Galaxy. We have observed the area of $25' \times 30'$, which corresponds to 39 pc $\times$ 47 pc. The frequency ranges of the observation are 85.1 - 101.1 GHz and 107.0 - 114.9 GHz. In the spectrum spatially averaged over the observed area, spectral lines of 12 molecular species and 4 additional isotopologues are identified. An intensity pattern of the spatially-averaged spectrum is found to be similar to that of the spiral arm in the external galaxy M51, indicating that these two sources have similar chemical compositions. The observed area has been classified into 5 sub-regions according to the integrated intensity of $^{13}$CO($J=1-0$) ($I_{\rm ^{13}CO}$), and contributions of the fluxes of 11 molecular lines from each sub-region to the averaged spectrum have been evaluated. For most of molecular species, 50 % or more of the flux come from the sub-regions with $I_{\rm ^{13}CO}$ from 25 K km s$^{-1}$ to 100 K km s$^{-1}$, which does not involve active star forming regions. Therefore, the molecular-cloud-scale spectrum observed in the 3 mm band hardly represents the chemical composition of star forming cores, but mainly represents the chemical composition of an extended quiescent molecular gas. The present result constitutes a sound base for interpreting the spectra of external galaxies at a resolution of a molecular cloud scale ($\sim10$ pc) or larger.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap