2,405 research outputs found
Study of the Correlations Between the Highest Energy Cosmic Ray Showers and Gamma Ray Bursts
We examine the correlation between the arrival direction of ultra high energy
cosmic ray showers and gamma ray bursts in the third BATSE catalog. We find no
correlation between the two data sets. We also find no correlations between a
pre-BATSE burst catalog and the Haverah Park Ultra High Energy shower set that
cover approximately the same period of time.Comment: 1 uuencoded g-zipped postscript file containing text and figure
Luminosities of Barred and Unbarred S0 Galaxies
Lenticular galaxies with M_B < -21.5 are almost exclusively unbarred, whereas
both barred and unbarred objects occur at fainter luminosity levels. This
effect is observed both for objects classified in blue light, and for those
that were classified in the infrared. This result suggests that the most
luminous (massive) S0 galaxies find it difficult to form bars. As a result the
mean luminosity of unbarred lenticular galaxies in both B and IR light is
observed to be ~0.4 mag brighter than than that of barred lenticulars. A small
contribution to the observed luminosity difference that is found between SA0
and SB0 galaxies may also be due to the fact that there is an asymmetry between
the effects of small classification errors on SA0 and SB0 galaxies. An E galaxy
might be misclassified as an S0, or an S0 as an E. However, an E will never be
misclassified an SB0, nor will an SB0 ever be called an E. This asymmetry is
important because elliptical (E) galaxies are typically twice as luminous as
lenticular (S0) galaxies. The present results suggest that the evolution of
luminous lenticular galaxies may be closely linked to that of elliptical
galaxies, whereas fainter lenticulars might be more closely associated with
ram-pressure stripped spiral galaxies. Finally it is pointed out that fine
details of the galaxy formation process might account for some of the
differences between the classifications of the same galaxy by individual
competent morphologists.Comment: Astrophysical Journal, in pres
Approaches to Automated Morphological Classification of Galaxies
There is an obvious need for automated classification of galaxies, as the
number of observed galaxies increases very fast. We examine several approaches
to this problem, utilising {\em Artificial Neural Networks} (ANNs). We quote
results from a recent study which show that ANNs can classsify galaxies
morphologically as well as humans can.Comment: 8 pages, uu-encoded compressed postscript file (containing 2 figures
Quantitative Morphology of Galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field
We measure quantitative structural parameters of galaxies in the Hubble Deep
Field (HDF) on the drizzled F814W images. Our structural parameters are based
on a two-component surface brightness made up of a S\'ersic profile and an
exponential profile. We compare our results to the visual classification of van
den Bergh et al. (1996) and the classification of Abraham et al. (1996a).
Our morphological analysis of the galaxies in the HDF indicates that the
spheroidal galaxies, defined here as galaxies with a dominant bulge profile,
make up for only a small fraction, namely 8% of the galaxy population down to
m = 26.0. We show that the larger fraction of early-type systems
in the van den Bergh sample is primarily due to the difference in
classification of 40% of small round galaxies with half-light radii <
0\arcsecpoint 31. Although these objects are visually classified as elliptical
galaxies, we find that they are disk-dominated with bulge fractions < 0.5.
Given the existing large dataset of HDF galaxies with measured spectroscopic
redshifts, we are able to determine that the majority of distant galaxies
() from this sample are disk-dominated. Our analysis reveals a subset of
HDF galaxies which have profiles flatter than a pure exponential profile.Comment: 35 pages, LaTeX, 18 Postscript Figures, Tables available at
http://astro.berkeley.edu/~marleau/. Accepted for Publication in The
Astrophysical Journa
Mid-Infrared Galaxy Morphology Along the Hubble Sequence
The mid-infrared emission from 18 nearby galaxies imaged with the IRAC
instrument on Spitzer Space Telescope samples the spatial distributions of the
reddening-free stellar photospheric emission and the warm dust in the ISM.
These two components provide a new framework for galaxy morphological
classification, in which the presence of spiral arms and their emission
strength relative to the starlight can be measured directly and with high
contrast. Four mid-infrared classification methods are explored, three of which
are based on quantitative global parameters (colors, bulge-to-disk ratio)
similar to those used in the past for optical studies; in this limited sample,
all correlate well with traditional B-band classification. We suggest reasons
why infrared classification may be superior to optical classification.Comment: ApJS (in press), Spitzer Space Telescope Special Issue; 13 pages,
LaTeX (or Latex, etc); Figure 1ab is large, color plate; full-resolution
plates in .pdf format available at
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/irac/publications
A New Concept of Transonic Galactic Outflows in a Cold Dark Matter Halo with a Central Super-Massive Black Hole
We study fundamental properties of isothermal, steady and spherically
symmetric galactic outflow in the gravitational potential of a cold dark matter
halo and a central super-massive black hole. We find that there are two
transonic solutions having different properties: each solution is mainly
produced by the dark matter halo and the super-massive black hole,
respectively. Furthermore, we apply our model to the Sombrero galaxy. In this
galaxy, Chandra X-ray observatory detected the diffuse hot gas as the trace of
galactic outflows while the star-formation rate is low and the observed gas
density distribution presumably indicates the hydrostatic equilibrium. To solve
this discrepancy, we propose a solution that this galaxy has a transonic
outflow, however, the transonic point forms in a very distant region from the
galactic center (? 127 kpc). In this slowly accelerated transonic
outflow, the outflow velocity is less than the sound velocity for most of the
galactic halo. Since the gas density distribution in this subsonic region is
similar to the hydrostatic one, it is difficult to distinguish the wide
subsonic region from hydrostatic state. Such galactic outflows are dfferent
from the conventional supersonic outflows observed in star-forming galaxies.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in JPS Conference
Proceedings. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1405.345
Dependence of Spiral Galaxy Distribution on Viewing Angle in RC3
The normalized inclination distributions are presented for the spiral
galaxies in RC3. The results show that, except for the bin of
-, in which the apparent minor isophotal diameters that
are used to obtain the inclinations, are affected by the central bulges, the
distributions for Sa, Sab, Scd and Sd are well consistent with the Monte-Carlo
simulation of random inclinations within 3-, and Sb and Sbc almost, but
Sc is different. One reason for the difference between the real distribution
and the Monte-Carlo simulation of Sc may be that some quite inclined spirals,
the arms of which are inherently loosely wound on the galactic plane and should
be classified to Sc galaxies, have been incorrectly classified to the earlier
ones, because the tightness of spiral arms which is one of the criteria of the
Hubble classification in RC3 is different between on the galactic plane and on
the tangent plane of the celestial sphere. Our result also implies that there
might exist biases in the luminosity functions of individual Hubble types if
spiral galaxies are only classified visually.Comment: 5 pages + 8 figures, LaTe
Limitations of model fitting methods for lensing shear estimation
Gravitational lensing shear has the potential to be the most powerful tool
for constraining the nature of dark energy. However, accurate measurement of
galaxy shear is crucial and has been shown to be non-trivial by the Shear
TEsting Programme. Here we demonstrate a fundamental limit to the accuracy
achievable by model-fitting techniques, if oversimplistic models are used. We
show that even if galaxies have elliptical isophotes, model-fitting methods
which assume elliptical isophotes can have significant biases if they use the
wrong profile. We use noise-free simulations to show that on allowing
sufficient flexibility in the profile the biases can be made negligible. This
is no longer the case if elliptical isophote models are used to fit galaxies
made up of a bulge plus a disk, if these two components have different
ellipticities. The limiting accuracy is dependent on the galaxy shape but we
find the most significant biases for simple spiral-like galaxies. The
implications for a given cosmic shear survey will depend on the actual
distribution of galaxy morphologies in the universe, taking into account the
survey selection function and the point spread function. However our results
suggest that the impact on cosmic shear results from current and near future
surveys may be negligible. Meanwhile, these results should encourage the
development of existing approaches which are less sensitive to morphology, as
well as methods which use priors on galaxy shapes learnt from deep surveys.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure
What are S0 (0) Galaxies?
Among early-type galaxies with almost circular isophotes E0 and E1 galaxies
are, at 99.3% significance, more luminous than face-on objects classified as S0
(0) and S(0) (1). This result supports the view that rotation and "diskiness"
are more important in the outer regions of faint-early type galaxies than they
are for more luminous galaxies of very early morphological type.Comment: 7 pages. 0 figures. Astrophysical Jounral Letters in pres
Infrared Photometry and Dust Absorption in Highly Inclined Spiral Galaxies
We present JHK surface photometry of 15 highly inclined, late-type (Sab-Sc)
spirals and investigate the quantitative effects of dust extinction. Using the
(J - H, H - K) two-color diagram, we compare the color changes along the minor
axis of each galaxy to the predictions from different models of radiative
transfer. Models in which scattering effects are significant and those with
more than a small fraction of the light sources located near the edge of the
dust distribution do not produce enough extinction to explain the observed
color gradients across disk absorption features. The optical depth in dust near
the plane as deduced from the color excess depends sensitively on the adopted
dust geometry, ranging from tau = 4 to 15 in the visual band. This suggests
that a realistic model of the dust distribution is required, even for infrared
photometry, to correct for dust extinction in the bulges of nearly edge-on
systems.Comment: Accepted for publication in the March 1996 AJ. LaTex source which
generates 27 pages of text and tables (no figures). Complete (text + figs)
compressed Postscript preprint is also available at
ftp://bessel.mps.ohio-state.edu/pub/terndrup/inclined.ps.Z (854 Mbyte
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