1,006 research outputs found
Advancing In Situ Modeling of ICMEs: New Techniques for New Observations
It is generally known that multi-spacecraft observations of interplanetary
coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) more clearly reveal their three-dimensional
structure than do observations made by a single spacecraft. The launch of the
STEREO twin observatories in October 2006 has greatly increased the number of
multipoint studies of ICMEs in the literature, but this field is still in its
infancy. To date, most studies continue to use on flux rope models that rely on
single track observations through a vast, multi-faceted structure, which
oversimplifies the problem and often hinders interpretation of the large-scale
geometry, especially for cases in which one spacecraft observes a flux rope,
while another does not. In order to tackle these complex problems, new modeling
techniques are required. We describe these new techniques and analyze two ICMEs
observed at the twin STEREO spacecraft on 22-23 May 2007, when the spacecraft
were separated by ~8 degrees. We find a combination of non-force-free flux rope
multi-spacecraft modeling, together with a new non-flux rope ICME plasma flow
deflection model, better constrains the large-scale structure of these ICMEs.
We also introduce a new spatial mapping technique that allows us to put
multispacecraft observations and the new ICME model results in context with the
convecting solar wind. What is distinctly different about this analysis is that
it reveals aspects of ICME geometry and dynamics in a far more visually
intuitive way than previously accomplished. In the case of the 22-23 May ICMEs,
the analysis facilitates a more physical understanding of ICME large-scale
structure, the location and geometry of flux rope sub-structures within these
ICMEs, and their dynamic interaction with the ambient solar wind
Clique descriptor of affine invariant regions for robust wide baseline image matching
Assuming that the image distortion between corresponding regions of a stereo pair of images with wide baseline can be approximated as an affine transformation if the regions are reasonably small, recent image matching algorithms have focused on affine invariant region (IR) detection and its description to increase the robustness in matching. However, the distinctiveness of an intensity-based region descriptor tends to deteriorate when an image includes homogeneous texture or repetitive pattern. To address this problem, we investigated the geometry of a local IR cluster (also called a clique) and propose a new clique-based image matching method. In the proposed method, the clique of an IR is estimated by Delaunay triangulation in a local affine frame and the Hausdorff distance is adopted for matching an inexact number of multiple descriptor vectors. We also introduce two adaptively weighted clique distances, where the neighbour distance in a clique is appropriately weighted according to characteristics of the local feature distribution. Experimental results show the clique-based matching method produces more tentative correspondences than variants of the SIFT-based method
Ram pressure feeding super-massive black holes
When supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies accrete matter
(usually gas), they give rise to highly energetic phenomena named Active
Galactic Nuclei (AGN). A number of physical processes have been proposed to
account for the funneling of gas towards the galaxy centers to feed the AGN.
There are also several physical processes that can strip gas from a galaxy, and
one of them is ram pressure stripping in galaxy clusters due to the hot and
dense gas filling the space between galaxies. We report the discovery of a
strong connection between severe ram pressure stripping and the presence of AGN
activity. Searching in galaxy clusters at low redshift, we have selected the
most extreme examples of jellyfish galaxies, which are galaxies with long
tentacles of material extending for dozens of kpc beyond the galaxy disk. Using
the MUSE spectrograph on the ESO Very Large Telescope, we find that 6 out of
the 7 galaxies of this sample host a central AGN, and two of them also have
galactic-scale AGN ionization cones. The high incidence of AGN among the most
striking jellyfishes may be due to ram pressure causing gas to flow towards the
center and triggering the AGN activity, or to an enhancement of the stripping
caused by AGN energy injection, or both. Our analysis of the galaxy position
and velocity relative to the cluster strongly supports the first hypothesis,
and puts forward ram pressure as another, yet unforeseen, possible mechanism
for feeding the central supermassive black hole with gas.Comment: published in Nature, Vol.548, Number 7667, pag.30
Central galaxy growth and feedback in the most massive nearby cool core cluster
We present multi-wavelength observations of the centre of RXCJ1504.1-0248 -
the galaxy cluster with the most luminous and relatively nearby cool core at
z~0.2. Although there are several galaxies within 100 kpc of the cluster core,
only the brightest cluster galaxy (BCG), which lies at the peak of the X-ray
emission, has blue colours and strong line-emission. Approximately 80 Msun/yr
of intracluster gas is cooling below X-ray emitting temperatures, similar to
the observed UV star formation rate of ~140 Msun/yr. Most star formation occurs
in the core of the BCG and in a 42 kpc long filament of blue continuum, line
emission, and X-ray emission, that extends southwest of the galaxy. The
surrounding filamentary nebula is the most luminous around any observed BCG.
The number of ionizing stars in the BCG is barely sufficient to ionize and heat
the nebula, and the line ratios indicate an additional heat source is needed.
This heat source can contribute to the H\alpha-deduced star formation rates
(SFRs) in BCGs and therefore the derived SFRs should only be considered upper
limits. AGN feedback can slow down the cooling flow to the observed mass
deposition rate if the black hole accretion rate is of the order of 0.5 Msun/yr
at 10% energy output efficiency. The average turbulent velocity of the nebula
is vturb ~325 km/s which, if shared by the hot gas, limits the ratio of
turbulent to thermal energy of the intracluster medium to less than 6%.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, MNRAS in press. Corrected typo in abstract
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