34,865 research outputs found
Minor stars in plane graphs with minimum degree five
The weight of a subgraph in is the sum of the degrees in of
vertices of . The {\em height} of a subgraph in is the maximum
degree of vertices of in . A star in a given graph is minor if its
center has degree at most five in the given graph. Lebesgue (1940) gave an
approximate description of minor -stars in the class of normal plane maps
with minimum degree five. In this paper, we give two descriptions of minor
-stars in plane graphs with minimum degree five. By these descriptions, we
can extend several results and give some new results on the weight and height
for some special plane graphs with minimum degree five.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure
The "True" Column Density Distribution in Star-Forming Molecular Clouds
We use the COMPLETE Survey's observations of the Perseus star-forming region
to assess and intercompare three methods for measuring column density in
molecular clouds: extinction mapping (NIR); thermal emission mapping (FIR); and
mapping the intensity of CO isotopologues. The structures shown by all three
tracers are morphologically similar, but important differences exist.
Dust-based measures give similar, log-normal, distributions for the full
Perseus region, once careful calibration corrections are made. We also compare
dust- and gas-based column density distributions for physically-meaningful
sub-regions of Perseus, and we find significant variations in the distributions
for those regions. Even though we have used 12CO data to estimate excitation
temperatures, and we have corrected for opacity, the 13CO maps seem unable to
give column distributions that consistently resemble those from dust measures.
We have edited out the effects of the shell around the B-star HD 278942. In
that shell's interior and in the parts where it overlaps the molecular cloud,
there appears to be a dearth of 13CO, likely due either to 13CO not yet having
had time to form in this young structure, and/or destruction of 13CO in the
molecular cloud. We conclude that the use of either dust or gas measures of
column density without extreme attention to calibration and artifacts is more
perilous than even experts might normally admit. And, the use of 13CO to trace
total column density in detail, even after proper calibration, is unavoidably
limited in utility due to threshold, depletion, and opacity effects. If one's
main aim is to map column density, then dust extinction seems the best probe.
Linear fits amongst column density tracers are given, quantifying the inherent
uncertainties in using one tracer (when compared with others). [abridged]Comment: Accepted in ApJ. 13 pages, 6 color figures. It includes small changes
to improve clarity. For a version with high-resolution figures see
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/COMPLETE/papers/Goodman_ColumnDensity.pd
Clustering of the Diffuse Infrared Light from the COBE DIRBE maps. III. Power spectrum analysis and excess isotropic component of fluctuations
The cosmic infrared background (CIB) radiation is the cosmic repository for
energy release throughout the history of the universe. Using the all-sky data
from the COBE DIRBE instrument at wavelengths 1.25 - 100 mic we attempt to
measure the CIB fluctuations. In the near-IR, foreground emission is dominated
by small scale structure due to stars in the Galaxy. There we find a strong
correlation between the amplitude of the fluctuations and Galactic latitude
after removing bright foreground stars. Using data outside the Galactic plane
() and away from the center () we extrapolate
the amplitude of the fluctuations to cosec. We find a positive intercept
of nW/m2/sr at 1.25, 2.2,3.5 and 4.9 mic
respectively, where the errors are the range of 92% confidence limits. For
color subtracted maps between band 1 and 2 we find the isotropic part of the
fluctuations at nW/m2/sr. Based on detailed numerical and
analytic models, this residual is not likely to originate from the Galaxy, our
clipping algorithm, or instrumental noise. We demonstrate that the residuals
from the fit used in the extrapolation are distributed isotropically and
suggest that this extra variance may result from structure in the CIB. For
2\deg< \theta < 15^\deg, a power-spectrum analysis yields firm upper limits
of (\theta/5^\deg) \times\delta F_{\rm rms} (\theta) < 6, 2.5, 0.8, 0.5
nW/m2/sr at 1.25, 2.2, 3.5 and 4.9 mic respectively. From 10-100 mic, the upper
limits <1 nW/m2/sr.Comment: Ap.J., in press. 69 pages including 24 fig
Monte Carlo simulations of dusty spiral galaxies: extinction and polarization properties
We present Monte Carlo simulations of dusty spiral galaxies, modelled as
bulge + disk systems, aimed to study their extinction and polarization
properties. The extinction parameters (absorption and scattering) of dust
grains are calculated from Mie's theory for a full distribution of sizes and
materials; the radiation transfer is carried on for the four Stokes parameters.
Photometric and polarimetric maps of galaxies of different optical depths,
inclinations and bulge-to-total ratios have been produced in the B and I
bandpasses. As expected, the effect of scattering is to reduce substantially
the extinction for a given optical depth, in particular for what concerns the
obscuration of bright bulge cores. For the same reason, scattering reduces also
the reddening, as evaluated from B-I maps. On the other hand the bluing
directly due to forward scattering is hardly appreciable. Radial color
gradients are often found. A comparison with ``sandwich'' models shows that
they fail dramatically to reproduce the extinction - optical depth relation.
The degree of linear polarization produced by scattering is usually of the
order of a few percent; it increases with optical depth, and with inclination
(less than 80 degrees). The polarization pattern is always perpendicular to the
major axis, unless the dust distribution is drastically modified. There is
little local correlation between extinction and polarization degree and there
is a trend of increasing polarization from the B to the I band. We discuss
implications and relevance of the results for studies of the structure and
morphology of spiral galaxies and of their interstellar medium.Comment: 43 pages, 13 Postscript figures, Latex AAS manuscript substyle, Ap.
J. Accepte
Clustering of the Diffuse Infrared Light from the COBE DIRBE maps. I. and limits on the near-IR background
This paper is devoted to studying the CIB through its correlation properties.
We studied the limits on CIB anisotropy in the near IR (1.25, 2.2, and 3.5 \um,
or ) bands at a scale of 0.7\deg\ using the COBE\footnote{ The
National Aeronautics and Space Administration/Goddard Space Flight Center
(NASA/GSFC) is responsible for the design, development, and operation of the
{\it COBE}. Scientific guidance is provided by the {\it COBE} Science Working
Group. GSFC is also responsible for the development of the analysis software
and for the production of the mission data sets.} Diffuse Infrared Background
Experiment (DIRBE) data. In single bands we obtain the upper limits on the
zero-lag correlation signal \w2m4sr2 for the
bands respectively. The DIRBE data exhibit a clear color between the
various bands with a small dispersion. On the other hand most of the CIB is
expected to come from redshifted galaxies and thus should have different color
properties. We use this observation to develop a `color subtraction' method of
linear combinations of maps at two different bands. This method is expected to
suppress the dominant fluctuations from foreground stars and nearby galaxies,
while not reducing (or perhaps even amplifying) the extragalactic contribution
to . Applying this technique gives significantly lower and more isotropic
limits.Comment: 44 pages postcript; includes 5 tables, 14 figures. Astrophysical
Journal, in pres
Ionized and neutral gas in the peculiar star/cluster complex in NGC 6946
The characteristics of ionized and HI gas in the peculiar star/cluster
complex in NGC 6946, obtained with the 6-m telescope (BTA) SAO RAS, the Gemini
North telescope, and the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT), are
presented. The complex is unusual as hosting a super star cluster, the most
massive known in an apparently non-interacting giant galaxy. It contains a
number of smaller clusters and is bordered by a sharp C-shaped rim. We found
that the complex is additionally unusual in having peculiar gas kinematics. The
velocity field of the ionized gas reveals a deep oval minimum, ~300 pc in size,
centered 7" east of the supercluster. The Vr of the ionized gas in the dip
center is 100 km/s lower than in its surroundings, and emission lines within
the dip appear to be shock excited. This dip is near the center of an HI hole
and a semi-ring of HII regions. The HI (and less certainly, HII) velocity
fields reveal expansion, with the velocity reaching ~30 km/s at a distance
about 300 pc from the center of expansion, which is near the deep minimum
position. The super star cluster is at the western rim of the minimum. The
sharp western rim of the whole complex is plausibly a manifestation of a
regular dust arc along the complex edge. Different hypotheses about the complex
and the Vr depression origins are discussed, including a HVC/dark mini-halo
impact, a BCD galaxy merging, and a gas outflow due to release of energy from
the supercluster stars.Comment: MN RAS, accepte
The Magnetic Field of L1544: I. Near-Infrared Polarimetry and the Non-Uniform Envelope
The magnetic field (B-field) of the starless dark cloud L1544 has been
studied using near-infrared (NIR) background starlight polarimetry (BSP) and
archival data in order to characterize the properties of the plane-of-sky
B-field. NIR linear polarization measurements of over 1,700 stars were obtained
in the H-band and 201 of these were also measured in the K-band. The NIR BSP
properties are correlated with reddening, as traced using the RJCE (H-M)
method, and with thermal dust emission from the L1544 cloud and envelope seen
in Herschel maps. The NIR polarization position angles change at the location
of the cloud and exhibit their lowest dispersion of position angles there,
offering strong evidence that NIR polarization traces the plane-of-sky B-field
of L1544. In this paper, the uniformity of the plane-of-sky B-field in the
envelope region of L1544 is quantitatively assessed. This allowed evaluating
the approach of assuming uniform field geometry when measuring relative
mass-to-flux ratios in the cloud envelope and core based on averaging of the
envelope radio Zeeman observations, as in Crutcher et al. (2009). In L1544, the
NIR BSP shows the envelope B-field to be significantly non-uniform and likely
not suitable for averaging Zeeman properties without treating intrinsic
variations. Deeper analyses of the NIR BSP and related data sets, including
estimates of the B-field strength and testing how it varies with position and
gas density, are the subjects of later papers in this series.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures; accepted for publication in The Astrophysical
Journa
A three dimensional extinction map of the Galactic Anticentre from multi-band photometry
We present a three dimensional extinction map in band. The map has a
spatial angular resolution, depending on latitude, between 3 -- 9\,arcmin and
covers the entire XSTPS-GAC survey area of over 6,000\, for Galactic
longitude and latitude . By cross-matching the photometric catalog of the Xuyi Schmidt
Telescope Photometric Survey of the Galactic Anticentre (XSTPS-GAC) with those
of 2MASS and WISE, we have built a multi-band photometric stellar sample of
about 30 million stars and applied spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting
to the sample. By combining photometric data from the optical to the
near-infrared, we are able to break the degeneracy between the intrinsic
stellar colours and the amounts of extinction by dust grains for stars with
high photometric accuracy, and trace the extinction as a function of distance
for low Galactic latitude and thus highly extincted regions. This has allowed
us to derive the best-fit extinction and distance information of more than 13
million stars, which are used to construct the three dimensional extinction
map. We have also applied a Rayleigh-Jeans colour excess (RJCE) method to the
data using the 2MASS and WISE colour . The resulting RJCE extinction
map is consistent with the integrated two dimensional map deduced using the
best-fit SED algorithm. However for individual stars, the amounts of extinction
yielded by the RJCE method suffer from larger errors than those given by the
best-fit SED algorithm.Comment: 20 pages, 18 figures, accepted in MNRA
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