The Phoenix survey: the pairing fraction of faint radio sources

The significance of tidal interactions in the evolution of the faint radio population (sub-mJy) is studied using a deep and homogeneous radio survey (1.4 GHz), covering an area of 3.14 deg$^2$ and complete to a flux density of 0.4 mJy. Optical photometric and spectroscopic data are also available for this sample. A statistical approach is employed to identify candidate physical associations between radio sources and optically selected `field' galaxies. We find an excess of close pairs around optically identified faint radio sources, albeit at a low significance level, implying that the pairing fraction of the sub-mJy radio sources is similar to that of `field' galaxies (at the same magnitude limit) but higher than that of local galaxies.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letter

Shared housing (1993)

"Reviewed October 1993.

Accessory apartments (1993)

An accessory apartment is a self-contained second living unit which is built into or attached to an existing single family dwelling. The apartment is private and generally smaller than the primary unit and usually contains one or two bedrooms, bath, sitting room and kitchen. The two units may share, at most, an entrance, yard and parking spaces

Archetypal analysis of galaxy spectra

Archetypal analysis represents each individual member of a set of data vectors as a mixture (a constrained linear combination) of the pure types or archetypes of the data set. The archetypes are themselves required to be mixtures of the data vectors. Archetypal analysis may be particularly useful in analysing data sets comprising galaxy spectra, since each spectrum is, presumably, a superposition of the emission from the various stellar populations, nebular emissions and nuclear activity making up that galaxy, and each of these emission sources corresponds to a potential archetype of the entire data set. We demonstrate archetypal analysis using sets of composite synthetic galaxy spectra, showing that the method promises to be an effective and efficient way to classify spectra. We show that archetypal analysis is robust in the presence of various types of noise.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, 1 style-file. Accepted for publication by MNRA

On the Determination of Star Formation Rates in Evolving Galaxy Populations

The redshift dependence of the luminosity density in certain wavebands (e.g. UV and H-alpha) can be used to infer the history of star formation in the populations of galaxies producing this luminosity. This history is a useful datum in studies of galaxy evolution. It is therefore important to understand the errors that attend the inference of star formation rate densities from luminosity densities. This paper explores the self-consistency of star formation rate diagnostics by reproducing commonly used observational procedures in a model with known galaxy populations, evolutionary histories and spectral emission properties. The study reveals a number of potential sources of error in the diagnostic processes arising from the differential evolution of different galaxy types. We argue that multi-wavelength observations can help to reduce these errors.Comment: 13 pages (including 5 encapsulated postscript figures), aastex, accepted for publication in Ap

VLA Observations of the "Eye of the Tornado"- the High Velocity \HII Region G357.63-0.06

The unusual supernova remnant candidate G357.7-0.1 and the compact source G357.63-0.06 have been observed with the Very Large Array at 1.4 and 8.3 GHz. The H92$\alpha$ line (8.3 GHz) was detected from the compact source with a surprising velocity of about -210 km/s indicating that this source is an \HII region, is most likely located at the Galactic center, and is unrelated to the SNR. The \HI absorption line (1.4 GHz) data toward these sources supports this picture and suggests that G357.7-0.1 lies farther away than the Galactic center.Comment: Latex, 14 pages including 4 figures. Accepted to A