A catalogue of velocities in the cluster of galaxies Abell 85

We present a catalogue of velocities for 551 galaxies (and give the coordinates of 39 stars misclassified as galaxies in our photometric plate catalogue) in a region covering about 100'$\times$100' (0.94$\times$0.94 Mpc for an average redshift of 0.0555, assuming H$_\circ$=50 km s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$) in the direction of the rich cluster Abell 85. This catalogue includes previously published redshifts by Beers et al. (1991) and Malumuth et al. (1992), together with our 367 new measurements. A total of 305 galaxies have velocities in the interval 13350-20000 km s$^{-1}$, and will be considered as members of the cluster. Abell 85 therefore becomes one of the clusters with the highest number of measured redshifts; its optical properties are being investigated in a companion paper.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&AS, Table 4 available in electronic form onl

Extragalactic Large-Scale Structures behind the Southern Milky Way. IV. Redshifts Obtained with MEFOS

Abbreviated: As part of our efforts to unveil extragalactic large-scale structures behind the southern Milky Way, we here present redshifts for 764 galaxies in the Hydra/Antlia, Crux and Great Attractor region (266deg < l < 338deg, |b| < 10deg), obtained with the Meudon-ESO Fibre Object Spectrograph (MEFOS) at the 3.6-m telescope of ESO. The observations are part of a redshift survey of partially obscured galaxies recorded in the course of a deep optical galaxy search behind the southern Milky Way. A total of 947 galaxies have been observed, a small percentage of the spectra (N=109, 11.5%) were contaminated by foreground stars, and 74 galaxies (7.8%) were too faint to allow a reliable redshift determination. With MEFOS we obtained spectra down to the faintest galaxies of our optical galaxy survey, and hence probe large-scale structures out to larger distances (v <~ 30000 km/s) than our other redshift follow-ups. The most distinct large-scale structures revealed in the southern Zone of Avoidance are discussed in context to known structures adjacent to the Milky Way.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures; accepted for publication in A&A. Tables 1 and 2 will be available in electronic format at the CDS. Figure 1 at full resolution, and both tables are available at http://mensa.ast.uct.ac.za/~pwoudt/data/H4462/

Discovery of Extreme Examples of Superclustering in Aquarius

We report the discovery of two highly extended filaments and one extremely high density knot within the region of Aquarius. The supercluster candidates were chosen via percolation analysis of the Abell and ACO catalogs and include only the richest clusters (R >= 1). The region examined is a 10x45 degree strip and is now 87% complete in cluster redshift measurements to mag_10 = 18.3. In all, we report 737 galaxy redshifts in 46 cluster fields. One of the superclusters, dubbed Aquarius, is comprised of 14 Abell/ACO clusters and extends 110h^-1Mpc in length only 7 degrees off the line-of-sight. On the near-end of the Aquarius filament, another supercluster, dubbed Aquarius-Cetus, extends for 75h^-1Mpc perpendicular to the line-of-sight. After fitting ellipsoids to both Aquarius and Aquarius-Cetus, we find axis ratios (long-to- midlength axis) of 4.3 for Aquarius and 3.0 for Aquarius-Cetus. We fit ellipsoids to all N>=5 clumps of clusters in the Abell/ACO measured-z cluster sample. The frequency of filaments with axis ratios >=3.0 (~20%) is nearly identical with that found among `superclusters' in Monte Carlo simulations of random and random- clumped clusters, however, so the rich Abell/ACO clusters have no particular tendency toward filamentation. The Aquarius filament also contains a `knot' of 6 clusters at Z ~0.11, with five of the clusters near enough togeteher to represent an apparent overdensity of 150. There are three other R >= 1 cluster density enhancements similar to this knot at lower redshifts: Corona Borealis, the Shapely Concentration, and another grouping of seven clusters in Microscopium. All four of these dense superclusters appear near the point of breaking away from the Hubble Flow, and some may now be in collapse, but there is little evidence of any being virialized.Comment: 45 pages (+ e-tables), 7 figures, AASTeX Accepted for Publication in Ap

A far UV study of interstellar gas towards HD34078: high excitation H2 and small scale structure - Based on observations performed by the FUSE mission and at the CFHT telescope

To investigate the presence of small scale structure in the spatial distribution of H2 molecules we have undertaken repeated FUSE UV observations of the runaway O9.5V star, HD34078. In this paper we present five spectra obtained between January 2000 and October 2002. These observations reveal an unexpectedly large amount of highly excited H2. Column densities for H2 levels from (v = 0, J = 0) up to (v = 0, J = 11) and for several v = 1 and v = 2 levels are determined. These results are interpreted in the frame of a model involving essentially two components: i) a foreground cloud (unaffected by HD34078) responsible for the H2 (J = 0, 1), CI, CH, CH+ and CO absorptions; ii) a dense layer of gas (n = 10E4 cm-3) close to the O star and strongly illuminated by its UV flux which accounts for the presence of highly excited H2. Our model successfully reproduces the H2 excitation, the CI fine-structure level populations as well as the CH, CH+ and CO column densities. We also examine the time variability of H2 absorption lines tracing each of these two components. From the stability of the J = 0, 1 and 2 damped H2 profiles we infer a 3 sigma upper limit on column density variations Delta(N(H2))/N(H2) of 5% over scales ranging from 5 to 50 AU. This result clearly rules out any pronounced ubiquitous small scale "density" structure of the kind apparently seen in HI. The lines from highly excited gas are also quite stable (equivalent to Delta(N)/N <= 30%) indicating i) that the ambient gas through which HD34078 is moving is relatively uniform and ii) that the gas flow along the shocked layer is not subject to marked instabilitie

The ESO Slice Project (ESP) galaxy redshift survey: III. The Sample

The ESO Slice Project (ESP) is a galaxy redshift survey extending over about 23 square degrees, in a region near the South Galactic Pole. The survey is ~85% complete to the limiting magnitude b_J=19.4 and consists of 3342 galaxies with redshift determination. The ESP survey is intermediate between shallow, wide angle samples and very deep, one-dimensional pencil beams; the spanned volume is ~ 5 x 10^4 Mpc^3 at the sensitivity peak (z ~ 0.1). In this paper we present the description of the observations and of the data reduction, the ESP redshift catalogue and the analysis of the quality of the velocity determinations.Comment: 10 pages, 4 encapsulated figures, uses A&A LATEX; A&A Supplements in press (June 1998 issue

Parkes HI observations of galaxies behind the southern Milky Way. - I. The Hydra/Antlia region (l : 266 to 296 deg)

As part of our program to map the large-scale distribution of galaxies behind the Milky Way, we used the Parkes 210 ft (64 m) radio telescope for pointed HI observations of a sample of low surface-brightness (due to heavy obscuration) spiral galaxies selected from the deep optical Zone of Avoidance (ZOA) galaxy catalog in the Hydra/Antlia region (Kraan-Korteweg 2000a). Searching a simultaneous velocity range of either 300 to 5500 km/s or 300 to 10500 km/s to an rms level of typically 2 - 4 mJy resulted in detections in 61 of the 139 pointings, leading to a total of 66 detections (an additional detection was made in a reference position, and two other pointings revealed two and four independent signals respectively). Except for 2 strong HI emitters identified in the shallow Zone of Avoidance HI survey (Henning et al. 2000), all HI detections are new. An analysis of the properties of the observed and detected galaxies prove that pointed HI observations of highly obscured galaxies allow the tracing of a population of nearby, intrinsically large and bright spiral galaxies that otherwise would not be recovered. The new data identified a previously unrecognized nearby group at l=287.5, b=-9.5, V=1700 km/s, the continuation of the Hydra/Antlia filament on the opposite side of the Galactic plane, and helped to delimit a distinct void in the ZOA centered at 2000 km/s.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astron. & Astrophys., 17 pages with 12 encapsulated ps-figure

The Stellar Composition of the Star Formation Region CMa R1 -- III. A new outburst of the Be star component in Z CMa

We report on a recent event in which, after more than a decade of slowly fading, the visual brightness of the massive young binary Z CMa suddenly started to rise by about 1 magnitude in December 1999, followed by a rapid decline to its previous brightness over the next six months. This behaviour is similar to that exhibited by this system around its eruption in February 1987. A comparison of the intrinsic luminosities of the system with recent evolutionary calculations shows that Z CMa may consist of a 16 M_sun B0 IIIe primary star and a ~ 3 M_sun FUOr secondary with a common age of ~ 3 x 10^5 yr. We also compare new high-resolution spectra obtained in Jan. and Feb. 2000, during the recent rise in brightness, with archive data from 1991 and 1996. The spectra are rich in emission lines, which originate from the envelope of the early B-type primary star. The strength of these emission lines increased strongly with the brightness of Z CMa. We interpret the collected spectral data in terms of an accretion disc with atmosphere around the Herbig B0e component of Z CMa, which has expanded during the outbursts of 1987 and 2000. A high resolution profile of the 6300 A [O I] emission line, obtained by us in March 2002 shows an increase in flux and a prominent blue shoulder to the feature extending to ~ -700 km/s, which was much fainter in the pre-outburst spectra. We propose that this change in profile is a result of a strong change in the collimation of a jet, as a result of the outburst at the start of this century.Comment: 22 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

The CRE1 carbon catabolite repressor of the fungus Trichoderma reesei: a master regulator of carbon assimilation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The identification and characterization of the transcriptional regulatory networks governing the physiology and adaptation of microbial cells is a key step in understanding their behaviour. One such wide-domain regulatory circuit, essential to all cells, is carbon catabolite repression (CCR): it allows the cell to prefer some carbon sources, whose assimilation is of high nutritional value, over less profitable ones. In lower multicellular fungi, the C2H2 zinc finger CreA/CRE1 protein has been shown to act as the transcriptional repressor in this process. However, the complete list of its gene targets is not known.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here, we deciphered the CRE1 regulatory range in the model cellulose and hemicellulose-degrading fungus <it>Trichoderma reesei </it>(anamorph of <it>Hypocrea jecorina</it>) by profiling transcription in a wild-type and a delta-<it>cre1 </it>mutant strain on glucose at constant growth rates known to repress and de-repress CCR-affected genes. Analysis of genome-wide microarrays reveals 2.8% of transcripts whose expression was regulated in at least one of the four experimental conditions: 47.3% of which were repressed by CRE1, whereas 29.0% were actually induced by CRE1, and 17.2% only affected by the growth rate but CRE1 independent. Among CRE1 repressed transcripts, genes encoding unknown proteins and transport proteins were overrepresented. In addition, we found CRE1-repression of nitrogenous substances uptake, components of chromatin remodeling and the transcriptional mediator complex, as well as developmental processes.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our study provides the first global insight into the molecular physiological response of a multicellular fungus to carbon catabolite regulation and identifies several not yet known targets in a growth-controlled environment.</p