885 research outputs found
A Constant Bar Fraction out to Redshift z~1 in the Advanced Camera for Surveys Field of the Tadpole Galaxy
Bar-like structures were investigated in a sample of 186 disk galaxies larger
than 0.5 arcsec that are in the I-band image of the Tadpole galaxy taken with
the HST ACS. We found 22 clear cases of barred galaxies, 21 galaxies with small
bars that appear primarily as isophotal twists in a contour plot, and 11 cases
of peculiar bars in clump-cluster galaxies, which are face-on versions of chain
galaxies. The latter bars are probably young, as the galaxies contain only weak
interclump emission. Four of the clearly barred galaxies at z~0.8-1.2 have
grand design spirals. The bar fraction was determined as a function of galaxy
inclination and compared with the analogous distribution in the local Universe.
The bar fraction was also determined as a function of galaxy angular size.
These distributions suggest that inclination and resolution effects obscure
nearly half of the bars in our sample. The bar fraction was also determined as
a function of redshift. We found a nearly constant bar fraction of 0.23+-0.03
from z~0 to z=1.1. When corrected for inclination and size effects, this
fraction is comparable to the bar fraction in the local Universe, ~0.4, as
tabulated for all bar and Hubble types in the Third Reference Catalogue of
Galaxies. The average major axis of a barred galaxy in our sample is ~10 kpc
after correcting for redshift with a LambdaCDM cosmology. Galaxy bars were
present in normal abundance at least ~8 Gy ago (z~1); bar dissolution cannot be
common during a Hubble time unless the bar formation rate is comparable to the
dissolution rate.Comment: to appear in ApJ, Sept 1, 2004, Vol 612, 18 pg, 12 figure
Metallicity inhomogeneities in local star-forming galaxies as sign of recent metal-poor gas accretion
We measure the oxygen metallicity of the ionized gas along the major axis of
seven dwarf star-forming galaxies. Two of them, SDSSJ1647+21 and SDSSJ2238+14,
show 0.5 dex metallicity decrements in inner regions with enhanced
star-formation activity. This behavior is similar to the metallicity drop
observed in a number of local tadpole galaxies by Sanchez Almeida et al. (2013)
and interpreted as showing early stages of assembling in disk galaxies, with
the star formation sustained by external metal-poor gas accretion. The
agreement with tadpoles has several implications: (1) it proves that galaxies
other than the local tadpoles present the same unusual metallicity pattern. (2)
Our metallicity inhomogeneities were inferred using the direct method, thus
discarding systematic errors usually attributed to other methods. (3) Taken
together with the tadpole data, our findings suggest a threshold around one
tenth the solar value for the metallicity drops to show up. Although galaxies
with clear metallicity drops are rare, the physical mechanism responsible for
them may sustain a significant part of the star-formation activity in the local
Universe. We argue that the star-formation dependence of the mass-metallicity
relationship, as well as other general properties followed by most local disk
galaxies, are naturally interpreted as side effects of pristine gas infall.
Alternatives to the metal poor gas accretion are examined too.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 10 pages. 5 Fig
Ocular Shock Front in the Colliding Galaxy IC 2163
The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in The Astrophysical Journal, 831:161 (13pp), 2016 November 4, doi:10.3847/0004-637X/831/2/161 © 2016. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.ALMA observations in the CO 1 - 0 line of the interacting galaxies IC 2163 and NGC 2207 at 2" x 1.5" resolution reveal how the encounter drives gas to pile up in narrow, ~ 1 kpc wide, "eyelids" in IC 2163. IC 2163 and NGC 2207 are involved in a grazing encounter, which has led to development in IC 2163 of an eye-shaped (ocular) structure at mid-radius and two tidal arms. The CO data show that there are large velocity gradients across the width of each eyelid, with a mixture of radial and azimuthal streaming of gas at the outer edge of the eyelid relative to its inner edge. The sense of the radial streaming in the eyelids is consistent with the idea that gas from the outer part of IC 2163 flows inward until its radial streaming slows down abruptly and the gas piles up in the eyelids. The radial compression at the eyelids causes an increase in the gas column density by direct radial impact and also leads to a high rate of shear. We find a strong correlation between the molecular column densities and the magnitude of dv/dR across the width of the eyelid at fixed values of azimuth. Substantial portions of the eyelids have high velocity dispersion in CO, indicative of elevated turbulence there.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio
Physical Properties of Tidal Features in Interacting Disk Galaxies
We explore tidal interactions of a galactic disk with Toomre parameter Q ~ 2
embedded in rigid halo/bulge with a point mass companion moving in a prescribed
parabolic orbit. Tidal interactions produce well-defined spiral arms and
extended tidal features such as bridge and tail that are all transient, but
distinct in nature. In the extended disks, strong tidal force is able to lock
the perturbed epicycle phases of the near-side particles to the perturber,
shaping them into a tidal bridge that corotates with the perturber. A tidal
tail develops at the opposite side as strongly-perturbed, near-side particles
overtake mildly-perturbed, far-side particles. The tail is essentially a narrow
material arm with a roughly logarithmic shape, dissolving with time because of
large velocity dispersions. Inside the disks where tidal force is relatively
weak, on the other hand, a two-armed logarithmic spiral pattern emerges due to
the kinematic alignment of perturbed particle orbits. While self-gravity makes
the spiral arms a bit stronger, the arms never become fully self-gravitating,
wind up progressively with time, and decay after the peak almost exponentially
in a time scale of ~ 1 Gyr. The arm pattern speed varying with both radius and
time converges to Omega-kappa/2 at late time, suggesting that the pattern speed
of tidally-driven arms may depend on radius in real galaxies. We present the
parametric dependences of various properties of tidal features on the tidal
strength, and discuss our findings in application to tidal spiral arms in
grand-design spiral galaxies. (Abridged)Comment: 49 pages, 17 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in
Astrophysical Journal. PDF version with higher resolution figures is
available at
http://astro.snu.ac.kr/~shoh/research/publications/astroph/Tidally_Induced_Spiral_Structure.pd
A Turbulent Origin for Flocculent Spiral Structure in Galaxies
The flocculent structure of star formation in 7 galaxies has a Fourier
transform power spectrum for azimuthal intensity scans with a power law slope
that increases systematically from -1 at large scales to -1.7 at small scales.
This is the same pattern as in the power spectra for azimuthal scans of HI
emission in the Large Magellanic Clouds and for flocculent dust clouds in
galactic nuclei. The steep part also corresponds to the slope of -3 for
two-dimensional power spectra that have been observed in atomic and molecular
gas surveys of the Milky Way and the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. The
same power law structure for star formation arises in both flocculent and grand
design galaxies, which implies that the star formation process is the same in
each. Fractal Brownian motion models that include discrete stars and an
underlying continuum of starlight match the observations if all of the emission
is organized into a global fractal pattern with an intrinsic 1D power spectrum
having a slope between 1.3 and 1.8. We suggest that the power spectrum of
optical light in galaxies is the result of turbulence, and that large-scale
turbulent motions are generated by sheared gravitational instabilities which
make flocculent spiral arms first and then cascade to form clouds and clusters
on smaller scales.Comment: accepted for ApJ, 31 pg, 9 figure
- âŠ