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NASA NTRS1979

Population statistics of faint stellar and non-stellar objects

A disc and halo population model is constructed to fit star counts and color data down to V approximately 23 at absolute value of b = 90 deg. This model is used to predict star counts and colors down to V approximately 30. Deviations from these extrapolated relationships provide constraints on the number of faint quasars and black dwarf stars. It is shown that extra-galactic globular clusters start contributing significantly to star counts at V approximately 25 and are more numerous than stars for V 31. Morphological studies of galaxies with approximately 0.5, were made with the space telescope. Significant constraints on theoretical models that describe the evolution of clusters of galaxies are provided.

Vandenbergh, S.↗

NASA NTRS1980

Observations of supernova remnants in the Large Magellanic Cloud with the Einstein Observatory

Consideration is given to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), noting that above 2 keV, the X-ray luminosity of the LMC is dominated by emission from 3-5 point sources similar to the bright sources near the center of our own Galaxy. The imaging proportional counter aboard the Einstein Observatory has been used to locate about 40 X-ray sources in the LMC. Supernova remnants observed in the LMC are presented, noting X-ray position, X-ray counting rate, and radio flux. For the six brightest sources, X-ray spectra have been analyzed to determine temperatures and intrinsic luminosity corrected for the interstellar absorption. These data are compared for parameters for the young galactic remnant of Tycho's supernova. Attention is given to the ratio of X-ray luminosity to radio luminosity, and the data are discussed within the framework of the standard blast-wave theory. The results of applying the model to recorded observations are numerically presented. In addition to providing a sample of objects for investigations of supernova remnants, the data are applicable to studies of galaxies of other morphological types and individual objects, such as N49.

Helfand, D. J.↗

NASA NTRS1983

CCD photometry of Abell clusters. II - Surface photometry of 249 cluster galaxies

The luminosity of the brightest cluster galaxies remains the best standard candle for observational cosmology. Studies of over 250 relatively nearby clusters show that the luminosity of these objects within an aperture of constant metric diameter has a dispersion of only 0.35 mag. The observations considered by Schneider et al. (1983) were acquired to measure the aperture luminosities of the brightest cluster galaxies. However, the data base, because of its high signal-to-noise ratio and large spatial coverage, allows several other investigations to be performed. In the present investigation, surface photometry of the brightness three galaxies within approximately 250 kpc of the cluster center is presented, taking into account the cores of 83 Abell clusters. The relevance of the photometry to cosmological studies is also discussed. It is found that dynamical friction does play an extremely important role in determining properties of brightest cluster galaxies and cluster morphology.

Schneider, D. P.↗

NASA NTRS1990

Dynamical experiments on models of colliding disk galaxies

Collisions between galaxies can induce large morphological changes in the participants and, in the case of colliding disk galaxies, bridges and tails are often formed. Observations of such systems indicate a wide variation in color (see Larson and Tinsley, 1978) and that some of the particpants are experiencing enhanced rates of star formation, especially in their central regions (Bushouse 1986, 1987; Kennicutt et al., 1987, Bushouse, Lamb, and Werner, 1988). Here the authors describe progress made in understanding some of the dynamics of interacting galaxies using N-body stellar dynamical computer experiments, with the goal of extending these models to include a hydrodynamical treatment of the gas so that a better understanding of globally enhanced star formation will eventually be forthcoming. It was concluded that close interactions between galaxies can produce large perturbations in both density and velocity fields. The authors measured, via computational experiments that represent a galaxy's stars, average radial velocity flows as large as 100 km/sec and 400 percent density increases. These can occur in rings that move outwards through the disk of a galaxy, in roughly homologous inflows toward the nucleus, and in off center, non-axisymmetric regions. Here the authors illustrate where the gas is likely to flow during the early stages of interaction and in future work they plan to investigate the fate of the gas more realistically by using an N-body/Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics code to model both the stellar and gaseous components of a disk galaxy during a collision. Specifically, they will determine the locations of enhanced gas density and the strength and location of shock fronts that form during the interaction.

Gerber, Richard A.↗

NASA NTRS1993

The multicomponent structure of bulges

The morphology of disk galaxies is usually described by two major components, the centrally concentrated spheroidal component, called the bulge, and an oblate disk. The ratio of there contribution to the total luminosity - the bulge-to-disk ratio - is one of the parameters characterizing the Hubble sequence. Following de Vaucouleurs (1948), for most galaxies the radial distribution of the outer spheroid is fairly well described by the r exp 1/4 law I(r)=I(sub 0) exp(-(alpha)r), whereas the radial luminosity distribution of the disk follows an exponential law: I(r)=I(sub 0) exp(-alpha(r exp 1/4)) (Freeman 1970), with r the radial distance from the center. I(sub 0) and alpha are characteristic constants for each individual galaxy. Parameters for the structural properties of these components give important constraints for models of the formation and evolution of galaxies. Therefore we have tried to decompose disk and bulge components from high S/N CCD observations of a sample of edge-on disk galaxies. A common procedure for the decomposition is to model one component in a region where it dominates and subtract it from the combined light distribution. This technique was successfully carried out e.g. by van der Kruit & Earl (1981, 1982) and Wakamatsu & Hamabe (1984, 1989). Here we present two more examples of bulge-dominated edge-on SO galaxies, namely ESO 506-G33 and NGC 7123, which show an additional small and concentrated central component besides disk and 'bulge'.

Dettmar, Ralf-Juergen↗

NASA NTRS1992

Cosmic rays and shock waves in active galaxies

Studies of nonthermal radio emission in the inner regions of active galaxies reveal clear morphological evidence for shock waves. It is argued that the shocks are driven by collimated outflow of plasma from the AGN. I describe a model in which the synchrotron radio emission arises from ambient relativistic electrons and magnetic fields which have been compressed in a radiative shock wave. No active particle acceleration at the shock front is required in this picture. The prospects for diagnosing active acceleration from radio continuum and optical emission line observations are briefly discussed.

Wilson, Andrew S.↗

NASA NTRS1987

The H I distribution in clouds within galaxies

An interpretation is given for the relatively flat distribution of atomic hydrogen as a function of radius within the visible disks of spiral galaxies and the existence of a correlation between H I surface density and morphological class of spiral galaxy. The H I is mostly contained in constant column density envelopes of molecular clouds. The clouds have a two-dimensional filling factor of unity when a galaxy is viewed face on. The column density of the cloud envelopes depends on the ratio of flux of H2 dissociating radiation in the ambient medium to envelope gas density. The flat H I profiles imply the gas density and pressure follow the ultraviolet ambient flux on kiloparsec scales throughout a given galaxy. Later-type galaxies have larger ultraviolet surface brightnesses, as deduced from the H-alpha surface brightnesses. Therefore, thicker protective H I envelopes develop in late-type spirals.

Shaya, E. J.↗

NASA NTRS1989

0714 - 2914 (M4-1) - Another Seyfert galaxy with aligned radio continuum and optical emission-line morphologies

Direct imaging and long-slit spectroscopic mapping of the emission-line gas in the Seyfert 2 galaxy 0714 - 2914 (M4-1, MCG - 5-18-2) are reported. The nuclear regions contain an extended (1 kpc size), high-excitation nebulosity that is well aligned with the jet-like nonthermal radio source. The profiles of Forbidden O III 5007A are asymmetric, with extended red wings to the north and west of the nucleus and extended blue wings to the south and east. This switch in the sense of asymmetry is accounted for in terms of a combination of normal rotational motions in the galaxy disk and high-velocity outflow or infall associated with the Seyfert activity.

Wilson, A. S.↗

DOE OSTI2022

Detection of a Superluminous Spiral Galaxy in the Heart of a Massive Galaxy Cluster

It is well established that brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs), residing in the centers of galaxy clusters, are typically massive and quenched galaxies with cD or elliptical morphology. An optical survey suggested that an exotic galaxy population, superluminous spiral and lenticular galaxies, could be the BCGs of some galaxy clusters. Because the cluster membership and the centroid of a cluster cannot be accurately determined based solely on optical data, we followed up a sample of superluminous disk galaxies and their environments using XMM-Newton X-ray observations. Specifically, we explored seven superluminous spiral and lenticular galaxies that are candidate BCGs. We detected massive galaxy clusters around five superluminous disk galaxies and established that one superluminous spiral, 2MASX J16273931+3002239, is the central BCG of a galaxy cluster. The temperature and total mass of the cluster are ${{kT}}_{500}={3.55}_{-0.20}^{+0.18}$ keV and M 500 = (2.39 ± 0.19) × 10 14 M ⊙ . We identified the central galaxies of the four clusters that do not host superluminous disk galaxies at their cores, and established that the centrals are massive elliptical galaxies. However, for two of the clusters, the offset superluminous spirals are brighter than the central galaxies, implying that the superluminous disk galaxies are the brightest cluster galaxies. Our results demonstrate that superluminous disk galaxies are rarely the central systems of galaxy clusters. This is likely because galactic disks are destroyed by major mergers, which are more frequent in high-density environments. We speculate that the disks of superluminous disk galaxies in cluster cores may have been reformed due to mergers with gas-rich satellites.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

NASA NTRS1987

Systematic properties of CO emission from galaxies. I - Luminosity function

A sensitive survey of normal galaxies covering a wide range of luminosities and morphological types is combined with galaxy observations in the literature to provide a sample for statistical study. The global CO emission of these galaxies is extrapolated by modeling the galaxies with an exponential radial profile. The maximum-likelihood distribution functions of CO luminosity and CO/H I flux ratio are similar in behavior. Both have long tails of bright galaxies. However, the typical galaxy has a CO luminosity of about 10 to the 6th Jy km/s Mpc-squared or less and a CO/H I ratio of the order of 10 or less. Averages of the distributions of CO luminosity and CO/H I flux ratio are higher for galaxies of Hubble type Sb-Sbc than for groups of earlier or later types. Quantitative estimates of the possible error sources in the conversion of CO luminosity to molecular mass indicates that the peaking of CO emission at intermediate types is a fairly confident result.

Verter, Frances↗

NASA NTRS1993

Probing the extent and content of low ionization gas in galaxies: QSO absorption and HI emission

The small projected separations of some QSO's and low-redshift galaxies provide unique opportunities to study the extent and content of gas in galaxies through observation of absorption in the QSO spectra. Observations of these systems provide valuable information on the connection between the absorbing gas and the galaxy, as well as detailed information on the morphology and environment of the galaxy itself. While there is direct evidence that galaxies can produce the intervening-type QSO absorption lines, over the past decade, the study of such 'QSO-galaxy pairs' (at low redshift) has been considered unsuccessful because new detections of absorption were seldom made. A fundamental problem concerning the relation between these low-redshift systems and those seen at moderate to high redshift remains unresolved. Direct and indirect measures of galaxy absorption cross sections at moderate to high redshifts (z is approximately greater than 20.5) are much larger than the optical and HI sizes of local galaxies. However, direct comparison of the low and moderate to high redshift systems is difficult since different ions are observed in different redshift regimes. Observations are presented for a new sample of QSO-galaxy pairs. Nine new QSO's which shine through nearby galaxies (on the sky-plane) were observed to search for CaII absorption in the QSO spectra at the foreground galaxy redshifts.

Womble, Donna S.↗

NASA NTRS1990

Stripping of gas and dust from the elliptical galaxy M86

Past observations of the x ray morphology of M86 have revealed that the galaxy is experiencing ram-pressure stripping due to its large velocity (1500 km s(-1)) relative to the intracluster medium of Virgo (Forman et al. 1979, Fabian, Schwartz, and Forman 1980). Observations indicate that the x ray emitting gas in the plume of M86 is still being produced from the continual heating of gas and dust stripped from nearer the galaxy's center. Researchers obtained two-dimensional Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS) images of M86 which have revealed that there are two spatially separated regions of emission, one at 60 microns and the other at 100 microns of the IRAS wavebands. The 100 microns emission, presumably from cool dust (at approximately 20 K), appears to be located near the center of the galaxy together with HI (detected by Bregman, Roberts and Giovanelli 1988), while the 60 microns emission appears to lie more than 3 arcminutes away from the optical center in a direction slightly south of the center of the plume. Optical images produced by scanning U.K. Schmidt plates, reveal asymmetric isophotal contours along the major axis of the galaxy (first reported by Nulsen and Carter in 1987, which they propose as excess emission due to star formation). This excess optical emission is co-incident with the direction of the 60 micron infra-red emission.

White, D. A.↗

NASA NTRS2009

Finding the First Galaxies

Astronomers study distant galaxies by taking long exposures in deep survey fields. They choose fields that are empty of known sources, so that they are statistically representative of the Universe as a whole. Astronomers can compare the distribution of the detected galaxies in brightness, color, morphology and redshift to theoretical models, in order to puzzle out the processes of galaxy evolution. In 2004, the Hubble Space Telescope was pointed at a small, deep-survey field in the southern constellation Fornax for more than 500 hours of exposure time. The resulting Hubble Ultra-Deep Field could see the faintest and most distant galaxies that the telescope is capable of viewing. These galaxies emitted their light less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang. From the Ultra Deep Field and other galaxy surveys, astronomers have built up a history of star formation in the universe. the peak occurred about7 billion years ago, about half of the age of the current universe, then the number of stars that were forming was about 15 time the rate today. Going backward in time to when the very first starts and galaxies formed, the average star-formation rate should drop to zero. but when looking at the most distant galaxies in the Ultra Deep field, the star formation rate is still higher than it is today. The faintest galaxies seen by Hubble are not the first galaxies that formed in the early universe. To detect these galaxies NASA is planning the James Webb Space Telescope for launch in 2013. Webb will have a 6.5-meter diameter primary mirror, much bigger than Hubble's 2.4-meter primary, and will be optimized for infrared observations to see the highly redshifted galaxies.

Gardner, Jonathan P.↗

DOE OSTI2024

GALAXY CRUISE: Spiral and ring classifications for bright galaxies at z = 0.01–0.3

Abstract This paper presents a morphology classification catalog of spiral and ring features of 59854 magnitude-limited galaxies (r < 17.8 mag, and additional 628005 subsamples down to r = 20 mag) at z = 0.01–0.3 based on the Third Public Data Release of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program. We employ two deep-learning classifiers to determine the spiral and ring structures separately based on GALAXY CRUISE Data Release 1, which is dedicated to Hyper Suprime-Cam data. The number of spiral and ring galaxies contain 31864 and 8808 sources, respectively, which constitute 53% and 15% of the sample. A notable result of this study is the construction of a large sample of ring galaxies utilizing high-quality imaging data delivered by the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam. However, the accurate identification of ring galaxies remains difficult at a limited seeing resolution. Additionally, we confirm that most spiral galaxies are located on the star-forming main sequence, whereas ring galaxies preferentially reside in the green valley at stellar masses of 1010.5–1011 solar mass. Furthermore, decreasing fractions of spiral and ring galaxies are observed toward the centers of the galaxy clusters. The obtained morphology catalog is publicly available on the GALAXY CRUISE website.

Shimakawa, Rhythm (ORCID:0000000344422750)↗

NASA NTRS1983

The filaments of NGC 1275 - A collision between a galaxy and an accretion flow?

Morphological evidence is presented (in the form of 3-A-bandpass Fabry-Perot images made with a CCD camera) that the two bright emission-line systems seen toward the galaxy NGC 1275 arise from a high-velocity impact of a foreground galaxy upon the accretion flow of gas cooling in the center of the Perseus cluster. The uniquely high optical-line luminosity of NGC 1275, in comparison with other central galaxies in clusters observed to have cooling flows, may be explained by energy deposited during the collision. Using additional information from 21-cm and extinction measurements, a rough model of the interaction is developed. Problems remain with this model - such as the likelihood of a gas-rich system penetrating to the cluster center. The kinematic structure of the optically emitting gas shows additional complex structure near the nucleus of NGC 1275.

Kaaret, P.↗

NASA NTRS1993

Simulations of Deep Galaxy Fields I: Monte-Carlo Simulations of Optical and Near Infrared Counts

Monte-Carlo simulations of three dimensional galaxy distributions are performed, following the prescription of Chokishi & Wright (1988), to study the photometric properties of evolving galaxy populations in the optical and near infrared bands to high redshifts. Galaxies are spatially distributed according to the spatial two point correlation function in a range of cluster to field environments andin volume elements appropriate to the cosmological model under consideration. Details of individual galaxy properties, including luminosities, morphologies, disk-to-bulge ratios, and size distributions are simulated to match local observed galaxy properties. Galaxies have evolving gas fraction, metallicity and spectral energy distributions that include both stellar emission and internal dust absorption and re-emission. The simulations result in noiseless two dimensional galaxy distributions on the sky that canbe compared to the observed deep images in the blue and near-infrared bands...

faint↗

DOE OSTI2022

Extremely massive disc galaxies in the nearby Universe form through gas-rich minor mergers

ABSTRACT In our hierarchical structure-formation paradigm, the observed morphological evolution of massive galaxies – from rotationally supported discs to dispersion-dominated spheroids – is largely explained via galaxy merging. However, since mergers are likely to destroy discs, and the most massive galaxies have the richest merger histories, it is surprising that any discs exist at all at the highest stellar masses. Recent theoretical work by our group has used a cosmological, hydrodynamical simulation to suggest that extremely massive (M* > 1011.4 M⊙) discs form primarily via minor mergers between spheroids and gas-rich satellites, which create new rotational stellar components and leave discs as remnants. Here, we use UV-optical and H i data of massive galaxies, from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Galaxy Evolution Explorer, Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS), and Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA surveys, to test these theoretical predictions. Observed massive discs account for ∼13 per cent of massive galaxies, in good agreement with theory (∼11 per cent). ∼64 per cent of the observed massive discs exhibit tidal features, which are likely to indicate recent minor mergers, in the deep DECaLS images (compared to ∼60 per cent in their simulated counterparts). The incidence of these features is at least four times higher than in low-mass discs, suggesting that, as predicted, minor mergers play a significant (and outsized) role in the formation of these systems. The empirical star formation rates agree well with theoretical predictions and, for a small galaxy sample with H i detections, the H i masses and fractions are consistent with the range predicted by the simulation. The good agreement between theory and observations indicates that extremely massive discs are indeed remnants of recent minor mergers between spheroids and gas-rich satellites.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

NASA NTRS1992

On the use of far-infrared luminosity as a star formation indicator in galaxies

By comparing the H-alpha and far-infrared (FIR) luminosities for an optically selected and magnitude-limited (m B is not greater than 14.5) sample of galaxies, a strong nonlinearity is found in the log L(H-alpha)-log L(FIR) correlation, and a systematic decrease of the L(FIR)/L(H-alpha) ratio from early- to late-type spirals. It is shown that these trends cannot be interpreted in the frame of a single-component model for the FIR emission of galaxies, with the star formation rate as the only parameter, but are consistent with a two-component model, with the cirrus fraction as the second parameter. A decreasing contribution of the cirrus component to L(FIR) toward later types, going from about 86 percent for Sa galaxies to about 3 percent for Sdm galaxies was found. If L(FIR) is to be used as a star formation indicator in galaxies, it needs to corrected, to first order, for the cirrus component, taking into account the morphological type of the galaxy.

Sauvage, Marc↗