Detection of CO Outflow in Rotating Cores

We investigate the effect of bulk motion on the detection of molecular outflows in the sources S 146, GGD27, and IRAS 22566 5830. The traditional techniques do allow for bulk motions or systematic VLSR shifts of the core emissions, which may cause contamination of the high velocity gas emissions, and outflows may either fail to be detected or have their properties miscalculated. We used a program to follow the systematic shift of VLSR and better results have been obtained.     

An Analytic Model of Galactic Winds and Mass Outflows

Galactic winds and mass outflows are observed both in nearby starburst galaxies and in high-redshift star-forming galaxies. We develop a simple analytic model to understand the observed superwind phenomenon with a discussion of the model uncertainties. Our model is built upon the model of McKee & Ostriker for the interstellar medium. It allows one to predict how properties of a superwind, such as wind velocity and mass outflow rate, are related to properties of its starforming host galaxy, such as size, gas density and star formation rate. The model predicts a threshold of star formation rate density for the generation of observable galactic winds. Galaxies with more concentrated star formation activities produce superwinds with higher velocities. The predicted mass outflow rates are comparable to (or slightly larger than) the corresponding star formation rates. We apply our model to both local starburst galaxies and high-redshift Lyman break galaxies, and find its predictions to be in good agreement with current observations. Our model is simple and so can be easily incorporated into numerical simulations and semi-analytical models of galaxy formation.     

Global Axisymmetric Stability Analysis for a Composite System of Two Gravitationally Coupled Scale-Free Discs

For a composite system of gravitationally coupled stellar and gaseous discs, we have carried out a linear stability analysis for axisymmetric coplanar perturbations using the two-fluid formalism. The background stellar and gaseous discs are taken to be scale-free with all physical variables varying as powers of the cylindrical radius r with compatible exponents. The unstable modes set in as neutral modes or stationary perturbation configurations with angular frequency ω=0. The axisymmetric stable range is bounded by two marginal stability curves derived from stationary perturbation configurations. Because of the gravitational coupling between the stellar and the gaseous discs, one only needs to consider the parameter regime of the stellar disc. There exist two unstable regimes in general: a collapse regime corresponding to large-scale perturbations and a ring-fragmentation regime corresponding to short-wavelength perturbations. The composite system will collapse if it rotates too slowly and will succumb to ring-fragmentation instabilities if it rotates sufficiently fast. The overall stable range against axisymmetric perturbations is determined by a necossary D-criterion involving the effective Mach number squared Ds^2 (the squared ratio of the stellar disc rotation speed to the stellar velocity dispersion up to a numerical factor). Different mass ratio δ and sound speed ratio of the gaseous and stellar disc components will alter the overall stability. For spiral galaxies or circumnuclear discs, we further include the dynamical effect of a massive dark matter halo. Astrophysical applications to disc galaxies, proto-stellar discs and circumnuclear discs are given as examples.     

First MERLIN Observations of Line Emission from the OH Megamaser toward IRAS 10173＋0828

Many galaxies are thought to contain massive black holes, with masses in excess of ten million solar masses, at their centres and warped circumnu-clear toruses. The best evidence comes from observing gas or masers rotating rapidly within a circumnuclear torus surrounding a central body. Here we report on the first MERLIN observations of line emission from the OH megamaser toward IRAS 10173+0828. The position of peak flux contours of the OH megamaser is consistent with that of the continuum in IRAS 10173+0828. This means that the OH megamaser is a diffuse unsaturated maser which could amplify the diffuse 18 cm continuum emission with an amplification factor of order unity.     

Cylindrical Jet—Wind interaction Model of Gamma—Ray Burst Afterglows

Observations on relativistic jets in radio galaxies, active galactic nuclei, and "microquasars" revealed that many of these outflows are cylindrical, not conical. So it is worthwhile to investigate the evolution of cylindrical jets in gamma-ray bursts. We discuss afterglows from cylindrical jets in a wind environment. Numerical results as well as analytic solutions in some special cases are presented. Our light curves are steeper compared to those in the homogeneous interstellar medium case, carefully considered by Cheng, Huang & Lu. We conclude that some afterglows, used to be interpreted as isotropic fireballs in a wind environment, can be fitted as well by cylindrical jets interacting with a wind.     

Galactic Chemical Evolution of the Lighter Neutron Capture Elements Sr, Y and Zr

Based on a three-component Galaxy chemical evolutionary model satisfying a large set of Galactic and extragalactic constraints, we compute the chemical evolution of the lighter neutron capture elements (e.g., Sr, Y and Zr) taking into account contributions from three processes. We compare our model results with available observational results and find that the observed trends can be understood in the light of present knowledge of neutron capture nucleosynthesis.     

Clustering Property of Wolf-Rayet Galaxies in the SDSS

We have analysed, for the first time, the clustering properties of Wolf-Rayet (W-R) galaxies, using a large sample of 846 W-R galaxies selected from the Data Release 4 (DR4) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We compute the cross-correlation function between W- R galaxies and a reference sample of galaxies drawn from the DR4. We compare the function to the results for control samples of non-W-R star-forming galaxies that are matched closely in redshift, luminosity, concentration, 4000-A break strength and specific star formation rate (SSFR). On scales larger than a few Mpc, W-R galaxies have almost the same clustering amplitude as the control samples, indicating that W-R galaxies and non-W-R control galax- ies populate dark matter haloes of similar masses. On scales between 0.1-1 h-1 Mpc, W-R galaxies are less clustered than the control samples, and the size of the difference depends on the SSFR. Based on both observational and theoretical considerations, we speculate that this negative bias can be interpreted by W-R galaxies residing preferentially at the centers of their dark matter haloes. We examine the distribution of W-R galaxies more closely using the SDSS galaxy group catalogue of Yang et al., and find that ～82% of our W-R galaxies are the central galaxies of groups, compared to ～74% for the corresponding control galaxies. We find that W-R galaxies are hosted, on average, by dark matter haloes of masses of 1012,3 M☉, compared to 1012,1 M? For centrally-located W-R galaxies and 1012,7 M☉ For satellite ones. We would like to point out that this finding, which provides a direct observational support to our conjecture, is really very crude due to the small number of W-R galaxies and the incom- pleteness of the group catalogue, and needs more work in future with larger samples.     

Velocity Space of Galactic O-B Stars

Based on the Hipparcos proper motions and available radial velocity data of O-B stars, we have re-examined the local kinematical structure of the young disk population of-1500 O-B stars not including the Gould-belt stars. A systematic warping motion of the stars about the direction to the Galactic center has been reconfirmed. A negative K-term implying a systematic contraction of stars in the solar vicinity has been detected. Two different distance scales are used in order to find out their impact on the kinematical parameters, and we conclude that the adopted distance scale plays an important role in characterizing the kinematical parameters at the present level of the measurement uncertainty.     

Time Scales and Tidal Effects in Minor Mergers

We use controlled N-body simulation to investigate the dynamical processes (dynamical friction, tidal truncation, etc.) involved in the merging of small satellites into bigger halos. We confirm the validity of some analytic formulae proposed earlier based on simple arguments. For rigid satellites represented by softened point masses, the merging time scale depends on both the orbital shape and concentration of the satellite. The dependence on orbital ellipticity is roughly a power law, as suggested by Lacey & Cole, and the dependence on satellite concentration is similar to that proposed by White. When merging satellites are represented by non-rigid objects, Tidal effects must be considered. We found that material beyond the tidal radius are stripped off. The decrease in the satellite mass might mean an increase in the merging time scale, but in fact, the merging time is decreased, because the stripped-off material carries away a proportionately larger amount of of orbital energy and angular momentum.     

Newly Identified Silicate Carbon Stars from IRAS Low-Resolution Spectra

The discovery of silicate carbon star poses a challenge to the theory of stellar evolution in the late stage, hence it is important to look for more silicate carbon stars. To this end we have carried out cross-identifications between the new IRAS Low-Resolution Spectrum (LRS) database and the new carbon star catalog, CGCS3. We have found nine new silicate carbon stars with silicate features around 10μm and/or 18μm. These newly identified stars are located in the Regions IIIa and VII in the IRAS two-color diagram, which means they indeed have typical far infrared colors of silicate carbon stars. The infrared properties of each of these sources are discussed.     

Radio Observations of Sgr B2

1 INTRODUCTIONFor the behavior of a molecular cloud in subsonic collision with another, Mao et al. (1992)have obtained simplified one-dimension traveling wave solutions for a plane-parallel s1ab. Chang-ing the sign in the transformation of variables in their case, we have the fOllowing results,1 rP = 2 l W op -- 1, (1)1 r =v = -- j W -- ry 1. (2)2 {V(N M)' 2z 2t -- W 1. (2)In Eq. (1), p increases with increasing t. Instability is expected to occur in strongly perturbedmolecular…     

A Check on the Cardassian Expansion Model with Type－IaSupernovae Data

We use the magnitude-redshift relation for the type Ia supernova datacompiled by Riess et al. to analyze the Cardassian expansion scenario. This sce-nario assumes the universe to be flat, matter dominated, and accelerating, but contains no vacuum contribution.The best fitting model parameters are H0=65.3kms^-1 Mpc^-1, n= 0.35 and Ω= 0.05. When the highest redshift supernova,SN 1997ck, is excluded, H0 remains the same, but n becomes 0.20 and Ωm, 0.15, and the matter density remains unreasonably low. Our result shows that this particular scenario is strongly disfavoured by the SNeIa data.     

A Search for High-velocity Gas Associated H_2O Masers and Ultracompact HII Regions

1 INTRODUCTIONA violent molecular outflow is a bajsic component of star formation process. Such outflowsare observed over a wide range of wavelength from the ultraviolet to the radio, resulting fromthe interaction of highly supersonic stellar winds with the alnbiellt material and the windejection takes place in the vicinity of a newly formed star. Outflows are produced by starsof all massess but currellt outflow theories are predominantly based on observations of nearby,low-mass outflow sy…     

Weak Elliptical Distortion of the Milky Way Potential traced by Open Clusters

From photometric observations and star counts, the existence of a bar in the cen-tral few kpc of the Galaxy is suggested. It is generally thought that our Galaxy is surrounded by a massive invisible halo. The gravitational potential of the Galaxy is therefore made non-axisymmetric generated by the central tfiaxial bar, by the outer triaxial halo, and/or by the spiral structures. Selecting nearly 300 open clusters with complete spatial velocity measure-ments and ages, we were able to construct the rotation curve of the Milky Way within a range of 3 kpc of the Sun. Using a dynamic model for an assumed elliptical disk, a clear weak el-liptical potential of the disk with ellipticity of ε(R0) = 0.060 ± 0.012 is detected, the Sun is found to be near the minor axis, displaced by 30°± 3°. The motion of the clusters is suggested to be on an oval orbit rather than on a circular one.     

Chandra Observations of the Flat Spectrum Seyfert-2 Galaxies NGC 2110 and NGC 7582

Chandra observations of the Seyfert-2 galaxies NGC 2110 and NGC 7582 are presented. With the superb spatial resolution of Chandra we found that in NGC 7582 the soft (≤2 keV) and hard (2-10 keV) X-rays are emitted in different regions, consistent with the report by Xue et al. By comparing the present X-ray data with the previous infrared data, we determined that the soft X-ray region is the site of starburst activities. We found no significant temporal variations during our observations. We confirm the previous finding that NGC 2110 and NGC 7582 are flat-spectrum sources. We argue that the flat spectra may result from a cold absorbing material such as envisaged in the “dual absorbed” model. Strong Fe Kα emission feature is detected in 6-7keV. Its equivalent width is so large that it cannot be reproduced by using the Galactic column density of - 10^22 cm^-2.     

Discovery of an Optical Jet in the Rosette Nebula： Rosette HH2

We report on the discovery of an optical jet-Rosette HH2-in the Rosette Nebula. The jet system bears unique features for residing at the center of a giant HII region, and its energy source is visible with apparently very low extinction along the line of sight. Unlike most other Herbig-Haro jets, this jet indicates a high-excitation origin, and its extended portion shows a seemingly intact structure, instead of normally a shocked working surface, which is attributed to photoablation.     

X-ray Flashes from Off-axis Nonuniform Jets

It has been widely believed that the outflows in gamma-ray bursts are jetted and some jets may have structures like ε(θ) ∝ θ^-k. We check the possibility that X-ray flashes come from such jets. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses have shown that this model can reproduce most of the observational features of both X-ray flashes and gamma-ray bursts. Using the usual parameters of gamma-ray bursts, we have carried out numerical calculations for both uniform and nonuniform jets, of their fluxes, spectra and peak energies. It seems that nonuniform jets are more appropriate to these observational properties than uniform jets.We have also shown that in our model the observational ratio of gamma-ray bursts to X-ray flashes is about a few units.     

The Synchrotron-self-Compton Radiation Accompanying Shallow Decaying X-Ray Afterglow： the Case of GRB 940217

High energy emission (> tens MeV) of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) provides an important clue on the physical processes occurring in GRBs that may be correlated with the GRB early afterglow. A shallow decline phase has been well identified in about half of Swift Gamma-ray Burst X-ray afterglows. The widely considered interpretation involves a significant energy injection and possibly time-evolving shock parameter(s). We calculate the synchrotron-self-Compton (SSC) radiation of such an external forward shock and show that it could explain the well-known long term high energy (i.e., tens MeV to GeV) afterglow of GRB 940217. We propose that cooperation of Swift and GLAST will help to reveal the nature of GRBs.     

Two Novel Approaches for Photometric Redshift Estimation based on SDSS and 2MASS

We investigate two training-set methods: support vector machines (SVMs) and Kernel Regression (KR) for photometric redshift estimation with the data from the databases of Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 5 and Two Micron All Sky Survey. We probe the performances of SVMs and KR for different input patterns. Our experiments show that with more parameters considered, the accuracy does not always increase, and only when appropriate parameters are chosen, the accuracy can improve. For different approaches, the best input pattern is different. With different parameters as input, the optimal bandwidth is dissimilar for KR. The rms errors of photometric redshifts based on SVM and KR methods are less than 0.03 and 0.02, respectively. Strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches are summarized. Compared to other methods of estimating photometric redshifts, they show their superiorities, especially KR, in terms of accuracy.