Anisotropy and rotation in homeoidally striated Jacobi ellipsoids

In this paper a unified theory of systematically rotating and peculiar motions is developed for homeoidally striated Jacobi ellipsoids, where both real and imaginary rotations are considered. The effect of positive or negative residual motion excess along the equatorial plane is considered to be equivalent either to an additional real or an imaginary rotation, respectively. The principle results consist of (i) the discovery that homeoidally striated Jacobi ellipsoids always admit an adjoint configuration i.e. a classical Jacobi ellipsoid of equal mass and axes; (ii) the establishment of further constraints on the amount of residual velocity anisotropy along the principal axes for triaxial configurations; (iii) the finding that bifurcation points from axisymmetric to triaxial configurations occur as in classical Jacobi ellipsoids, contrary to earlier findings. An interpretation of recent results from numerical simulations on stability is provided in the light of the model. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Search for H I emission from superdisk candidates associated with radio galaxies

Giant gaseous layers(termed “superdisks”) have been hypothesized in the past to account for the strip-like radio emission gap(or straight-edged central brightness depression) observed between twin radio lobes, in over a dozen relatively nearby powerful Fanaroff-Riley Class II radio galaxies. They could also provide a plausible alternative explanation for a range of observations. Although a number of explanations have been proposed for the origin of the superdisks, little is known about their material content. Some X-ray observations of superdisk candidates indicate the presence of hot gas, but a cool dusty medium also seems to be common. If they are entirely or partly composed of neutral gas, then it may be directly detectable and we report here a first attempt to detect/image any neutral hydrogen gas present in the superdisks that are inferred to be present in four nearby radio galaxies. We have not found a positive H I signal in any of the four sources, resulting in tight upper limits on the H I number density in the postulated superdisks,estimated directly from the central rms noise values of the final radio continuum subtracted image. The estimated ranges of the upper limit on neutral hydrogen number density and column density are 10^-4-10^-3 atoms per cm3 and 10^19-10^20 atoms per cm^2, respectively. No positive H I signal is detected even after combining all the four available H I images(with inverse variance weighting). This clearly rules out an H I dominated superdisk as a viable model to explain these structures, however, the possibility of a superdisk being composed of warm/hot gas still remains open.     

Tracing the star stream through M31 using planetary nebula kinematics

We present a possible orbit for the Southern Stream of stars in M31, which connects it to the Northern Spur. Support for this model comes from the dynamics of planetary nebulae (PNe) in the disc of M31: analysis of a new sample of 2611 PNe obtained using the Planetary Nebula Spectrograph reveals ∼20 objects with kinematics inconsistent with the normal components of the galaxy, but which lie at the right positions and velocities to connect the two photometric features via this orbit. The satellite galaxy M32 is coincident with the stream both in position and velocity, adding weight to the hypothesis that the stream comprises its tidal debris.