Challenging a Paradigm: Do We Need Active and Inactive Areas to Account for Near-Nuclear Jet Activity?

We briefly describe an advanced 3D gas dynamical model developed for the simulation of theenvironment of active cometary nuclei. The model canhandle realistic nucleus shapes and alternative physical models for the gas and dust production mechanism.The inner gas coma structure is computed by solving self-consistently(a) near to the surface the Boltzman Equation(b) outside of it, Euler or Navier-Stokes equations.The dust distribution is computed from multifluid ``zero-temperature' Euler equations,extrapolated with the help of a Keplerian fountain model.The evolution of the coma during the nucleus orbital and spin motion,is computed as a succession of quasi-steady solutions. Earlier versions of the model using simple,``paedagogic' nuclei have demonstrated that the surface orographyand the surface inhomogeneity contribute similarly to structuring the near-nucleusgas and dust coma,casting a shadow on the automatic attribution of such structures to ``active areas'.The model was recently applied to comet P/Halley, for whichthe nucleus shape is available. In the companion paper of this volume,we show that most near-nucleus dust structuresobserved during the 1986 Halley flybys are reproduced, assuming that the nucleus is strictly homogeneous. Here, we investigate the effect of shape perturbations and homogeneityperturbations. We show that the near nucleus gas coma structure is robust vis-a-vissuch effects. In particular, a random distribution of active and inactive areaswould not affect considerably this structure, suggesting that such areas,even if present, could not be easily identified on images of the coma.     

Application of the global modal approach to the spiral galaxies

We have tested the applicability of the global modal approach in the density wave theory of spiral structure for a sample of spiral galaxies with measured axisymmetric background properties. We report here the results of the simulations for four galaxies: NGC 488, NGC 628, NGC 1566, and NGC 3938. Using the observed radial distributions for the stellar velocity dispersions and the rotation velocities we have constructed the equilibrium models for the galactic disks in each galaxy and implemented two kinds of stability analyses - the linear global analysis and 2D-nonlinear simulations. In general, the global modal approach is able to reproduce the observed properties of the spiral arms in the galactic disks. The growth of spirals in the galactic disks can be physically understood in terms of amplification by over-reflection at the corotation resonance. Our results support the global modal approach as a theoretical explanation of spiral structure in galaxies. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

南极乔治王岛长城湾沿岸固定冰中有色层生态观察

自1988年11月至1989年3月,对南极乔治王岛的长城湾沿岸水域中的海洋生物和环境因子进行了调查,1988年11月20日在2号站采得的冰芯中部有一层约5cm的棕色层,而1988年11月17日、20日和26日在5号站采得的冰芯样中有二层棕色层。固定冰中叶绿素a浓度范围在2.55～56.8mg/m~3之间,而且大部分含量集中在海冰的中间层中,而不象其它海区如昭和、戴维斯、凯西和麦克默多等站,大部分叶绿素a集中在海冰的底部,造成这种差别的原因、可能是由于海冰的结构和形成过程不同所致。