Interesting Astrophysics: Feb 23 to Feb 27

The latest batch of interesting papers and preprints for February 2009. Doesn't time fly? As usual any comments I have on any of the papers are given in italics.

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Galaxies and Starbursts

Ubiquitous Outflows in DEEP2 Spectra of Star-Forming Galaxies at z = 1.4
Weiner, Benjamin J.; Coil, Alison L.; Prochaska, Jason X.; Newman, Jeffrey A.; Cooper, Michael C.; Bundy, Kevin; Conselice, Christopher J.; Dutton, Aaron A.; Faber, S. M.; Koo, David C.; Lotz, Jennifer M.; Rieke, G. H.; Rubin, K. H. R., 2009, ApJ, 692, 197
PDF (2.04 MB) | HTML

A Young Super Star Cluster in the Nuclear Region of NGC 253
Katherine A. Kornei, Nate McCrady, arXiv:0902.4027 [ps, pdf, other]
Comments: 8 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

Are ring galaxies the ancestors of giant low surface brightness galaxies?
M. Mapelli, B. Moore, arXiv:0902.3554 [ps, pdf, other]
Comments: 4 pages, 6 figures, Astronomische Nachrichten, Vol.329, p.948, proceeding of "Galactic & Stellar Dynamics in the era of high resolution surveys", Strasbourg, France, March 16-20 2008

The diverse X-ray properties of four truly isolated elliptical galaxies: NGC 2954, NGC 6172, NGC 7052, and NGC 7785

Elisabetta Memola, Ginevra Trinchieri, Anna Wolter, Paola Focardi, Birgit Kelm, arXiv:0902.3611 [ps, pdf, other]

Comments: Comments: 12 pages, 14 PostScript figures, 3 tables, LaTeX - Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics, elisabetta.memola@mib.infn.it. The original version of the manuscript is available at: this http URL

The onset of warps in Spitzer observations of edge-on spiral galaxies
Kanak Saha, Roelof de Jong, Benne Holwerda, arXiv:0902.4436 [ps, pdf, other]
Comments: Accepted for publication in MNRAS, 25 pages, 12 figures

Spitzer/IRAC 4.5 micron observations and luminosities of ESO121-G6, NGC 4013, NGC 4157, NGC 4302, NGC 4565, NGC 5907 (i.e. many of the Howk and Savage edge-on sample).

The Extragalactic Distance Database
R Brent Tully, L Rizzi, E J Shaya, H M Courtois, D I Makarov, B A Jacobs, arXiv:0902.3668 [pdf, other]
Comments: 10 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Astronomical Journal

The Extragalactic Distance Database: All Digital HI Profile Catalog
Helene M Courtois, R B Tully, J R Fisher, N Bonhomme, M Zavodny, A Barnes, arXiv:0902.3670 [pdf, other]
Comments: 17 pages, 22 figures, submitted to Astronomical Journal

A spectroscopic measure of the star-formation rate density in dwarf galaxies at z~1
G.T. Davies, David Gilbank, Karl Glazebrook, Richard Bower, I.K. Baldry, Michael Balogh, G.K.T. Hau, I.H. Li, P. McCarthy, S. Savaglio, arXiv:0902.3997 [ps, pdf, other]
Comments: Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letters. 6 pages, 2 figures

Trigonometric Parallaxes of Massive Star Forming Regions: VI. Galactic Structure, Fundamental Parameters and Non-Circular Motions
M. J. Reid, K. M. Menten, X. W. Zheng, A. Brunthaler, L. Moscadelli, Y. Xu, B. Zhang, M. Sato, M. Honma, T. Hirota, K. Hachisuka, Y. K. Choi, G. A. Moellenbrock, A. Bartkiewicz, arXiv:0902.3913 [ps, pdf, other]
Comments: 35 pages, 7 figures, 7 tables

This is the actual paper associated with one of the January 2009 AAS meeting press releases I discussed in this older blog entry . Better late than never, eh? A really nice piece of work though.

On the origin of high-velocity clouds
J. Binney, C. Nipoti, F. Fraternali, arXiv:0902.4525 [ps, pdf, other]
Comments: Submitted to MNRAS. 13 pages, 9 figures

Poors cold water on the currently popular idea (Maller & Bullock, etc) that the HVCs are gas cooling out of the the hot Galactic halo via thermal instability. Apparently a hot atmosphere confined by a gravitational field and radially stratified by specific entropy is NOT thermally unstable in the common sense. Adiabatic (constant entropy) coronae are subject to thermal instability, but in addition to being somewhat unrealistic they can be stabilized against T.I. by even tiny amounts of thermal conduction (Spitzer/100). Impressive.

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Black Holes and AGN

The effect of stellar feedback on the formation and evolution of gas and dust tori in AGN
M. Schartmann, K. Meisenheimer, H. Klahr, M. Camenzind, S. Wolf, Th. Henning, 2009, MNRAS, 393, 759
Full Text: HTML, PDF (Size: 9636K)

Evolution of X-ray cavities
Marcus Brüggen, Evan Scannapieco, Sebastian Heinz, arXiv:0902.4242 [ps, pdf, other]
Comments: 13 pages, 8 figures, MNRAS, in press

Nice work. Must check out the XIM software mentioned in the paper to see if it is more capable than my home-grown simulated X-ray imaging and spectra software that is sadly gathering dust.

The ULX NGC 1313 X-2 : an optical study revealing an interesting behavior
Fabien Grisé, Manfred W. Pakull, Roberto Soria, Christian Motch, arXiv:0902.4431 [ps, pdf, other]
Comments: 3 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the second Simbol-X International Symposium "Simbol-X - Focusing on the Hard X-ray Universe", AIP Conf. Proc. Series, P. Ferrando and J. Rodriguez eds

Looks like they're moving away from the intermediate mass black hole interpretation for ULXs as well. Sigh. It was nice idea... So where are the true intermediate mass black holes, if they're not ULXs?

CAIXA: a Catalogue of AGN In the XMM-Newton Archive - Correlations
Stefano Bianchi, Nuria Fonseca Bonilla, Matteo Guainazzi, Giorgio Matt, Gabriele Ponti, arXiv:0902.4539 [ps, pdf, other]
Comments: 3 pages, 3 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the second Simbol-X International Symposium "Simbol-X - Focusing on the Hard X-ray Universe", AIP Conf. Proc. Series, P. Ferrando and J. Rodriguez eds

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Stars, Supernovae and Planets

Predictions of the extent of self-enrichment in oxygen of giant metal-poor HII regions
Aida Wofford, arXiv:0902.3679 [ps, pdf, other]
Comments: 13 pages, 6 eps figures, MN Latex v2.2, accepted for publication in MNRAS

A Smoking Gun in the Carina Nebula
Kenji Hamaguchi, Michael F. Corcoran, Yuichiro Ezoe, Leisa Townsley, Patrick Broos, Robert Gruendl, Kaushar Vaidya, Stephen M. White, Tod Strohmayer, Rob Petre, You-Hua Chu, arXiv:0902.4162 [ps, pdf, other]
Comments: 9 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication to ApJL

The broad H-alpha, [O III] line wings in stellar supercluster A of NGC2363 and the turbulent mixing layer hypothesis
Luc Binette, Laurent Drissen, Leonardo Ubeda, Alejandro C. Raga, Carmelle Robert, Yair Krongold, arXiv:0902.3689 [ps, pdf, other]
Comments: 12 pages, 9 figures

Suzaku Spectroscopy of Vela Shrapnel B
Hiroya Yamaguchi, Satoru Katsuda, arXiv:0902.3672 [ps, pdf, other]
Comments: accepted for publication in ApJ, 7 pages, 5 figures