Dynamics of Galaxies and Their Molecular Cloud Distributions


Book Description

Proceedings of the 146th Symposium of the International Astronomical Union, held in Paris, France, June 4-9, 1990




Physics of Nearby Galaxies


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Star Formation, Galaxies and the Interstellar Medium


Book Description

The enormously powerful phenomena of starbursts are examined in this book. These spectacular star-forming events are seen on large scales in some galaxies, often triggered by galactic interactions. An intriguing implication of starburst research is that active galactic nuclei (AGN) may not be powered by accreting black holes. Instead theories are presented where compact powerhouses of dust-enshrouded star formation lie at the core of AGN, with supernovae exploding roughly once per year within massive nuclear concentrations of gas. This book collects articles from a timely international conference in Elba, Italy, in 1992; these comprise a thorough review of the most important developments in galactic-scale star formation since the starburst revolution of the late 1980s. This text will introduce graduate students to this exciting area and keep experts apace with rapid developments in it.




Physics Briefs


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Galactic Bulges


Book Description

In the early summer of '89 a very informal meeting on the bulge of our Galaxy was held in Leiden. During that meeting Michael Rich proposed to hold a more properly organised symposium on "Galactic Bulges" in a few years time. After some discussion a Scientific Organising Committee was founded and after some manoeuvring a chairman was chosen, a local organiser was assigned and two editors were given instructions. A good thing about the location of the meeting was that Ghent is a very beautiful city and had never before hosted an IAU symposium. It could be that this, plus the fact that he is a very keen amateur astronomer led H. M. the King of Belgium to offer his patronage to the meeting - an offer that we gratefully and - we hope - gracefully accepted. The meeting took place at a resort some 15 km outside Ghent. Most participants were housed on the premises - a very convenient situation. This feeling of togeth erness made up for the small shortcomings of the lecture room, which is normally used as a sports hall. The weather was fair, except on the day of the barbecue when pouring rain forced us to go inside.




Morphological and Physical Classification of Galaxies


Book Description

The morphological scheme devised by Hubble and followers to classify galaxies has proven over many decades to be quite effective in directing our quest for the fundamental pa rameters describing the extragalactic manifold. This statement is however far more true for spirals than for ellipticals. Echoing the concluding remarks in Scott Tremaine's sum mary talk at the Princeton meeting on Structure and Dynamics of Elliptical Galaxies, "the Hubble classification of spirals is useful because many properties of spirals (gas con tent, spiral arm morphology, bulge prominence, etc. ) all correlate with Hubble time. By contrast, almost nothing correlates with the elliptical Hubble sequence El to E7. " During the last few years much effort has been put into the search for a more meaningful classification of ellipticals than Hubble's. Concomitantly, forwarded by some provocative conjectures by R. Michard, the classical question of whether E galaxies form a physically homogeneous family has been brushed up once more. Results of these and other parallel studies look rather promising and point to suture part of the dichotomy between ellipticals and disk galaxies which had become popular in the early eighties, owing to dynamical arguments. At the same time it appears more and more clear that, besides the usual genetic varieties of galaxies, products of environmental evolution must also be contemplated in building our modern picture of the "reign of galaxies" . The above considerations prompted us to solicit Prof.




The Central Regions of the Galaxy and Galaxies


Book Description

Proceedings of the August 1997 symposium. One hundred and ninety- four contributions present comparative studies on the data of the Milky Way and central regions of nearby galaxies. Included is information on galactic bulges, galactic center star clusters, star formation, starbursts, neutral ISM in the galactic center, molecular gas in the nuclei of galaxies, gas dynamics in the galactic center, the central parsecs of the milky way, magnetic and high-energy phenomena, black holes in galaxies, black hole in the galactic center, and black hole powering of AGN and jets. A sampling of topics: diffraction-limited IR speckle masking observations of the central regions of Seyfert galaxies, the stellar content of the Quintuplet cluster, and the structural characteristics of spiral bulges. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR







The Galactic Interstellar Medium


Book Description

The previous Saas-Fee Advanced Course dedicated to the interstellar medium took place in 1972. The tremendous scientific advances that have occurred in this field since then, in particular owing to the availabihty of receivers working at completely unexplored wavelength bands, fuUy justified a new set of lectures. As a consequence, the members of the Swiss Society for Astrophysics and As tronomy voted that "The Galactic Interstellar Medium" should be the subject of the 1991 course. The 21st Saas Fee Advanced Course took place in Les Diablerets from 18 to 23 March 1991, gathering together about 80 participants from all over the world, but mostly from Europe. According to a rule that has proved to lead to success, but also to chal lenge the lecturers' energy, the format of a Saas-Fee Advanced Course consists traditionally of 28 lectures of 45 minutes which take place in the morning and late afternoon, leaving ample time for discussions, self-study, hiking or skiing. Despite the inordinate work load imposed, this year's lecturers felt that the subject was sufficiently dense to increase the lecture time by 1/3! This proved judicious and left more time for questions and discussions during the lectures.




Astrochemistry of Cosmic Phenomena


Book Description

The IAU symposium No. 150 "Astrochemistry of Cosmic Phenomena" was held at the beautiful and scenic town of Campos do Jordao, Sao Paulo, Brazil from August 5 to 9, 1991, and was attended by 111 registered participants with 17 accompanied guests from 19 countries. The symposium had a wide ranging discussion of the chemistry of astronomical environments with an emphasis on the description of molecular processes that critically influence the nature and evolution of astronomical objects and the identification of specific observations that directly address significant astronomical questions. The subject areas of the symposium included atomic and molecular processes at low and high temperatures and photon interactions, the chemical structure of molecular clouds in the Milky Way and in external galaxies, the chemistry of outflows and their interactions with the interstellar medium, the chemical connections between the interstellar medium and the solar system and pregalactic chemistry. The scientific programme comprised of review talks and con tributed papers, with a general introduction by Professor A. Dalgarno and a final overview of the whole symposium by Professor D. A. Williams. Financial supports from the Sao Paulo State Foundation Support (FAPESP), Brazilian National Research Council(CNPq), Finance Company of Studies and Projects (FINEP), Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics of University of Sao Paulo (IAG-USP) and Inter national Astronomical Union (IAU) are greatfully acknowledged. I am greatly indebted to Professor A.