No Arabic abstract
By observing radiation-affected gas in the Cepheus B molecular cloud we probe whether the sequential star formation in this source is triggered by the radiation from newly formed stars. We used the dual band receiver GREAT onboard SOFIA to map [C II] and CO 13--12 and 11--10 in Cep B and compared the spatial distribution and the spectral profiles with complementary ground-based data of low-$J$ transitions of CO isotopes, atomic carbon, and the radio continuum. The interaction of the radiation from the neighboring OB association creates a large photon-dominated region (PDR) at the surface of the molecular cloud traced through the photoevaporation of C^+. Bright internal PDRs of hot gas are created around the embedded young stars, where we detect evidence of the compression of material and local velocity changes; however, on the global scale we find no indications that the dense molecular material is dynamically affected.
We use Green Bank Ammonia Survey observations of NH$_3$ (1,1) and (2,2) emission with 32 FWHM resolution from a ~ 10 pc$^{2}$ portion of the Cepheus-L1251 molecular cloud to identify hierarchical dense gas structures. Our dendrogram analysis of the NH$_3$ data results in 22 top-level structures, which reside within 13 lower-level, parent structures. The structures are compact (0.01 pc $lesssim R_{eff} lesssim$ 0.1 pc) and are spatially correlated with the highest H$_2$ column density portions of the cloud. We also compare the ammonia data to a catalog of dense cores identified by higher-resolution (18.2 FWHM) Herschel Space Observatory observations of dust continuum emission from Cepheus-L1251. Maps of kinetic gas temperature, velocity dispersion, and NH$_3$ column density, derived from detailed modeling of the NH$_3$ data, are used to investigate the stability and chemistry of the ammonia-identified and Herschel-identified structures. We show that the dust and dense gas in the structures have similar temperatures, with median $T_{dust}$ and $T_K$ measurements of 11.7 $pm$ 1.1 K and 10.3 $pm$ 2.0 K, respectively. Based on a virial analysis, we find that the ammonia-identified structures are gravitationally dominated, yet may be in or near a state of virial equilibrium. Meanwhile, the majority of the Herschel-identified dense cores appear to be not bound by their own gravity and instead confined by external pressure. CCS $(2_0-1_0)$ and HC$_5$N $(9-8)$ emission from the region reveal broader line widths and centroid velocity offsets when compared to the NH$_3$ (1,1) emission in some cases, likely due to these carbon-based molecules tracing the turbulent outer layers of the dense cores.
A large fraction of the baryons and most of the metals in the Universe are unaccounted for. They likely lie in extended galaxy halos, galaxy groups, and the cosmic web, and measuring their nature is essential to understanding galaxy formation. These environments have virial temperatures >10^5.5 K, so the gas should be visible in X-rays. Here we show the breakthrough capabilities of grating spectrometers to 1) detect these reservoirs of hidden metals and mass, and 2) quantify hot gas flows, turbulence, and rotation around the Milky Way and external galaxies. Grating spectrometers are essential instruments for future X-ray missions, and existing technologies provide 50-1500-fold higher throughput compared to current orbiting instruments.
Aim: The aim of the paper is to understand the emission from the photon dominated regions in Cepheus B, estimate the column densities of neutral carbon in bulk of the gas in Cepheus B and to derive constraints on the factors which determine the abundance of neutral carbon relative to CO. Methods: This paper presents 15x15 fully sampled maps of CI at 492 GHz and 12CO 4-3 observed with KOSMA at 1 resolution. The new observations have been combined with the FCRAO 12CO 1-0, IRAM-30m 13CO 2-1 and C18O 1-0 data, and far-infrared continuum data from HIRES/IRAS. The KOSMA-tau spherical PDR model has been used to understand the CI and CO emission from the PDRs in Cepheus B and to explain the observed variation of the relative abundances of both C^0 and CO. Results: The emission from the PDR associated with Cepheus B is primarily at V_LSR between -14 and -11 km s^-1. We estimate about 23% of the observed CII emission from the molecular hotspot is due to the ionized gas in the HII region. Over bulk of the material the C^0 column density does not change significantly, (2.0+-1.4)x10^17 cm^-2, although the CO column density changes by an order of magnitude. The observed cbyco abundance ratio varies between 0.06 and 4 in Cepheus B. We find an anti-correlation of the observed C/CO abundance ratio with the observed hydrogen column density, which holds even when all previous observations providing C/CO ratios are included. Here we show that this observed variation of C/CO abundance with total column density can be explained only by clumpy PDRs consisting of an ensemble of clumps. At high H2 column densities high mass clumps, which exhibit low C/CO abundance, dominate, while at low column densities, low mass clumps with high C/CO abundance dominate.
Optically-similar early-type galaxies are observed to have a large and poorly understood range in the amount of hot, X-ray-emitting gas they contain.To investigate the origin of this diversity, we studied the hot gas properties of all 42 early-type galaxies in the multiwavelength ATLAS$^{rm 3D}$ survey that have sufficiently deep {sl Chandra} X-ray observations. We related their hot gas properties to a number of internal and external physical quantities. To characterize the amount of hot gas relative to the stellar light, we use the ratio of the gaseous X-ray luminosity to the stellar $K$-band luminosity, $L_{X_{rm gas}}/L_K$; we also use the deviations of $L_{X_{rm gas}}$ from the best-fit $L_{X_{rm gas}}$--$L_K$ relation (denoted $Delta L_{X_{rm gas}}$). We quantitatively confirm previous suggestions that various effects conspire to produce the large scatter in the observed $L_X/L_K$ relation. In particular, we find that the deviations $Delta L_{X_{rm gas}}$ are most strongly positively correlated with the (low rates of) star formation and the hot gas temperatures in the sample galaxies. This suggests that mild stellar feedback may energize the gas without pushing it out of the host galaxies. We also find that galaxies in high galaxy density environments tend to be massive slow-rotators, while galaxies in low galaxy density environments tend to be low mass, fast-rotators. Moreover, cold gas in clusters and fields may have different origins. The star formation rate increases with cold gas mass for field galaxies but it appears to be uncorrelated with cold gas for cluster galaxies.
We use quasar absorption lines to study the physical conditions in the circumgalactic medium of redshift $zapprox 2.3$ star-forming galaxies taken from the Keck Baryonic Structure Survey (KBSS). In Turner et al. 2014 we used the pixel optical depth technique to show that absorption by HI and the metal ions OVI, NV, CIV, CIII and SiIV is strongly enhanced within $|Delta v|lesssim170$ km/s and projected distances $|d|lesssim180$ proper kpc from sightlines to the background quasars. Here we demonstrate that the OVI absorption is also strongly enhanced at fixed HI, CIV, and SiIV optical depths, and that this enhancement extends out to $sim350$ km/s. At fixed HI the increase in the median OVI optical depth near galaxies is 0.3-0.7 dex and is detected at 2--3-$sigma$ confidence for all seven HI bins that have $log_{10}tau_{rm HI}ge-1.5$. We use ionization models to show that the observed strength of OVI as a function of HI is consistent with enriched, photoionized gas for pixels with $tau_{rm HI}gtrsim10$. However, for pixels with $tau_{rm HI} lesssim 1$ this would lead to implausibly high metallicities at low densities if the gas were photoionized by the background radiation. This indicates that the galaxies are surrounded by gas that is sufficiently hot to be collisionally ionized ($T > 10^5,$K) and that a substantial fraction of the hot gas has a metallicity $gtrsim 10^{-1}$ of solar. Given the high metallicity and large velocity extent (out to $sim1.5times v_{rm circ}$) of this gas, we conclude that we have detected hot, metal enriched outflows arising from star-forming galaxies.