No Arabic abstract
We have searched for emission from the 557 GHz ortho-water line in the interstellar medium of six nearby starburst galaxies. We used the Odin satellite to observe the 1_10-1_01 transition of o-H2O in the galaxies NGC253, IC342, M82, NGC4258, CenA, and M51. None of the galaxies in our sample was detected. We derive three sigma upper limits to the H2O abundance relative to H2 ranging from 2e-9 to 1e-8. The best of these upper limits are comparable to the measured abundance of H$_2$O in the Galactic star forming region W3. However, if only 10% of the molecular gas is in very dense cores, then the water abundance limits in the cores themselves would be larger by a factor of 10 i.e. 2e-8 to 1e-7. These observations suggest that detections of H2O emission in galaxies with the upcoming Herschel Space Observatory are likely to require on-source integration times of an hour or more except in the very brightest extragalactic targets such as M82 and NGC253.
We report new observations of molecular oxygen in absorption at z=0.685 in front of the radio source B0218+357. The lines at 56.3 and 118.7 GHz have been observed, redshifted to 33.4 and 70.5 GHz respectively, with the 12m at Kitt Peak, 43m at Green Bank telescopes, and the 45m Nobeyama radio telescope. Deriving the surface filling factor of the absorbing dark cloud with other lines detected at nearby frequencies, we deduce from the upper limits on the O2 lines a relative abundance of molecular oxygen with respect to carbon monoxyde of O2/CO $la$ 2 10$^{-3}$ at 1$sigma$, seven times lower than the previous limit. The consequences of this result are discussed.
We performed a sensitive search for the ground-state emission lines of ortho- and para-water vapor in the DM Tau protoplanetary disk using the Herschel/HIFI instrument. No strong lines are detected down to 3sigma levels in 0.5 km/s channels of 4.2 mK for the 1_{10}--1_{01} line and 12.6 mK for the 1_{11}--0_{00} line. We report a very tentative detection, however, of the 1_{10}--1_{01} line in the Wide Band Spectrometer, with a strength of T_{mb}=2.7 mK, a width of 5.6 km/s and an integrated intensity of 16.0 mK km/s. The latter constitutes a 6sigma detection. Regardless of the reality of this tentative detection, model calculations indicate that our sensitive limits on the line strengths preclude efficient desorption of water in the UV illuminated regions of the disk. We hypothesize that more than 95-99% of the water ice is locked up in coagulated grains that have settled to the midplane.
Oxygen is the most common element after hydrogen and helium in Jupiters atmosphere, and may have been the primary condensable (as water ice) in the protoplanetary disk. Prior to the Juno mission, in situ measurements of Jupiters water abundance were obtained from the Galileo Probe, which dropped into a meteorologically anomalous site. The findings of the Galileo Probe were inconclusive because the concentration of water was still increasing when the probe died. Here, we initially report on the water abundance in the equatorial region, from 0 to 4 degrees north latitude, based on 1.25 to 22 GHz data from Juno Microwave radiometer probing approximately 0.7 to 30 bars pressure. Because Juno discovered the deep atmosphere to be surprisingly variable as a function of latitude, it remains to confirm whether the equatorial abundance represents Jupiters global water abundance. The water abundance at the equatorial region is inferred to be $2.5_{-1.6}^{+2.2}times10^3$ ppm, or $2.7_{-1.7}^{+2.4}$ times the protosolar oxygen elemental ratio to H (1$sigma$ uncertainties). If reflective of the global water abundance, the result suggests that the planetesimals formed Jupiter are unlikely to be water-rich clathrate hydrates.
The detection of diffuse radio emission associated with clusters of galaxies indicates populations of relativistic leptons infusing the intracluster medium. Those electrons and positrons are either injected into and accelerated directly in the intracluster medium, or produced as secondary pairs by cosmic-ray ions scattering on ambient protons. Radiation mechanisms involving the energetic leptons together with decay of neutral pions produced by hadronic interactions have the potential to produce abundant GeV photons. Here, we report on the search for GeV emission from clusters of galaxies using data collected by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (Fermi) from August 2008 to February 2010. Thirty-three galaxy clusters have been selected according to their proximity and high mass, X-ray flux and temperature, and indications of non-thermal activity for this study. We report upper limits on the photon flux in the range 0.2-100 GeV towards a sample of observed clusters (typical values 1-5 x 10^-9 ph cm^-2 s^-1) considering both point-like and spatially resolved models for the high-energy emission, and discuss how these results constrain the characteristics of energetic leptons and hadrons, and magnetic fields in the intracluster medium. The volume-averaged relativistic-hadron-to-thermal energy density ratio is found to be < 5-10% in several clusters.
We here derive upper limits on the mass and luminosity of Population III (POPIII) dominated proto-galaxies based on the collapse of primordial gas under the effect of angular momentum loss via Ly$alpha$ radiation drag and the gas accretion onto a galactic centre. Our model predicts that POPIII-dominated galaxies at z ~ 7 are hosted by haloes with $M_{rm halo} sim 1.5 times 10^{8} - 1.1 times 10^{9} rm ~M_{odot}$, that they have Ly$alpha$ luminosities of $L_{rm Lyalpha} sim 3.0 times 10^{42} - 2.1 times 10^{43}$ erg/s, stellar mass of $M_{rm star} sim 0.8 times 10^{5} - 2.5 times 10^{6} rm ~M_{odot}$, and outflowing gas with velocities $V_{rm out} sim 40$ km/s due to Ly$alpha$ radiation pressure. We show that the POPIII galaxy candidate CR7 violates the derived limits on stellar mass and Ly$alpha$ luminosity and thus is unlikely to be a POPIII galaxy. POPIII-dominated galaxies at z ~ 7 have HeII line emission that is ~1- 3 orders of magnitude lower then that of Ly$alpha$, they have high Ly$alpha$ equivalent width of > 300 $AA$ and should be found close to bright star forming galaxies. The HeII 1640 $AA$ line is in comfortable reach of next generation telescopes, like the JWST or TMT.