This paper presents a detailed analysis of two-armed spiral structure in a sample of galax- ies from the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey (SINGS), with particular focus on the relationships between the properties of the spiral pattern in the s
tellar disc and the global struc- ture and environment of the parent galaxies. Following Paper I we have used a combination of Spitzer Space Telescope mid-infrared imaging and visible multi-colour imaging to isolate the spiral pattern in the underlying stellar discs, and we examine the systematic behaviours of the observed amplitudes and shapes (pitch angles) of these spirals. In general, spiral morphology is found to correlate only weakly at best with morphological parameters such as stellar mass, gas fraction, disc/bulge ratio, and vflat. In contrast to weak correlations with galaxy structure a strong link is found between the strength of the spiral arms and tidal forcing from nearby companion galaxies. This appears to support the longstanding suggestion that either a tidal interaction or strong bar is a necessary condition for driving grand-design spiral structure. The pitch angles of the stellar arms are only loosely correlated with the pitch angles of the corresponding arms traced in gas and young stars. We find that the strength of the shock in the gas and the contrast in the star formation rate are strongly correlated with the stellar spiral amplitude.
The Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES) is the largest Guaranteed Time Key Programme on the Herschel Space Observatory. With a wedding cake survey strategy, it consists of nested fields with varying depth and area totalling ~380 deg^2
. In this paper, we present deep point source catalogues extracted from Herschel-SPIRE observations of all HerMES fields, except for the later addition of the 270 deg^2 HeLMS field. These catalogues constitute the second Data Release (DR2) made in October 2013. A subset of these catalogues, which consists of bright sources extracted from Herschel-SPIRE observations completed by May 1, 2010 (covering ~ 74 deg^2) were released earlier in the first extensive Data Release (DR1) in March 2012. Two different methods are used to generate the point source catalogues, the SUSSEXtractor (SXT) point source extractor used in two earlier data releases (EDR and EDR2) and a new source detection and photometry method. The latter combines an iterative source detection algorithm, StarFinder (SF), and a De-blended SPIRE Photometry (DESPHOT) algorithm. We use end-to-end Herschel-SPIRE simulations with realistic number counts and clustering properties to characterise basic properties of the point source catalogues, such as the completeness, reliability, photometric and positional accuracy. Over 500, 000 catalogue entries in HerMES fields (except HeLMS) are released to the public through the HeDAM website (http://hedam.oamp.fr/herMES).
We attempt to evaluate whether the integrated galactic IMF (IGIMF) is expected to be steeper than the IMF within individual clusters through direct evaluation of whether there is a systematic dependence of maximum stellar mass on cluster mass. We sho
w that the result is sensitive to observational selection biases and requires an accurate knowledge of cluster ages, particularly in more populous clusters. At face value there is no compelling evidence for non-random selection of stellar masses in low mass clusters but there is arguably some evidence that the maximum stellar mass is anomalously low (compared with the expectations of random mass selection) in clusters containing more than several thousand stars. Whether or not this effect is then imprinted on the IGIMF then depends on the slope of the cluster mass function. We argue that a more economical approach to the problem would instead involve direct analysis of the upper IMF in clusters using statistical tests for truncation of the mass function. When such an approach is applied to data from hydrodynamic simulations we find evidence for truncated mass functions even in the case of simulations without feedback.
We consider the conditions required for a cluster core to shrink, by adiabatic accretion of gas from the surrounding cluster, to densities such that stellar collisions are a likely outcome. We show that the maximum densities attained, and hence the v
iability of collisions, depends on a competition between core shrinkage (driven by accretion) and core puffing up (driven by relaxation effects). The expected number of collisions scales as $N_{core}^{5/3} tilde v^2$ where $N_{core}$ is the number of stars in the cluster core and $tilde v$ is the free fall velocity of the parent cluster (gas reservoir). Thus whereas collisions are very unlikely in a relatively low mass, low internal velocity system such as the Orion Nebula Cluster, they become considerably more important at the mass and velocity scale characteristic of globular clusters. Thus stellar collisions in response to accretion induced core shrinkage remains a viable prospect in more massive clusters, and may contribute to the production of intermediate mass black holes in these systems.
