We report simultaneous H110{alpha} and H_2_CO line observations with the 25m radio telescope of Nanshan station toward 251 HII regions. We used the H110{alpha} line to establish the velocity of the HII regions and H_2_CO absorption lines to distinguish between near and far distances. We detected the H110{alpha} RRLs in 28 sources and H_2_CO absorption lines in 59 sources. In the latter case, 43 features had not previously been observed. H_2_CO and H110{alpha} lines were simultaneously detected toward 23 HII regions. We resolved the kinematic distance ambiguities for 14 HII regions and 20 intervening molecular clouds.
We report simultaneous H110{alpha} and H_2_CO line observations with the NRAO Green Bank Telescope toward 72HII regions in the Spitzer Space Telescope GLIMPSE survey area (|l|=10{deg}-65{deg} and |b|<=1{deg}). We used the H110{alpha} line to establish the velocity of the HII regions and H_2_CO absorption lines to distinguish between near and far distances. Accurate distances are crucial for the determination of physical properties of massive star formation regions.
A compilation of CO emission regions and their measured parameters is presented which represents a nearly complete accounting of the molecular clouds in the first quadrant of the Galaxy. Emission regions associated with radio H II regions have systematically brighter CO peaks that are a factor of two to three times larger and have twice the mean velocity dispersion as the general cloud population. Both the H II region clouds and the hot core regions have a Galactic distribution characteristic of a spiral arm population, whereas the colder clouds are much less confined in Galactic azimuthal angle. Virial masses are obtained for the large sample of clouds with assigned kinematic distances. The mean H2 density for a GMC of diameter 40 pc is 180cm^-3^. For these clouds, a linear relationship is found between the H2 column density and the integrated CO emission. The variation in the Z-dispersion of clouds as a function of cloud mass suggests that more massive GMCs have smaller random velocities.
Inner Oort cloud objects (IOCs) are trans-Plutonian for their entire orbits. They are beyond the strong gravitational influences of the known planets, yet close enough to the Sun that outside forces are minimal. Here we report the discovery of the third known IOC after Sedna and 2012 VP113, called 2015 TG387. This object has a perihelion of 65+/-1 au and semimajor axis of 1170+/-70 au. The longitude of perihelion angle, {omega}, for 2015 TG387 is between that of Sedna and 2012 VP113 and thus similar to the main group of clustered extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNOs), which may be shepherded into similar orbital angles by an unknown massive distant planet called Planet X, or Planet Nine. The orbit of 2015 TG387 is stable over the age of the solar system from the known planets and Galactic tide. When including outside stellar encounters over 4 Gyr, 2015 TG387's orbit is usually stable, but its dynamical evolution depends on the stellar encounter scenarios used. Surprisingly, when including a massive Planet X beyond a few hundred au on an eccentric orbit that is antialigned in longitude of perihelion with most of the known ETNOs, we find that 2015 TG387 is typically stable for Planet X orbits that render the other ETNOs stable as well. Notably, 2015 TG387's argument of perihelion is constrained, and its longitude of perihelion librates about 180{deg} from Planet X's longitude of perihelion, keeping 2015 TG387 antialigned with Planet X over the age of the solar system.
Using integral field spectroscopy (IFS) observations we aim to perform a systematic study and comparison of two inner and outer HII regions samples. The spatial resolution of the IFS, the number of objects and the homogeneity and coherence of the observations allow a complete characterization of the main observational properties and differences of the regions. We analyzed a sample of 725 inner HII regions and a sample of 671 outer HII regions, all of them detected and extracted from the observations of a sample of 263 nearby, isolated, spiral galaxies observed by the CALIFA survey. We find that inner HII regions show smaller equivalent widths, greater extinction and luminosities, along with greater values of [NII] {lambda}6583/H{alpha} and [OII] {lambda}3727/[OIII] {lambda}5007 emission-line ratios, indicating higher metallicities and lower ionization parameters. Inner regions have also redder colors and higher photometric and ionizing masses, although Mion/Mphot is slightly higher for the outer regions. This work shows important observational differences between inner and outer HII regions in star forming galaxies not previously studied in detail. These differences indicate that inner regions have more evolved stellar populations and are in a later evolution state with respect to outer regions, which goes in line with the inside-out galaxy formation paradigm.
Orbits of inner and outer subsystems in 13 triple or higher-order stellar systems are computed or updated using position measurements and, in three cases, radial velocities. The goal is to determine mutual orbital inclinations, period ratios, and masses to complement the statistics of hierarchical systems. The effect of the subsystems on the motion in the outer orbits (wobble) is explicitly modeled to determine inner mass ratios. Stars studied here (HD 5408, 8036, 9770, 15089, 29310, 286955, 29316, 140538, 144362, 154621, 156034, 185655, and 213235) are bright and nearby (from 15pc to 150pc). Their inner periods range from 1.7yr to 49yr, and the outer periods from 83 to 2400yr. Some long-period outer orbits are poorly constrained. Four astrometric inner orbits and one outer orbit are computed for the first time.
In this Letter, I distinguish "passive" inner rings to be those with no current star formation, as distinct from "active" inner rings which have undergone recent star formation. I built a sample of nearby galaxies with inner rings observed in the near- and mid-infrared by the NIRS0S and the S^4^G surveys. I used archival far-ultraviolet (FUV) and H{alpha} imaging of 319 galaxies to diagnose whether their inner rings are passive or active. I found that passive rings are found only in early-type disc galaxies (-3<=T<=2). In this range of stages, 21+/-3% and 28+/-5% of rings are passive according to the FUV and H{alpha} indicators, respectively. A ring which is passive according to FUV is always passive according to H{alpha}, but the reverse is not always true. Ring-lenses form 30-40% of passive rings, which is four times more than the fraction of ring-lenses found in active rings in the stage range -3<=T<=2. This is consistent with both a resonance and a manifold origin for the rings because both models predict purely stellar rings to be wider than their star-forming counterparts. In the case of resonance rings, the widening may be at least partly due to the dissolution of rings. If most inner rings have a resonance origin, I estimate 200Myr to be a lower bound for their dissolution time-scale. This time-scale is on the order of one orbital period at the radius of inner rings.
We present a detailed investigation of the Cepheid distance scale by using both theory and observations. Through the use of pulsation models for fundamental mode Cepheids, we found that the slope of the period-luminosity (P-L) relation covering the entire period range (0.40<=logP<=2.0) becomes steeper when moving from optical to near-infrared (NIR) bands, and that the metallicity dependence of the slope decreases from the B- to the K band. The sign of the metallicity dependence for the slopes of the P-LV and P-LI relation is at odds with some recent empirical estimates. We determined new homogeneous estimates of V- and I-band slopes for 87 independent Cepheid data sets belonging to 48 external galaxies with nebular oxygen abundance 7.5<=12+log(O/H)<=8.9. We investigated the dependence of the period-Wesenheit (P-W) relations on the metal content and we found that the slopes of optical and NIR P-W relations in external galaxies are similar to the slopes of Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) Cepheids. They also agree with the theoretical predictions suggesting that the slopes of the P-W relations are independent of the metal content.
Over two years, 8859 high-resolution H-band spectra of 3493 young (1-10Myr) stars were gathered by the multi-object spectrograph of the APOGEE project as part of the IN-SYNC ancillary program of the SDSS-III survey. Here we present the forward modeling approach used to derive effective temperatures, surface gravities, radial velocities, rotational velocities, and H-band veiling from these near-infrared spectra. We discuss in detail the statistical and systematic uncertainties in these stellar parameters. In addition, we present accurate extinctions by measuring the E(J-H) of these young stars with respect to the single-star photometric locus in the Pleiades. Finally, we identify an intrinsic stellar radius spread of about 25% for late-type stars in IC 348 using three (nearly) independent measures of stellar radius, namely, the extinction-corrected J-band magnitude, the surface gravity, and the Rsini from the rotational velocities and literature rotation periods. We exclude that this spread is caused by uncertainties in the stellar parameters by showing that the three estimators of stellar radius are correlated, so that brighter stars tend to have lower surface gravities and larger Rsini than fainter stars at the same effective temperature.
The initial velocity dispersion of newborn stars is a major unconstrained aspect of star formation theory. Using near-infrared spectra obtained with the APOGEE spectrograph, we show that the velocity dispersion of young (1-2Myr) stars in NGC 1333 is 0.92+/-0.12km/s after correcting for measurement uncertainties and the effect of binaries. This velocity dispersion is consistent with the virial velocity of the region and the diffuse gas velocity dispersion, but significantly larger than the velocity dispersion of the dense, star-forming cores, which have a subvirial velocity dispersion of 0.5km/s. Since the NGC 1333 cluster is dynamically young and deeply embedded, this measurement provides a strong constraint on the initial velocity dispersion of newly formed stars. We propose that the difference in velocity dispersion between stars and dense cores may be due to the influence of a 70{mu}G magnetic field acting on the dense cores or be the signature of a cluster with initial substructure undergoing global collapse.