The 21-cm line emission from a 7x6deg^2^ region east of and adjoining the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) has been observed with the Australia Telescope Compact Array and the Parkes telescopes. This region represents the westernmost part of the Magellanic Bridge, a gas-rich tail extending ~14{deg} to the Large Magellanic Cloud. A rich and complex neutral hydrogen (HI) structure containing shells, bubbles and filaments is revealed. On the larger scale, the HI of the Bridge is organized into two velocity components. This bimodality, which appears to originate in the SMC, converges to a single velocity component within the observed region. A census of shell-like structures suggests a shell population with characteristics similar to that of the SMC.
A service in the Common Execution Architecture. This service
provides one or more science applications which are separately registered.
See the ManagedApplications element of this document for a list of
applications
This AstroGrid community is for users from the Univeristy of Edinburgh, as well as users from continental Europe who have requested AstroGrid access to UKIDSS data. It is also for those users who will be using UKIDSS heavily and would like to have their online data storage close to the actual database server.
Stellar variability in the near-infrared (NIR) remains largely unexplored. The exploitation of public science archives with data-mining methods offers a perspective for a time-domain exploration of the NIR sky. We perform a comprehensive search for stellar variability using the optical-NIR multiband photometric data in the public Calibration Database of the WFCAM Science Archive (WSA), with the aim of contributing to the general census of variable stars and of extending the current scarce inventory of accurate NIR light curves for a number of variable star classes.
The ionizing continuum from active galactic nuclei is fundamental for interpreting their broad emission lines and understanding their impact on the surrounding gas. Furthermore, it provides hints on how matter accretes on to supermassive black holes. Using Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3, we have constructed the first stacked ultraviolet (rest-frame wavelengths 600-2500{AA}) spectrum of 53 luminous quasars at z=~2.4, with a state-of-the-art correction for the intervening Lyman forest and Lyman continuum absorption. The continuum slope (f_{nu}_{prop.to}{nu}^{alpha}{nu}^) of the full sample shows a break at ~912{AA} with spectral index {alpha}_{nu}_=-0.61+/-0.01 at {lambda}>912{AA} and a softening at shorter wavelengths ({alpha}_{nu}_=-1.70+/-0.61 at {lambda}<=912{AA}). Our analysis proves that a proper intergalactic medium absorption correction is required to establish the intrinsic continuum emission of quasars. We interpret our average ultraviolet spectrum in the context of photoionization, accretion disc models, and quasar contribution to the ultraviolet background. We find that observed broad line ratios are consistent with those predicted assuming an ionizing slope of {alpha}_ion_=-2.0, similar to the observed ionizing spectrum in the same wavelength range. The continuum break and softening are consistent with accretion disc plus X-ray corona models when black hole spin is taken into account. Our spectral energy distribution yields a 30 per cent increase to previous estimates of the specific quasar emissivity, such that quasars may contribute significantly to the total specific Lyman limit emissivity estimated from the Ly{alpha} forest at z<3.2.
We present the results of an optical multi-band survey for low-mass pre-main sequence (PMS) stars and young brown dwarfs (BDs) in the Chamaeleon II (Cha II) dark cloud. This survey constitutes the complementary optical data to the c2d Spitzer Legacy survey in Cha II.