Other
Scientific paper
Jan 2012
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21934632r&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #346.32
Other
Scientific paper
Although the internal physical properties of molecular clouds have been extensively studied (Solomon et al. 1987), a more detailed understanding of their origin and evolution in different types of galaxies is needed. In order to disentangle the details of this process, we performed CO(1-0) CARMA observations of the eastern part of the multi-armed galaxy NGC 6946. Although we found no evidence of an angular offset between molecular gas, atomic gas and star formation regions in our observations (Tamburro et al. 2008), we observe a clear radial progression from regions where molecular gas dominates over atomic gas (for r ≤ 2.8 kpc) to regions where the gas becomes mainly atomic (5.6 kpc ≤ r ≤ 7.6 kpc) when azimuthally averaged. In addition, we found that the densest concentrations of molecular gas are located on arms, particularly where they appear to intersect, which is in concordance with the predictions by simulations of the spiral galaxies with an active potential (Clarke & Gittins 2006; Dobbs & Bonnell 2008). At CO(1-0) resolution (140 pc), we were able to find CO emitting complexes with masses greater than those of typical Giant Molecular Clouds (105-106 M&sun;). To identify GMCs individually and make a more detailed study of their physical properties, we made D array observations of CO(2-1) toward the densest concentrations of gas, achieving a resolution similar to GMCs sizes found in other galaxies (Bolatto et al. 2008). We present first results about differences in properties of the on-arm clouds and inter-arm clouds. We found that, in general, on-arm clouds present broader line widths, are more massive and more active in star formation than inter-arm clouds. We investigated if the velocity dispersion observed in CO(1-0) emitting complexes reflects velocity differences between unresolved smaller clouds, or if it corresponds to actual internal turbulence of the gas observed.
Leroy Adam
Rebolledo David
Wong Tai
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