Other
Scientific paper
Oct 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011mwac.meet..p12r&link_type=abstract
Midwest Astrochemistry Meeting 2011, held 21-22 October at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. http://midwest.astroc
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. Our goal was to determine if azimuthal segregation of various gas and star formation tracers occurs in this kind of spiral galaxy (Tamburro et al. 2008). Although we found no evidence of an angular offset between molecular gas, atomic gas and star formation regions in our observations, 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. This result is in concordance with the behavior predicted by simulations of the spiral galaxies with an active potential (Clarke & Gittins 2006; Dobbs & Bonnell 2008). Since NGC 6946 is located at a distance of 5.5 Mpc, the linear resolution of the map corresponds to 140 pc. At such resolution, 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 located in the prominent spiral arms. We achieved a linear resolution of 50 pc at 1 mm in D array, similar to GMCs sizes found in other galaxies (Bolatto et al. 2008). We present first results about possible differences in the properties of the on-arm clouds and the inter-arm clouds. While inter-arm GMAs in grand-design galaxies are thought to be formed by fragmentation of more massive on-arm GMAs, forming spur structures, in flocculent galaxies like NGC 6946 the formation of inter-arm molecular gas structures are proposed to be the result of collision between spiral arms.
Leroy Adam
Rebolledo David
Wong Tony
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