The halo of NGC 891 has been the subject of studies for more than a decade. One of its most striking features is the large asymmetry in H-$α$ emission. We have taken a quantitative look at this asymmetry at different wavelengths for the first time. We propose that NGC 891 is intrinsically almost symmetric, as seen in Spitzer observations, and the large asymmetry in H-$α$ emission is mostly due to dust attenuation. We quantify the additional optical depth needed to cause the observed H-$α$ asymmetry. A comparison of large strips on the North East side of the galaxy with strips covering the same area in the South West we can quantify and analyze the asymmetry in the different wavelengths. From the 24 $μ$m emission we find that the intrinsic asymmetry in star-formation in NGC 891 is small i.e., approximately 30%. The additional asymmetry in H-alpha is modeled as additional symmetric dust attenuation which extends up to ~ 40'' (1.9 kpc) above the plane of the galaxy with a mid-plane value of $τ$=0.8 and a scale height of 0.5 kpc. This observational technique offers the possibility to quantify the effects of vertical ISM disk stability as an explanation for dust lanes in massive galaxies Dalcanton et al. (2004).
Using a one-zone model for the evolution of dust in spiral galaxies and applying the instantaneous recycling approximation to the model equations, we investigate dust-to-gas ratio of spiral galaxies. Four processes are considered; dust formation from heavy elements ejected by stellar mass loss, dust destruction in supernova remnants, dust destruction in star-forming regions, and accretion of heavy elements onto preexisting dust grains. The equations describe a simplified relation between dust-to-gas ratio and metallicity. The relation is independent of star formation rate. By comparing the the…
We study the effects of dusty spiral arms on the photometric properties of disk galaxies using a series of 2D radiative transfer models, approximating the arms with axially symmetrical rings. We find that dusty arms, as well as dusty disks, have a significant influence on the aperture photometry and surface brightness profiles altering colors of model galaxies. We suggest that, in addition to the conventionally modeled diffuse absorbing layers or disks, the dusty arms should be taken into account in spiral galaxy extinction studies.
Motivated by recent observations which detect dust at large galactocentric distances in the disks of spiral galaxies, we propose a mechanism of outward radial transport of dust by spiral stellar density waves. We consider spiral galaxies in which most of dust formation is localized inside the corotation radius. We show that in the disks of such spiral galaxies, the dust grains can travel over radial distances that exceed the corotation radius by roughly 25%. A fraction of the dust grains can be trapped on kidney-shaped stable orbits between the stellar spiral arms and thus can escape the destr…
Spiral shocks are potentially a major source of turbulence in the interstellar medium. To address this problem quantitatively, we use numerical simulations to investigate gas flow across spiral arms in vertically stratified, self-gravitating, magnetized models of galactic disks. Our models are isothermal, quasi-axisymmetric, and local in the quasi-radial direction while global in the vertical direction. We find that a stellar spiral potential perturbation promptly induces a spiral shock in the gas flow. For vertically stratified gas disks, the shock front in the radial-vertical plane is in gen…
Gravitational lensing of an optical QSO by a spiral galaxy is often counteracted by dust obscuration, since the line-of-sight to the QSO passes close to the center of the galactic disk. The dust in the lens is likely to be correlated with neutral hydrogen, which in turn should leave a Lyman-alpha absorption signature on the QSO spectrum. We use the estimated dust-to-gas ratio of the Milky-Way galaxy as a mean and allow a spread in its values to calculate the effects of dust on lensing by low redshift spiral galaxies. Using a no-evolution model for spirals at z<1 we find (in Lambda=0 cosmologie…
Dust emission in the far-infrared (FIR) characterizes the temperature and quantity of interstellar dust in a spiral disk. The three Spitzer/MIPS bands are well suited to measuring the gradient in temperature and the total optical depth in the disk of a spiral galaxy. Another way to estimate the quantity of dust in a spiral disk is the "Synthetic Field Method" (SFM, Gonzalez et al. 1998), which uses the number of distant field galaxies seen through the disk of the nearby spiral. The optical depth estimated from this method can be compared to the values derived from the FIR emission. Since the t…
Giant planets embedded in circumstellar discs are expected to open gaps in these discs. We examine the vertical structure of the gap edges. We find that the planet excites spiral arms with significant (Mach number of a half) vertical motion of the gas, and discuss the implications of these motions. In particular, the spiral arms will induce strong vertical stirring of the dust, making the edge appeared `puffed up' relative to the bulk of the disc. Infra-red observations (sensitive to dust) would be dominated by the light from the thick inner edge of the disc. Sub-millimetre observations (sensi…
Observations with the Hubble Space Telescope reveal an irregular network of dust spiral arms in the nuclear region of the interacting disk galaxy NGC 2207. The spirals extend from ~50 pc to ~300 pc in galactocentric radius, with a projected width of ~20 pc. Radiative transfer calculations determine the gas properties of the spirals and the inner disk, and imply a factor of ~4 local gas compression in the spirals. The gas is not strongly self-gravitating, nor is there a nuclear bar, so the spirals could not have formed by the usual mechanisms applied to main galaxy disks. Instead, they may resu…
The internal dust extinction in spiral galaxies can affect our understanding of their structure and morphology, as well as our perception of the distant universe in the background. The intrinsic properties of the stellar and dust components can be studied by comparing the observed appearance of a dusty spiral in the optical with a radiative transfer model. The absorbed starlight is re-radiated by dust in the FIR/sub-mm. Thus, observations at long wavelengths allow to put further constraints on the properties of the dust distribution. I present our Monte Carlo simulations for dust extinction an…
We present maps of dust emission at 7 microns and 15 microns/7 microns intensity ratios of selected regions in 43 spiral galaxies observed with ISOCAM. This atlas is a complement to studies based on these observations, dealing with star formation in centers of barred galaxies and in spiral disks. It is accompanied by a detailed description of data reduction and an inventory of generic morphological properties in groups defined according to bar strength and HI gas content.
We present detailed modelling of the spectral energy distribution (SED) of the spiral galaxies NGC 891, NGC 4013, and NGC 5907 in the far-infrared (FIR) and sub-millimeter (submm) wavelengths. The model takes into account the emission of the diffuse dust component, which is heated by the UV and optical radiation fields produced by the stars, as well as the emission produced locally in star forming HII complexes. The radiative transfer simulations of Xilouris et al. (1999) in the optical bands are used to constrain the stellar and dust geometrical parameters, as well as the total amount of dust…
(Abridged) We investigate the growth of spiral-arm substructure in vertically stratified, self-gravitating, galactic gas disks, using local numerical MHD simulations. Our new models extend our previous 2D studies (Kim & Ostriker 2002), which showed that a magnetized spiral shock in a thin disk can undergo magneto-Jeans instability (MJI), resulting in interarm spur structures and massive fragments. Similar spur features have recently been seen in high-resolution observations of several galaxies. Here, we consider two sets of numerical models: 2D models that use a thick-disk gravitational kernel…
We discuss the distribution and kinematics of neutral hydrogen in the halos of spiral galaxies. We focus in particular on new results obtained for the nearby Sc galaxy NGC 2403 which have revealed the presence of extended HI emission (here referred to as the `beard') at anomalous velocities with respect to the `cold' HI disk. Modeling shows that this component has a mass of about 1/10 of the total HI mass and is probably located in the halo region. Its kinematics differs from that of the thin HI disk: it rotates more slowly and shows radial inflow. The origin of this anomalous gas component is…
We present analysis of WFPC2 imaging of two spiral galaxies partially backlit by E/S0 systems in the pairs AM1316-241 and AM0500-620, and the spiral foreground system in NGC 1275. Images in B and I are used to determine the reddening curve of in these systems. The spiral component of AM1316-241 shows dust strongly concentrated in discrete arms, with a reddening law very close to the Milky Way mean. The dust distribution is scale-free between about 100 pc and the arm scale. The spiral in AM0500-620 shows dust concentrated in arms and interarm spurs, with measurable interarm extinction as well. …
We present high resolution BV images of 12 edge-on spiral galaxies observed with the WIYN 3.5-m telescope. These images were obtained to search for extraplanar (|z| > 0.4 kpc) absorbing dust structures similar to those previously found in NGC 891 (Howk & Savage 1997). Our imaged galaxies include a sample of seven massive L_*-like spiral galaxies within D<25 Mpc that have inclinations i > 87 deg from the plane of the sky. We find that five of these seven systems show extraplanar dust, visible as highly-structured absorbing clouds against the background stellar light of the galaxies. The more pr…
Recent optical and submillimeter observations have begun to probe the existence of dust grains in the halos of spiral galaxies. I review our own work in this area which employs high-resolution optical images of edge-on spiral galaxies to trace high-z dust in absorption against the background stellar light of the galaxies. We have found that a substantial fraction of such galaxies (>50%) show extensive webs of dust-bearing clouds to heights z>2 kpc. Extraplanar dust in galaxies is statistically correlated with extraplanar diffuse ionized gas, though there is no evidence for a direct, physical r…
As stars evolve along the Asymptotic Giant Branch, strong winds are driven from the outer envelope. These winds form a shell, which may ultimately become a planetary nebula. Many planetary nebulae are highly asymmetric, hinting at the presence of a binary companion. Some post-Asymptotic Giant Branch objects are surrounded by torii of crystalline dust, but there is no generally accepted mechanism for annealing the amorphous grains in the wind to crystals. In this Letter, we show that the shaping of the wind by a binary companion is likely to lead to the formation of crystalline dust in the orbi…
We present simulations of Far Infrared (FIR) emission by dust in spiral galaxies, based on the Monte Carlo radiative transfer code of Bianchi, Ferrara & Giovanardi (1996). The radiative transfer is carried out at several wavelength in the Ultraviolet, optical and Near Infrared, to cover the range of the stellar Spectral Energy Distribution (SED). Together with the images of the galactic model, a map of the energy absorbed by dust is produced. Using Galactic dust properties, the spatial distribution of dust temperature is derived under the assumption of thermal equilibrium. A correction is appl…
Gravitational lensing is a potentially important probe of spiral galaxy structure, but only a few cases of lensing by spiral galaxies are known. We present Hubble Space Telescope and Magellan observations of the two-image quasar PMN J2004-1349, revealing that the lens galaxy is a spiral galaxy. One of the quasar images passes through a spiral arm of the galaxy and suffers 3 magnitudes of V-band extinction. Using simple lens models, we show that the mass quadrupole is well-aligned with the observed galaxy disk. A more detailed model with components representing the bulge and disk gives a bulge-…
We analyse the attenuation properties of a sample of UV selected galaxies, with the use of the spectrophotometric model Grasil. In particular, we focus on the relation between dust attenuation and the reddening in the UV spectral region. We show that a realistic modelling of geometrical distribution of dust and of the different population of stars can explain the UV reddening of normal spiral galaxies also with a standard Milky Way dust. Our results clearly underline that it is fundamental to take into account that younger stars suffer a higher attenuation than older stars (the age-dependent e…
The opacity of spiral galaxies is examined by modelling the dust and stellar content of individual galaxies. The model is applied to five late-type spiral galaxies (NGC 4013, IC 2531, UGC 1082, NGC 5529 and NGC 5907). Having analyzed a total of seven galaxies thus far, the five galaxies mentioned above plus UGC 2048 and NGC 891 presented in (Xilouris et al. 1997, 1998), we are able to draw some general conclusions, the most significant of which are: 1) The face-on central optical depth is less than one in all optical bands indicating that typical spiral galaxies like the ones that we have mode…
We investigate how significant the spiral structure is on calculations concerning radiative transfer in dusty spiral galaxies seen edge-on. The widely adopted exponential disk model (i.e. both the stars and the dust are distributed exponentially in the radial direction and also perpendicular to the plane of the disk) is now subject to a detailed comparison with a realistic model that includes spiral structure for the stars and the dust in the disk. In particular, model images of galaxies with logarithmic spiral arms are constructed, such that the azimuthally averaged disk is exponential in rad…
The structure of dust spirals in the nuclei of the SAab-type Liner galaxies NGC 4450 and NGC 4736 is studied using archival HST PC images. The spirals are typically only several hundredths of a magnitude fainter than the neighboring disks, so unsharp mask techniques are used to highlight them. The ambient extinction is estimated to be less than 0.1 mag from the intensity decrements of the dust features and from the spiral surface filling factor, which is about constant for all radii and sizes. The nuclear dust spirals differ from main-disk spirals in several respects: the nuclear spirals have …
The detailed distribution of dust in the disks of spiral galaxies is important to understanding the radiative transfer within disks, and to measuring overall dust masses if significant quantities of dust are either very opaque or very cold. We address this issue by comparing measures of dust absorption, using the galaxy-overlap technique in the optical, with measures of the dust grains' thermal emission from 50-2000 micron using ISOPHOT on board ISO and SCUBA at the JCMT. We examine three spiral galaxies projected partially in front of E/S0 galaxies --- AM1316-241, NGC 5545, and NGC 5091 (for …
The opacity of spiral galaxy disks, from counts of distant galaxies, is compared to HI column densities. The opacity measurements are calibrated using the ``Synthetic Field Method'' from Gonzalez et al (1998) and Holwerda et al. (2005a). When compared for individual disks, the HI column density and dust opacity do not seem to be correlated as HI and opacity follow different radial profiles. To improve statistics, an average radial opacity profile is compared to an average HI profile. Compared to dust-to-HI estimates from the literature, more extinction is found in this profile. This difference…
We explore the vertical light distribution as a function of galactocentric radius in the edge-on (i=88) Sd `superthin' galaxy UGC7321. UGC7321 is a low-luminosity spiral (M_B,i=-17.0) with a diffuse, low surface brightness stellar disk and no discernible bulge component. Within 0.25' (725 pc) of the disk center the global luminosity profile of UGC7321 can be reasonably characterized by an exponential function with a scale height h_z=2.9" (140 pc) in H and h_z=3.1" (150 pc) in R, making this among the thinnest galaxy disks know. Near the disk center we derive a ratio of disk scale length to glo…
The opacity of foreground spiral disks can be probed from the number of distant galaxies seen through them. To calibrate this number for effects other than the dust extinction, Gonzalez et al (1998) developed the "Synthetic Field Method". A synthetic field is an extincted Hubble Deep Field added to the science field. The relation between the dimming and the number of retrieved synthetic galaxies calibrates the number found in the science field. Here I present results from counts in 32 HST/WFPC2 fields. The relation between opacity and radius, arm and disk, surface brightness and HI are present…
We present and analyse high-quality SCUBA 850- and 450-um images of 14 local spiral galaxies, including the detection of dust well out into the extended disk in many cases. We use these data in conjunction with published far-IR flux densities from IRAS and ISO, and millimetre-wave measurements from ground-based facilities to deduce the global properties of the dust in these galaxies; in particular temperature and mass. We find that simple two-temperature greybody models of fixed dust emissivity index beta=2 and with typical temperatures of 25 < T(warm) < 40 K and 10 < T(cold) < 20 K provide go…
We present a comparison of barstrength Qb and circumnuclear dust morphology for 75 galaxies in order to investigate how bars affect the centers of galaxies. We trace the circumnuclear dust morphology and amount of dust structure with structure maps generated from visible-wavelength HST data, finding that tightly wound nuclear dust spirals are primarily found in weakly barred galaxies. While strongly barred galaxies sometimes exhibit grand design structure within the central 10 percent of D25, this structure rarely extends to within ~10 pc of the galaxy nucleus. In some galaxies, these spiral a…
ISO observations at 200 micron have modified our view of the dust component in spiral galaxies. For a sample of seven resolved spirals we have retrieved a mean temperature of 20K, about 10K lower than previous estimates based on IRAS data at shorter wavelengths. Because of the steep dependence of far-infrared emission on the dust temperature, the dust masses inferred from ISO fluxes are a factor of 10 higher than those derived from IRAS data only, leading to gas-to-dust ratios close to the value observed in the Galaxy. The scale-length of the 200 micron emission is larger than for the IRAS 100…
We use the radiation transfer simulation of Xilouris et al. (1999) to constrain the quantity of dust in three nearby spiral galaxies (NGC 4013, NGC 5907 and NGC 891). The predicted visual optical depth from the model is compared with the thermal continuum radiation detected from these galaxies at 850 microns. This comparison yields the emissivity of dust grains in the submillimeter waveband which is a factor 4 higher than the benchmark, semi-empirical model of Draine & Lee (1984). Our estimates are more closely aligned with recent measurements carried out in the laboratory on amorphous carbon …
(Abridged) We present a detailed study of the relation between circumnuclear dust morphology, host galaxy properties, and nuclear activity in nearby galaxies. We use our sample of 123 nearby galaxies with visible--near-infrared colormaps from the Hubble Space Telescope to create well-matched, "paired" samples of 28 active and 28 inactive galaxies, as well as 19 barred and 19 unbarred galaxies, that have the same host galaxy properties. Comparison of the barred and unbarred galaxies shows that grand design nuclear dust spirals are only found in galaxies with a large-scale bar. Tightly wound nuc…
The interstellar thick disks of galaxies contain not only gas, but significant quantities of dust. Most of our knowledge of extraplanar dust in disk galaxies comes from direct broadband optical imaging of these systems, wherein the dust is identified due to the irregular extinction it produces against the thick disk and bulge stars. This observational technique is sensitive to only the most dense material, and we argue much of the material identified in this way traces a cold phase of the interstellar thick disks in galaxies. The presence of a cold, dense phase likely implies the interstellar …
We measure the turbulent diffusion coefficient of dust grains embedded in magnetorotational turbulence in a protoplanetary disc directly from numerical simulations and compare it to the turbulent viscosity of the flow. The simulations are done in a local coordinate frame comoving with the gas in Keplerian rotation. Periodic boundary conditions are used in all directions, and vertical gravity is not applied to the gas. Using a two-fluid approach, small dust grains of various sizes (with friction times up to $\varOmega_0 τ_{\rm f}=0.02$) are allowed to move under the influence of friction with t…
Using a samples of 61506 spiral galaxies selected from the SDSS DR2, we examine the luminosity function (LF) of spiral galaxies with different inclination angles. We find that the characteristic luminosity of the LF, $L^*$, decreases with increasing inclination, while the faint-end slope, $α$, depends only weakly on it. The inclination-dependence of the LF is consistent with that expected from a simple model where the optical depth is proportional to the cosine of the inclination angle, and we use a likelihood method to recover both the coefficient in front of the cosine, $γ$, and the LF for g…
We have used a Monte Carlo radiative transfer code to produce edge-on images of dusty galactic disks, allowing a fraction of the dust to be distributed in clumps. Synthetic images of edge-on galaxies have been constructed for different amounts of dust, distributions of clumps and fractions of dust in clumps, following the formalism of Bianchi et al. (1999). We have also considered models with stellar emission embedded in the clumps. The synthetic images have been fitted with analytical models made with smooth distributions of dust, adopting the procedure developed by Xilouris et al. (1999) to …
We present an analysis of an occulting galaxy pair, serendipitously discovered in ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury (ANGST) observations of NGC 253 taken with Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Survey in F475W, F606W$ and F814W (SDSS-g, broad V and I). The foreground disk system (at z < 0.06) shows a dusty disk much more extended than the starlight, with spiral lanes seen in extinction out to 1.5 R\_25, approximately six half-light radii. This pair is the first where extinction can be mapped reliably out to this distance from the center. The spiral arms of the extended dust disk show…
Using the Millennium Galaxy Catalogue we quantify the dependency of the disc and bulge luminosity functions on galaxy inclination. Using a contemporary dust model we show that our results are consistent with galaxy discs being optically thick in their central regions (tau_B^f=3.8+/-0.7). As a consequence the measured B-band fluxes of bulges can be severely attenuated by 50% to 95% depending on disc inclination. We argue that a galaxy's optical appearance can be radically transformed by simply removing the dust, e.g. during cluster infall, with mid-type galaxies becoming earlier, redder, and mo…
We present archival Hubble Space Telescope images of the nuclear regions of 43 of the 46 Seyfert galaxies found in the volume-limited, spectroscopically-complete CfA Redshift Survey sample. Using an improved method of image contrast enhancement, we create detailed high-quality structure maps that allow us to study the distributions of dust, star clusters, and emission-line gas in the circumnuclear regions (100-1000 pc scales) and in the associated host galaxy. Essentially all of these Seyfert galaxies have circumnuclear dust structures with morphologies ranging from grand-design two-armed spir…
We show that the mean percentage of stellar light re-radiated by dust is ~30 percent for the Virgo Cluster late-spirals measured with ISOPHOT by Tuffs et al. (2002). A strong dependence of this ratio with morphological type was found, ranging from typical values of ~15 percent for early spirals to up to ~50 percent for some late spirals. The extreme BCDs can have even higher percentages of their bolometric output re-radiated in the thermal infrared. Luminosity correction factors for the cold dust component are given for general use in converting far-infrared (FIR) luminosities derived from IRA…
The circumstellar dust disk of the Herbig Ae star AB Aur has been found to exhibit complex spiral-like structures in the near-IR image obtained with the Subaru Telescope. We present maps of the disk in both 12CO (3-2) and dust continuum at 345 GHz with the SMA at an angular resolution of 1.0"x0.7" (144AU x 100AU). The continuum emission traces a dust disk with a central depression and a maximum overall dimension of 450AU (FWHM). This dust disk exhibits several distinct peaks that appear to coincide with bright features in the near-IR image, in particular the brightest inner spiral arm. The CO …
We have developed a technique of isolating elongated structures in galactic images, such as spiral arms, using anisotropic wavelets and apply this to maps of the CO, infrared and radio continuum emission of the grand-design spiral galaxy M51. Systematic shifts between the ridges of CO, infrared and radio continuum emission that are several $\kpc$ long are identified, as well as large variations in pitch angle along spiral arms, of a few tens of degrees. We find two types of arms of polarized radio emission: one has a ridge close to the ridge of CO, with similar pitch angles for the CO and pola…
The superimposed pair of spiral galaxies NGC 3314 offers a unique opportunity to trace the dust properties in a spiral galaxy. We analyze multicolor HST imaging, supported by ground-based near-IR imaging and fiber-array spectroscopy to measure dust extinction in the foreground Sc galaxy NGC 3314A, which is backlit by the Sb system NGC 3314B. We can measure extinctions over a wide range of galactocentric radii in the foreground galaxy, from 0.4-4.5 kpc. In the outer disk, the extinction is strongly localized in discrete dust lanes. These dust features show an extinction curve with a slope close…
We present multi-wavelength (interferometer and single-dish CO J=1-0, Halpha, broadband optical and near-infrared) observations of the classic barred spiral NGC 5383. We compare the observed central gas and dust morphology to the predictions of recent hydrodynamic simulations. In the nuclear region, our observations reveal three peaks lying along a S-shaped gas and dust distribution. In contrast, the model predicts a circumnuclear ring, not the observed S-shaped distribution; moreover, the predicted surface density contrast between the central gas accumulation and the bar dust lanes is an orde…
We study the effects of dust in hydrodynamic simulations of spiral galaxies when different radial metallicity gradients are assumed. SUNRISE, a Monte-Carlo radiative-transfer code, is used to make detailed calculations of the internal extinction of disk galaxies caused by their dust content. SUNRISE is used on eight different Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations of isolated spiral galaxies. These galaxies vary mainly in mass and hence luminosity, spanning a range in luminosities from -16 to -22 magnitudes in the B band. We focus on the attenuation in different wavelength bands as a …
We present Very Large Array 21-cm observations of the massive edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 5746. This galaxy has recently been reported to have a luminous X-ray halo, which has been taken as evidence of residual hot gas as predicted in galaxy formation scenarios. Such models also predict that some of this gas should undergo thermal instabilities, leading to a population of warm clouds falling onto the disk. If so, then one might expect to find a vertically extended neutral layer. We detect a substantial high-latitude component, but conclude that almost all of its mass of 1.2-1.6 billion solar mas…
We investigate the dynamical effects of a molecular cloud complex with a mass of about 10**7 M_sun and a size of a few 100 pc on the vertical distribution of stars and atomic hydrogen gas in a spiral galactic disc. Such massive complexes have now been observed in a number of spiral galaxies. The extended mass distribution in a complex, with an average mass density 6 times higher than the Oort limit, is shown to dominate the local gravitational field. This results in a significant redistribution of the surrounding disc components towards the mid-plane, with a resulting decrease in their vertica…
The vertical as well as horizontal oscillation modes in a thermally excited two-dimensional (2D) dust coulomb cluster were investigated for particle numbers between and using both a box_tree simulation and an analytical method. The horizontal mode spectra is shown to agree with published results while the vertical mode spectra obtained from the box_tree simulation and the analytical method are shown to agree with one another. The maximum frequency of the vertical modes is shown to be the vertical oscillation frequency of the whole system acting as a solid plane and the frequency is shown to de…
We study the radial distribution of the temperature of the warm dust and gas-to-dust mass ratios in a sample of 22 spiral galaxies. The heating capabilities of the diffuse interstellar radiation field (ISRF), based on Desert et al. model, are investigated in 13 of the sample galaxies. In general, the temperature of the warm dust decreases away from the center, reaches a minimum value at the mid-disk and increases again in the outer parts of galaxies. Heating a mixture of small and big grains by the ISRF is able to explain the observed behavior qualitatively. However, ultraviolet photons from r…
In the near-infrared, the morphology of older star-dominated disks indicates a simple classification scheme (1) H$m$ where $m$ is the dominant harmonic, (2) a pitch angle (derived from the Fourier spectra) associated with the rate of shear A/$ω$ in the stellar disk and (3) a `bar strength' parameter, robustly derived from the gravitational potential or torque of the bar. A spiral galaxy may present two radically different morphologies in the optical and near-infrared regime; there is no correlation between our quantitative dust penetrated tuning fork and that of Hubble. Applications of our $z\…
Dusty plasmas have generated a large amount of interest since the discovery of ordered structure (crystal) formation in experimentally generated complex plasmas in 1994. Dust particles within the plasma sheath generated in these complex plasmas can form vertical chains due to the streaming ion wakefield. For the simplest of these configurations (a two particle chain), the particle closest to the lower electrode will generally remain in the shadow of the particle farthest from the lower electrode. These results in the two particles feeling differing ion drag forces: the top particle is acted on…
We examine far-infrared and submillimeter spectral energy distributions for galaxies in the Infrared Space Observatory Atlas of Bright Spiral Galaxies. For the 71 galaxies where we had complete 60-180 micron data, we fit blackbodies with lambda^-1 emissivities and average temperatures of 31 K or lambda^-2 emissivities and average temperatures of 22 K. Except for high temperatures determined in some early-type galaxies, the temperatures show no dependence on any galaxy characteristic. For the 60-850 micron range in eight galaxies, we fit blackbodies with lambda^-1, lambda-2, and lambda^-beta (w…
Gravitational instability of a vertically thin, dusty sheet near the midplane of a protoplanetary disk has long been proposed as a way of forming planetesimals. Before Roche densities can be achieved, however, the dust-rich layer, sandwiched from above and below by more slowly rotating dust-poor gas, threatens to overturn and mix by the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI). Whether such a threat is real has never been demonstrated: the Richardson criterion for the KHI is derived for 2-D Cartesian shear flow and does not account for rotational forces. Here we present 3-D numerical simulations of …
We investigate the relations among the stellar continuum-subtracted 8 micron polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH 8 micron) emission, 24 micron hot dust emission, and 160 micron cold dust emission in fifteen nearby face-on spiral galaxies in the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey sample. The relation between PAH 8 and 24 micron emission measured in ~2 kpc regions is found to exhibit a significant amount of scatter, and strong spatial variations are observed in the (PAH 8 micron)/24 micron surface brightness ratio. In particular, the (PAH 8 micron)/24 micron surface brightness ratio is obs…
The nearby face-on spiral galaxy M101 has been observed with the Far-Infrared Surveyor (FIS) onboard AKARI. The far-infrared four-band images reveal fine spatial structures of M101, which include global spiral patterns, giant HII regions embedded in outer spiral arms, and a bar-like feature crossing the center. The spectral energy distribution of the whole galaxy shows the presence of the cold dust component (18 K) in addition to the warm dust component (55 K). The distribution of the cold dust is mostly concentrated near the center, and exhibits smoothly distributed over the entire extent of …
