Sign on

SAO/NASA ADS Astronomy Abstract Service

· Find Similar Abstracts (with default settings below)
· Full Refereed Journal Article (PDF/Postscript)
· Full Refereed Scanned Article (GIF)
· References in the article
· Citations to the Article (97) (Citation History)
· Refereed Citations to the Article
· SIMBAD Objects (33)
· NED Objects (35)
· Also-Read Articles (Reads History)
·
· Translate This Page
Title:
Molecular gas mass and far-infrared emission from distant luminous galaxies
Authors:
Downes, D.; Solomon, P. M.; Radford, S. J. E.
Affiliation:
AA(Inst. de Radioastronomie Millimetrique, Saint-Martin-d'Heres, France), AB(New York State Univ., Stony Brook), AC(Inst. de Radioastronomie Millimetrique, Saint-Martin-d'Heres, France)
Publication:
Astrophysical Journal, Part 2 - Letters (ISSN 0004-637X), vol. 414, no. 1, p. L13-L16. (ApJL Homepage)
Publication Date:
09/1993
Category:
Astrophysics
Origin:
STI
NASA/STI Keywords:
EMISSION SPECTRA, GALACTIC STRUCTURE, INTERPLANETARY GAS, MASS DISTRIBUTION, MOLECULAR GASES, ASTRONOMICAL MODELS, CARBON MONOXIDE, INFRARED ASTRONOMY, LUMINOSITY
DOI:
10.1086/186984
Bibliographic Code:
1993ApJ...414L..13D

Abstract

Molecular line observations suggest the central few hundred parsecs of ultraluminous IR galaxies have high mean gas densities, of about 3000 to 10,000/cu cm, unlike the centers of normal galaxies and very different from the disks of spiral galaxies. The CO line emission may not trace an ensemble of gravitationally bound gas clouds but instead a medium bound by the total potential of the Galactic center (gas and stars). This means the CO luminosity no longer measures gas mass alone, as in normal galaxies, but instead the geometric mean of the gas mass and the dynamical mass. In practice, molecular gas dominates the dynamical masses of the centers of ultraluminous galaxies, which suggests gas masses estimated from CO luminosities are basically correct. We present a model in which the 100/micron radiation from ultraluminous galaxies is optically thick and the CO line flux is proportional to the 100-micron flux, with S(CO)Delta(V)/S(100 microns) = 2-4 km/s. Our measurements of CO flux from 35 ultraluminous galaxies support this model of optically thick dust at 100 microns, providing additional evidence that the dust mass is high and the gas mass is a large fraction of the dynamical mass. We derive a relation between the M(gas)/L-prime(CO) ratio and the luminosity distance that we apply to Arp 220.

Printing Options

Print whole paper
Print Page(s) through

Return 600 dpi PDF to Acrobat/Browser. Different resolutions (200 or 600 dpi), formats (Postscript, PDF, etc), page sizes (US Letter, European A4, etc), and compression (gzip,compress,none) can be set through the Printing Preferences


More Article Retrieval Options

HELP for Article Retrieval
Bibtex entry for this abstract   Preferred format for this abstract (see Preferences)
   

Find Similar Abstracts:

Use: Authors
Title
Keywords (in text query field)
Abstract Text
Return: Query Results Return    items starting with number
Query Form
Database: Astronomy
Physics
arXiv e-prints