An Inner Molecular Bar or Disk in NGC 5195
Astrophysics
2007-05-23 v1
Abstract
High resolution OVRO CO 1-0 observations of the inner kpc of the M51-companion NGC 5195 reveal the presence of a kpc-sized bar, or possibly an inclined disk with a two armed spiral, at the center of the optical bar. The molecular mass of the feature is 2.7 x 10^8 M_o, half of which is within a radius of 250 pc. The resulting gas surface density of 10^3 M_o pc^-2 is typical for starbursts. However, the lack of evidence for current star formation suggests that either some mechanism is preventing stars from forming, or the standard CO to H_2 conversion factor substantially overestimates the available amounts of molecular gas.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0107590,
title = {An Inner Molecular Bar or Disk in NGC 5195},
author = {S. Aalto and G. Rydbeck},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0107590},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
4 pages 3 figures included, conference proceedings "The Central kpc of Starbursts and AGN" La Palma 2001