Astrophysics
We review the wide range of astrophysical observations of gamma ray emission lines and we discuss their implications. We consider line emission from solar flares, the Orion molecular cloud complex, supernovae 1987A and 1991T, the supernova…
Supervoids are regions in the local Universe which do not contain rich clusters of galaxies. We have studied the closest example, the Northern Local Void, situated between the Local, Coma, and the Hercules superclusters. We find that this…
Geometrical optics provides an excellent description for quasar images crossing caustics which are formed by gravitational microlensing of objects like Q2237+0305. Within this approximation the source size can be estimated from the maximum…
We test the reliability of mass determination in clusters of galaxies by X-ray observations. The true mass in cluster models is compared to the mass derived by the X-ray emission and X-ray temperature of a model assuming hydrostatic…
We analyze the limitations imposed by photon counting statistics on extracting useful information about MACHOs from Earth-based parallax observations of microlensing events. We find that if one or more large (say $2.5\,\rm m$) telescopes…
Although numerous studies of individual galaxy clusters have demonstrated the presence of significant substructure, previous studies of the distribution of masses of galaxy clusters determined from optical observations have failed to…
We present a quantitative analysis of the effect of microlensing caused by random motion of individual stars in the galaxy which is lensing a background quasar. We calculate a large number of magnification patterns for positions of the…
We have detected circumstellar molecular gas around a small sample of T Tauri stars through aperture synthesis imaging of CO(2-1) emission at ~2-3'' resolution. RY Tauri, DL Tauri, DO Tauri, and AS 209 show resolved and elongated gaseous…
Visual, NIR, and H_alpha surface photometry of the oval disk galaxy M94 (NGC 4736) was performed to study the distribution of mass in old stars and the distribution of the warm emission line gas. The radial profile of the inner stellar disk…
We present observations of OY Car, obtained with the Anglo-Australian Telescope, during a normal outburst in August 1991. Two sinusoidal components are resolved in the H$\beta$ trailed spectra and we determine the location of the narrow…
Motivated by recent neutral hydrogen observations with the VLA, we have undertaken an investigation into the interaction that produced the well known merger remnant NGC 7252. Through fully self-consistent N-body simulations, we are able to…
We analyze the $2-10$~keV X-ray emission of complete samples of AGN and galaxies selected at 12$\mu$m and recently compiled by Rush, Malkan \& Spinoglio (1993). As a necessary complement we also study the IR emissivity of the largest sample…
Spectrophotometric indices for $18$ Galactic globular clusters, obtained from CCD observations and careful reductions, were used to determine reliable calibrations on metallicity $[Fe/H]$. The indices were measured in the bandpasses adopted…
We investigate the dynamics and evolution of coalescing neutron stars. The three-dimensional Newtonian equations of hydrodynamics are integrated by the `Piecewise Parabolic Method' However, we do include the effects of the emission of…
The recent observations of high-velocity maser emissions in NGC 4258 by Myoshi et al provide strong evidence for a central object of mass 3.6 10**7 solar masses in the nucleus of this galaxy based on a kinematic argument. However, they…
I discuss the Hubble parameter $H_0$, the age of the universe $t_0$, the density $\Omega_0$, and the cosmological constant $\Lambda$. To focus the discussion, I concentrate on the issue of the value of the density $\Omega_0$ in currently…
A double inflationary model with enhanced power at large scales --- Broken Scale Invariant perturbations (BSI) --- leads to a promising scenario for the formation of large-scale structure. We use high-resolution PM simulations with a model…
Observations of the interstellar medium in the vicinity of the Orion OB1 association show a cavity filled with hot ionized gas, surrounded by an expanding shell of neutral hydrogen (the Orion-Eridanus Bubble). In this paper we examine this…
We present results of ROSAT/PSPC and HRI observations of the AWM7 group of galaxies, which is a poor galaxy cluster and forms part of the Perseus-Pisces filament. The X-ray emission originates from intracluster gas at temperatures of 1.7 to…
ROSAT HRI observations have been used to determine an upper limit of the Crab pulsar surface temperature from the off-pulse count rate. For a neutron star mass of 1.4 \Mo and a radius of 10 km as well as the standard distance and…