Related papers: Fingers of God
The evolution of the universe from an initial dramatic event, the Big-Bang, is firmly established. Hubble's law [1] (HL) connects the velocity of galactic objects and their relative distance: v(r)=Hr, where H is the Hubble constant. In this…
There are three independent techniques for determining the age of the universe: via cosmochronology of long-lived radioactive nuclei, via stellar modelling and population synthesis of the oldest stellar populations, and via the precision…
The direct detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO-Virgo collaboration has opened a new window with which to measure cosmological parameters such as the Hubble constant $H_0$, and also probe general relativity on large scales. In this…
Pulsar motions in our Galaxy from their birth until 2 Gyr are studied statistically via Monte-Carlo simulation of $2\times 10^5$ pulsars with the best available representation of the Galactic potential. We find that the distribution of…
These lecture notes concentrate on a few specific topics concerning the distribution of galaxies on scales from 0.1 to nearly 1000/h Mpc. The main aim is to provide the students with the information and tools to familiarize with a few basic…
We have mapped two molecular clouds at (l, b) = (3.2 degrees, + 0.3 degrees) and (l, b) = (5.4 degrees, -0.5 degrees) in 21-cm line and continuum emission. These clouds show unusually large velocity dispersions of more than 100 km/s (FWHM)…
New estimates of globular cluster distances, combined with revised ranges for input parameters in stellar evolution codes and recent estimates of the earliest redshift of cluster formation allow us to derive a new 95% confidence level lower…
B,V CCD frames have been used to derive surface brightness profiles for NGC 3201 out to ~18 arcmin. A total of 857 radial velocities with median precision ~1 km/s for 399 member giants have been used to trace the velocity dispersion profile…
Clusters of galaxies are the largest gravitationally bound objects in the Universe, containing about 10^15 solar masses of hot (10^8 K) gas, galaxies and dark matter in a typical volume of about 10 Mpc^3. Magnetic fields and relativistic…
I review the current state of determinations of the Hubble constant, which gives the length scale of the Universe by relating the expansion velocity of objects to their distance. There are two broad categories of measurements. The first…
The Milky Way lies in a thin plane, the Local Sheet, a part of a wall bounding the Local Void lying toward the north supergalactic pole. Galaxies with accurate distances both above and below this supergalactic equatorial plane have…
Their ubiquity and extreme densities make star clusters probes of prime importance of galaxy evolution. Old globular clusters keep imprints of the physical conditions of their assembly in the early Universe, and younger stellar objects,…
Small number statistics may heavily affect the structure of the broadening function in integrated spectra of galactic globular cluster centers. As a consequence, it is a priori unknown how closely line broadening measure- ments gauge the…
The distribution of galaxies up to a distance of 200 Mpc (650 million light-years) is flat and shows a structure like a shell roughly centered on the Local Supercluster (Virgo cluster). This result clearly confirms the existence of the…
The present rate of the expansion of our Universe, the Hubble constant, can be predicted from the cosmological model using measurements of the early Universe, or more directly measured from the late Universe. But as these measurements…
We investigate the power spectrum of velocity fluctuations in the universe, $V^2(k)$, starting from four different measures of velocity: (1) the power spectrum of velocity fluctuations from peculiar velocities of galaxies; (2) the rms…
We establish a framework for determing absolute ages of Galactic globular clusters and then use these ages to investigate the age-metallicity and age-Galactocentric distance relations for the 36 clusters with the most reliable age data. The…
We simulate the future evolution of the observed inhomogeneities in the local universe assuming that the global expansion rate is dominated by a cosmological constant. We find that within two Hubble times (~ 30 billion years) from the…
We study the growth of small-scale inhomogeneities of the density of particles floating in weakly nonlinear, small-amplitude, surface waves. Despite the amplitude smallness, the accumulated effect of the long-time evolution may produce…
Historically the velocity scatter seen on local Hubble plots has been attributed to the peculiar velocities of individual galaxies. Although most galaxies also have uncertainties in their distances, when galaxies with accurate distances are…