Related papers: Observations of a glaciating hole-punch cloud
The black hole spacetime is described by general relativity and characterized by two quantities: the black hole mass and spin. Black hole spin measurement requires information from the vicinity of the event horizon, which is spatially…
Time-resolved optical and infrared polarimetric observations of black hole and neutron star low-mass X-ray binaries are presented. Data were acquired with the VLT, UKIRT and HIPPO on the SAAO 1.9-m. We find that for some sources in…
Optical linear polarization measurements are presented for about 30 Vega-like stars. These are then compared with the polarization observed for normal field stars. A significant fraction of the Vega-like stars are found to show polarization…
Black-hole binaries are important sources through which studying accretion onto compact objects. In the X/gamma-ray domain, these objects show several and complex spectral behaviours and transitions. Based on INTEGRAL observations collected…
A small number of young stellar objects show signs of a halo-like structure of optically thin dust. This halo or torus is located within a few AU of the star, but its origin has not yet been understood. A dynamically excited cloud of…
The molecular cloud, DR21 Main, is an example of a large-scale gravitational collapse about an axis near the plane of the sky where the collapse is free of major disturbances due to rotation or other effects. Using flux maps, polarimetric…
Tidal disruption of main sequence stars by black holes has generally been thought to lead to a signal dominated by UV emission. If, however, the black hole spins rapidly and the poloidal magnetic field intensity on the black hole horizon is…
We present a large-scale combination of near-infrared (near-IR) interstellar polarization data from background starlight with polarized emission data at submillimeter (sub-mm) wavelengths for the Vela C molecular cloud. The near-IR data…
We re-investigated the distance to the black hole X-ray binary 4U 1630-47 by analyzing its dust scattering halo (DSH) using high-resolution X-ray (Chandra) and millimeter (APEX) observations. Dust scattering halos form when X-rays from a…
Recent observation of linear optical polarization from brown dwarfs confirms the dust hypothesis in the atmospheres of brown dwarfs with effective temperature higher than 1400 K. The observed polarization could arise due to dust scattering…
X-ray images and gas temperatures taken from a deep ~200 ks Chandra observation of the Centaurus cluster are presented. Multiple inner bubbles and outer semicircular edges are revealed, together with wispy filaments of soft X-ray emitting…
Polar ring galaxies, where matter is in equilibrium in perpendicular orbits around spiral galaxies, are ideal objects to probe the 3D shapes of dark matter halos. The conditions to constrain the halos are that the perpendicular system does…
Pulsars are known for their exceptionally stable rotation. However, this stability can be disrupted by glitches, sudden increases in rotation frequency whose cause is poorly understood. In this study, we present some preliminary results…
A clump moving through the intracluster medium of a galaxy cluster can drive a bow shock trailed by a bullet-like core. In some cases, such as in the prototypical Bullet cluster, X-rays show a gas bullet with a protruding head and…
A granular instability driven by gravity is studied experimentally and numerically. The instability arises as grains fall in a closed Hele-Shaw cell where a layer of dense granular material is positioned above a layer of air. The initially…
To determine the polarization character of gravitational waves, we use strain data from the GW170814 binary black hole coalescence event detected by the three LIGO-Virgo observatories, extracting the gravitational wave strain signal…
We present the first direct evidence for cold gas in a high redshift DLA galaxy. We measured several multiplets of weak neutral carbon (CI) transitions in order to perform a curve of growth analysis. A delta chi-squared test constrains the…
In this paper, we measure the spectrum of light scattered by a cold atomic cloud driven by a strong laser beam. The experimental technique is based on heterodyne spectroscopy coupled to single-photon detectors and intensity correlations. At…
The gravitational pull of an unseen companion to a luminous star is well-known to cause deviations to the parallax and proper motion of a star. In a previous paper in this series, we argue that the astrometric mission Gaia can identify…
A new one-dimensional, inviscid, and vertically integrated disk model with prescribed infall is presented. The flow is computed using a second-order shock-capturing scheme. Included are vertical infall, radial infall at the outer radial…