Related papers: Extragalactic H2O Masers
Astronomers have established that for a few million years newborn stars possess disks of orbiting gas and dust. Such disks, which are likely sites of planet formation, appear to disappear once these stars reach ages of 5-10 times 10^6 yr;…
Multi-epoch VLBA observations of the maser in NGC 4258 have yielded a 4% geometrical distance to the galaxy. The potential scientific payoffs of finding similar objects at large distances, in the Hubble flow, are considerable. In this…
Along several sight lines within the Milky Way ArH+ has been ubiquitously detected with only one detection in extragalactic environments, namely along two sight lines in the red shift z=0.89 absorber towards the lensed blazar PKS 1830-211.…
The discovery of hundreds of young, bright stars within a parsec from the massive black hole at the center of the Galaxy presents a challenge to star formation theories. The requisite Roche densities for the gravitational collapse of gas…
Studies of the molecular interstellar medium that fuels star formation and supermassive black hole growth in galaxies at cosmological distances have undergone tremendous progress over the past few years. Based on the detection of molecular…
Recent years have seen the discovery of an ever growing number of stellar debris streams and clouds. These structures are typically detected as extended and often curvilinear overdensities of metal-poor stars that stand out from the…
Quasars are high-luminosity active galactic nuclei believed to be powered by accretion of interstellar matter onto a super-massive black hole (SMBH) therein. Most of the observed energy is released in an accretion disk of inspiralling gas…
Despite their paucity, massive hot stars are real cosmic engines of fundamental importance in shaping our Universe, from its very early stages up to its current appearance. Understanding the physics of massive stars is then a key issue for…
We show that the rapid formation of super-massive black holes in quasars can indeed be understood in terms of major galaxy mergers followed by disk accretion. The necessary short disk evolution time can be achieved provided the disk…
The paper describes a Space-VLBI observation of the 22 GHz H2O masers in the massive star-forming region G25.65+1.05, using the 10-m space antenna of Radioastron together with the ground-based VLBA array. Two observing epochs at the…
Methanol masers which are traditionally divided into two classes provide possibility to study important parts of the star forming regions: Class~II masers trace vicinities of the massive YSOs while class~I masers are likely to trace more…
The discovery of the first extra-solar planet surrounding a main-sequence star was announced in 1995, based on very precise radial velocity (Doppler) measurements. A total of 34 such planets were known by the end of March 2000, and their…
HI observations have revealed large gaseous extensions in interacting and merging systems. The interstellar gas is obviously dragged out in tidal tails during an encounter, and the percentage of HI in the tails increases with the merging…
An introduction is given to a meeting on the role of massive and stellar black holes in powering non-thermal activity in a rich variety of cosmic sources. Relevant properties of magnetized, spinning black holes are summarized and their…
In the five years since its launch, the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer has given the astronomical community a marvelous glimpse into the realm of previously unexplored regions of the Milky Way and its surroundings. Absorption lines…
In the last few years new evidence has been presented for the presence of ongoing massive star formation in the outer HI disks of galaxies. These discoveries strongly suggest that precursor molecular gas must also be present in some…
The interplay between supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and their surrounding environment is fundamental to understanding galactic evolution. This work investigates the influence of a cold dark matter (DM) halo on the dynamics of…
Hierarchical structure formation inevitably leads to the formation of supermassive binary black holes (BBHs) with a sub-parsec separation in galactic nuclei. However, to date there has been no unambiguous detection of such systems. In an…
The growth-rate and the internal dynamics of galaxy-sized dark-matter haloes depend on their location within the cosmic web. Haloes that sit at the nodes grow in mass till the present time and are dominated by radial orbits. Conversely,…
An overview is given of the analysis of more than a decade of H2O maser data from our monitoring program. We find the maser emission to generally depend on the luminosity of the YSO as well as on the geometry of the SFR. There appears to be…