Related papers: The Link Between Rotation Curve Type and Spiral Ar…
Spiral arms are common features in low-redshift disc galaxies, and are prominent sites of star-formation and dust obscuration. However, spiral structure can take many forms: from galaxies displaying two strong `grand design' arms, to those…
We have imaged a sample of 20 spiral galaxies in H$\alpha$ and in the near-infrared K band (2.2 um), in order to determine the location and strength of star formation in these objects with respect to perturbations in the old stellar…
We measure the pitch angle ($\varphi$) of spiral arms in a sample of 79 galaxies to perform a systematic study of the dependence of $\varphi$ on galaxy morphology, mass, and kinematics to investigate the physical origin of spiral arms. We…
Spiral density wave theory attempts to describe the spiral pattern in spiral galaxies in terms of a long-lived wave structure with a constant pattern speed in order to avoid the winding dilemma. The pattern is consequently a rigidly…
We test whether the spiral patterns apparent in many large disk galaxies should be thought of as dynamical features that are stationary in a co-rotating frame for > t_{dyn}, as implied by the density wave approach for explaining spiral…
One of the key parameters that characterize spiral arms in disk galaxies is a pitch angle that measures the inclination of a spiral arm to the direction of galactic rotation. The pitch angle differs from galaxy to galaxy, which suggests…
Spiral arms are distinctive features of many circumstellar disks, observed in scattered light, which traces the disk surface, millimeter dust emission, which probes the disk midplane, as well as molecular emission. The two leading…
We have examined the effect of the environmental density on the arm classification of an extensive sample of spiral galaxies included in the Nearby Galaxy Catalog (Tully, 1988a). We have also explored the dependence of the arm class of a…
We have imaged a sample of 20 face-on spiral galaxies in H\alpha and in the near-IR K-band (2.2 microns), in order to determine the location and strength of star formation with respect to perturbations in the old stellar population. We…
We present a sample of 33 galaxies for which we have calculated (i) the average rate of shear from publish rotation curves, (ii) the far-infrared luminosity from IRAS fluxes and (iii) The K-band luminosity from 2MASS. We show that a…
Spiral arms shown by different components may not be spatially coincident, which can constrain formation mechanisms of spiral structure in a galaxy. We reassess the spiral arm tangency directions in the Milky Way through identifying the…
We propose a new dynamical picture of galactic stellar and gas spirals, based on hydrodynamic simulations in a `live' stellar disk. We focus especially on spiral structures excited in a isolated galactic disk without a stellar bar. Using…
We discuss a model for the Milky Way obtained by fitting the observed terminal velocities with the radial acceleration relation. The resulting stellar surface density profile departs from a smooth exponential disk, having bumps and wiggles…
We examine the distribution of young stars associated with the spiral arms of a simulated L* cosmological disk galaxy. We find age patterns orthogonal to the arms which are not inconsistent with the predictions of classical density wave…
The majority of astrophysics involves the study of spiral galaxies, and stars and planets within them, but how spiral arms in galaxies form and evolve is still a fundamental problem. Major progress in this field was made primarily in the…
We use two-dimensional Fourier transformation to measure the pitch angle ($\varphi$) of the dominant spiral Fourier mode of well-defined spiral arms in 13 protoplanetary disks, making use of near-infrared scattered-light images of AB Aur,…
We investigate how the properties of spiral arms relate to other fundamental galaxy properties. To this end, we use previously published measurements of those properties, and our own measurements of arm-interarm luminosity contrasts for a…
Rings and spiral arms are distinctive features of many galaxies, and their properties are closely related to the disk dynamics. They are often associated to stellar bars, but the details of this connection are far from clear. We study the…
The onset of spiral structure in galaxies appears to occur between redshifts 1.4 and 1.8 when disks have developed a cool stellar component, rotation dominates over turbulent motions in the gas, and massive clumps become less frequent.…
Spiral arms are the most characteristic features of disc galaxies, easily distinguishable due to their association with ongoing star formation. However, the role of spiral structure in the chemical evolution of galaxies is unclear. Here we…