Formation of leading spiral arms in retrograde galaxy encounters
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 1989

The formation of spiral structures in retrograde galaxy encounters was studied theoretically and with N-body simulations. A one-armed leading spiral dominates in a disk if the tidal perturbation from the retrograde companion is large enough, and the disk is surrounded by a massive halo. The leading arm is made up of particles in slightly elongated orbits, the turning points of which outline the arm. The orbits precess in such a way that the arm structure survives while it rotates in the opposite sense to the disk rotation. From the literature it is found that very few spirals in a sample of galaxies with a large companion have leading spiral arms. A possible reason for this is that very few spiral galaxies have a halo with larger mass than the disk mass.

galaxies: kinematics and dynamics of

galaxies: structure of

galaxies: spiral

Författare

Magnus Thomasson

Chalmers, Onsala Rymdobservatorium

K.J. Donner

B. Sundelius

G.G. Byrd

T.-Y. Huang

M.J. Valtonen

Astronomy and Astrophysics

0004-6361 (ISSN) 1432-0746 (eISSN)

Vol. 211 1 25-36

Ämneskategorier

Astronomi, astrofysik och kosmologi

Infrastruktur

Onsala rymdobservatorium

Mer information

Skapat

2017-10-07