SPIRAL GALAXY STRUCTURE: Ongoing project with Phil James (LJMU). Looking at spiral structure in the disks of spiral galaxies. This includes looking at star-formation in galaxy disks. A sample of 45 face-on spiral galaxies has been observed in the near-infrared K- (2.2 micron) and J- (1.2 micron) bands. The analysis of these data were presented in my PhD thesis and in two papers, Seigar & James (1998a, MNRAS, 299, 672) and Seigar & James (1998b, MNRAS, 299, 685). Ongoing research in this area includes near-infrared spectroscopy of the CO 2.3 micron absorption feature in three different galaxies and Halpha imaging of 15 of the 45 galaxies to look at star-formation properties. We have recently published a paper (James \& Seigar 1999)[astro-ph/9909200] which shows that hot dust (with an effective temperature of 1000K) may contribute to the 2.3 micron light. This could have significant effect on the K-band analysis of star-forming galaxies. We now plan to follow this up with more CGS4 data.
As an extension to this project we have applied to KPNO to observe (again in J and K) a sample of inclined spiral galaxies for which rotation curves are either available or can be measured. This will give us dynamical information about these galaxies, a tool which we did not have available for the previous sample, due to the face-on nature of the galaxies. Paulo Salucci (SISSA) has joined us as a collaborator for this project.
SPIRAL GALAXY NUCLEI: HST data is available for c. 100 spiral galaxies (WFPC2 and NICMOS). This project is in collaboration with Herwig Dejonghe (Ghent), Massimo Stiavelli (STScI), Marcella Carrollo (JHU) and Tim de Zeeuw (Leiden). For more details follow this link.
THE LOCAL STAR-FORMATION RATE OF THE UNIVERSE:
SPIRAL GALAXIES WITH DECLINING ROTATION CURVES: Jacqueline van Gorkom (Columbia) has HI data of edge on spiral galaxies that shows declining rotation curves. We are planning to take near-infrared images of these galaxies for future work, to better trace the stellar mass of the disk. This may enable us to put limits on the amount of dark matter present in both the disk and halo.
AGN AND EXTRAGALACTIC JETS: My MSc project looked at proper motions in the M87 jet.
GALAXY MERGERS:
Last updated April 8 1999
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