Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Science Updates

03/19/2021
Cold Molecular Clouds as Cosmic Ray Detectors

The ionization of the neutral gas in an interstellar molecular cloud plays a key role in the cloud's evolution, helping to regulate the heating and cooling processes, the chemistry and molecule formation, and coupling the gas to magnetic fields.
03/12/2021
The Circumnuclear Starburst Ring in Infrared Ultraluminous Galaxies

Ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs), powered by starburst activity and often with supermassive black holes accreting material at their nuclei, contain large reservoirs of molecular gas. This is to be expected: Molecular gas is the raw material for new stars and moreover the presence of the infrared luminous warm dust implies an abundance of molecular gas.

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