MHO Catalogue

Recently I’ve been collaborating with Chris Davis on the catalogue of Molecular Hydrogen Emission-Line Objects (MHOs for short). This project is going forward quite well and recently Chris drafted an article announcing the catalogue which was submitted to A&A. The article is also available from astro-ph.

The catalogue itself has a home page where one could have a look at current numberings of many outflows detected in NIR. There is also a possibility to identify the objects by their pictures. People working in the are of star formation and outflows are encouraged to request the numbers for their new detected objects in NIR. More details can be obtained in the actual MHO home page.

Still Here

I wonder … yes, I wonder if someone ever noticed my silence here. Not likely! I’ve been going through hard times recently. Lot’s of work to do and no time to do. Yes, yes I need to prioritise my work and get things done on time. Well, at least the very important part of it.

Meanwhile I’ve been trying to finish one article on GM 2-4 and my Braid Nebula survey paper. Both things are going well. GM 2-4 paper is almost ready to be circulated to the wider audience.

core JCMT 18354-0649S

We have successfully submitted our paper entitled “Supersonic turbulence in the cold massive core JCMT 18354-0649S” into MNRAS. The paper is leaded by our former PhD student and now Dr. Patrick Carolan. Paper includes radio-line observations of this particular core taken at the JCMT and MOPRA. The results were then fitted by the 3D non-LTE radiative transfer code by Eric Keto.

Here is a quote from the Abstract:

In this example of a cold massive core, JCMT 18354-0649S, a possible high mass analogue to a low mass star forming core is studied. Line and continuum observations from JCMT, Mopra Telescope and Spitzer are presented and modelled in detail using a 3D molecular line radiative transfer code. In almost every way JCMT 18354-0649S, is a scaled-up version of a typical low mass core with similar temperatures, chemical abundances and densities. The difference is that both the infall velocity and the turbulent width of the line profiles are an order of magnitude larger. While the higher infall velocity is expected due to the large mass of JCMT 18354-0649S, we suggest that this highly supersonic turbulence is best understood as being due to a large population of clumps embedded in a more tenuous medium. Many of these clumps will eventually undergo gravitational collapse to form individual low mass stars in a cluster around the massive stars.

Journal Club Meetings

Recently I’ve been given the responsibility to run regular Journal Club Meetings at the Centre for Astronomy of NUIG. After trying to pull together the list of potential candidates I’ve finally organised them together and today we had our “opening” meeting. 

The idea behind the Journal Club is following: We have 2 speakers who present recently published papers of their choice. The papers should not be related to them but could be related to their research. Every speaker gets 20 minutes for the presentation and 5 minutes afterwards for the questions. 

We got 2 speakers one was Gregg Hallinan and the other was me. The audience was full and everybody seamed quite interested in the presented topics. Hope that next Thursday the turnout would be as good as this one.

NIR Spectroscopy paper accepted

Our paper is accepted for publication in AJ! That was quick! So anytime soon I’ll be linking it here.

Update (23.Oct.2008) : The article now has a bib-code 2008arXiv0810.3943A and can be accessed via ADS.

Orion Paper Submitted

Recently I’ve become a silent participant to a huge collaboration intended to map all the molecular hydrogen outflows in Orion-A Molecular Ridge. The submitted paper is entitled: A census of molecular outflows and their sources along the Orion A molecular ridge Characteristics and overall distribution by Davis et al. It is a remarkable work combining data from several wave-bands NIR to MM. Here is the abstract:

ASGI meeting in Cork

Recently (2-3 October 2008) I’ve participated in the ASGI meeting held in beautiful city of Cork (Ireland). The meeting took place in UCC (University College Cork) where astronomers and alike gathered from around the Ireland to present their recent work and talk about the future developments still to come.

I’ve also presented a talk entitled “Dissection of a Cold, Infalling High-Mass Star-Forming Core” which was about the work that we are doing here in Galway with Matt Redman and Patrick Carolan. My intention was to present our work on JCMT 18354-0649S massive core from observational and modelling prospective.

NIR Spectroscopy Paper

We have submitted a paper entitled “NEAR-IR SPECTROSCOPY OF YOUNG STARS IN THE BRAID NEBULA STAR FORMATION REGION IN CYGNUS OB7” by Aspin et al. to Astrophysical Journal. This is part of a big project on Braid Nebula Star-Formation Region that I’m actively participating. Here is the abstract of the paper:

We present 1.4 to 2.5 µm integral field spectroscopy of 16 stars in the Braid Nebula star formation region in Cygnus OB7. These data forms one aspect of a large-scale multi-wavelength survey aimed at determining an unbiased estimate of the number, mass distribution, and evolutionary state of the young stars within this one square degree area of the previously poorly studied Lynds 1003 molecular cloud. Our new spectroscopic data, when combined with 2MASS near-IR photometry, provide evidence of membership of many of these objects in the regions pre-main sequence population. We discuss both the characteristics of the young stars found in the region and the level of star forming activity present.

Now we wait for the referee’s response, and for the papers in the same series by other participants of the collaboration (myself inclusive).

Management Course – part2

Today in the afternoon I took the second part of the management course entitled “Personal Organisation” which was again organised by our very helpful Staff Training Office. This course was quite to the point for me since I’m trying to push forward several project and sometimes I don’t understand where the time is going and yet the projects are barely progressing. The aim of this course was highlighted by our Facilitator Dr. Lousie Baron as:

Being organised gives you time to think. Having time to think boosts creativity and effectiveness. Being organised gives you time to live. Successful researchers and professionals understand the importance of gaining control over their working lives. This short course will be appreciated by anyone who needs more time to do what is important to them.

By the end of the day we now feel like really getting ourselves organised. One interesting thing for me was the realisation of how many people do suffer from the same problems. Everybody who attended the course confessed that the time waste is a big problem for them … interesting …

Management Course – part1

Today I took a course “Managing and Producing Your Thesis and Reports” organised by our Staff Training Office which was aimed at Academic and Research Staff of the NUIG. Course main objectives were:

Report Writing is one of the most important skills professionals need to master. Unclear writing and the inability to be brief are major complaints among academic institutions and employers as is the problem of working to deadlines. This workshop has a unique approach to the task of thesis and report production. Faithful to modern business practice and theory, the task is treated as a process. This means it’s properly managed, completed on time and to the best possible standards.
 

It was quite rewarding to listen the main lecture and then to participate in actual management of an example report/thesis planning. We were split into groups and each of us were supposed to present the skeleton of the project and highlight the necessary steps to complete it by using Gantt diagrams.