The giant planets in the Solar System each have two groups of satellites. The regular satellites move along nearly circular orbits in the planet's orbital plane, revolving about it in the same sense as the planet spins. In contrast, the so-called irregular satellites are generally smaller in size and are characterized by large orbits with significant eccentricity, inclination or both. The differences in their characteristics suggest that the regular and irregular satellites formed by different mechanisms: the regular satellites are believed to have formed in an accretion disk around the planet, like a miniature Solar System, whereas the irregulars are generally thought to be captured planetesimals. Here we report the discovery of 12 irregular satellites of Saturn, along with the determinations of their orbits. These orbits, along with the orbits of irregular satellites of Jupiter and Uranus, fall into groups on the basis of their orbital inclinations. We interpret this result as indicating that most of the irregular moons are collisional remnants of larger satellites that were fragmented after capture, rather than being captured independently.

Star forming molecular clouds are observed to be both highly magnetized and turbulent. Consequently the formation of protostellar disks is largely dependent on the complex interaction between gravity, magnetic fields, and turbulence. Studies of non-turbulent protostellar disk formation with realistic magnetic fields have shown that these fields are efficient in removing angular momentum from the forming disks, preventing their formation. However, once turbulence is included, disks can form in even highly magnetized clouds, although the precise mechanism remains uncertain. Here we present several high resolution simulations of turbulent, realistically magnetized, high-mass molecular clouds with both aligned and random turbulence to study the role that turbulence, misalignment, and magnetic fields have on the formation of protostellar disks. We find that when the turbulence is artificially aligned so that the angular momentum is parallel to the initial uniform field, no rotationally supported disks are formed, regardless of the initial turbulent energy. We conclude that turbulence and the associated misalignment between the angular momentum and the magnetic field are crucial in the formation of protostellar disks in the presence of realistic magnetic fields.

We carry out direct numerical simulations of turbulent astrophysical media that explicitly track ionizations, recombinations, and species-by-species radiative cooling. The simulations assume solar composition and follows the evolution of hydrogen, helium, carbon, oxygen, sodium, and magnesium, but they do not include the presence of an ionizing background. In this case, the medium reaches a global steady state that is purely a function of the one-dimensional turbulent velocity dispersion, σ 1D , and the product of the mean density and the driving scale of turbulence, nL. Our simulations span a grid of models with σ 1D ranging from 6 to 58 km s −1 and nL ranging from 10 16 to 10 20 cm −2 , which correspond to turbulent Mach numbers from M = 0.2 to 10.6. The species abundances are well described by single-temperature estimates whenever M is small, but local equilibrium models can not accurately predict the global equilibrium abundances when M 1. To allow future studies to account for nonequilibrium effects in turbulent media, we gather our results into a series of tables, which we will extend in the future to encompass a wider range of elements, compositions, and ionizing processes.

Outflows are a pervasive feature of mechanical feedback from super star clusters (SSC) in starburst galaxies, playing a fundamental role in galaxy evolution. Observations are now starting to confirm that outflows can undergo catastrophic cooling, suppressing adiabatic superwinds. Here we present a suite of one-dimensional, hydrodynamic simulations that study the ionization structure of these outflows and the resulting line emission generated by the cooling gas. We use the non-equilibrium atomic chemistry package within MAIHEM, our modified version of FLASH, which evolves the ionization state of the gas and computes the total cooling rate on an ion-by-ion basis. We find that catastrophically cooling models produce strong nebular line emission compared to adiabatic outflows. We also show that such models exhibit non-equilibrium conditions, thereby generating more highly ionized states than equivalent equilibrium models. When including photoionization from the parent SSC, catastrophically cooling models show strong C IV λ1549 and O VI λ1037 emission. For density bounded photoionization, He II λ1640, λ4686, C III] λ1908, Si IV λ1206, and Si III λ1400 are also strongly enhanced. These lines are seen in extreme starbursts where catastrophic cooling is likely to occur, suggesting that they may serve as diagnostics of such conditions. The higher ionization generated by these flows may help to explain line emission that cannot be attributed to SSC photoionization alone.

We present a suite of one-dimensional spherically-symmetric hydrodynamic simulations that study the atomic ionization structure of galactic outflows. We track the ionization state of the outflowing gas with a non-equilibrium atomic chemistry network that includes photoionization, photo-heating, and ion-by-ion cooling. Each simulation describes a steady-state outflow that is defined by its mass and energy input rates, sonic radius, metallicity, and UV flux from both the host galaxy and metagalactic background. We find that for a large range of parameter choices, the ionization state of the material departs strongly from what it would be in photo-ionization equilibrium, in conflict with what is commonly assumed in the analysis of observations. In addition, nearly all the models reproduce the low N V to O VI column density ratios and the relatively high O VI column densities that are observed.