Astrophysics in 1994

Abstract

1994 was the year in which we saw the first images from the repaired Hubble Space Telescope; the probable detection of a diffuse intergalactic medium, a black hole in M87, and an enormous primordial deuterium abundance; the discovery of the first (and second) superluminal objects within our own galaxy; not to mention the demise of the Jovian dinosaurs. But, as always, most astronomers continued to work away on the projects that have interested them for years or decades, and we attempt also to report some progress in broader areas, including cooling flows, extragalactic globular cluster populations, disk instabilities, phases of the interstellar medium, and brown dwarfs among microlenses and other populations. Several sections of short items range from the obvious to the remarkable to the unbelievable. As in previous years, the ordering of the topics attempts to preserve the near-to-far custom of elementary astronomy textbooks. INTRODUCTIONGreetings, and welcome to the fourth annual roundup of beasts for the astrophysical zoo. 2 It attempts, like its predecessors, to catch most of the obvious, newsworthy events, but also to highlight areas where less spectacular, yet hard and steady, effort is slowly pushing back the frontiers, or anyhow relocating them. We hope we are at least as successful as Carl Seyfert (of the eponymous galaxies) who used to ride his horse, Silver, in the annual roundup during his days at McDonald Observatory.The first item cited reached our library shelves on 5 October 1993 and the last on

What is the closest black hole to the Sun?

“…However the correct year is 1995. Trimble and Leonard (1995) mention the IAU Circular nb. 6063 of Inoue et al (1994) but attribute it for some reasons to Reynolds & Jauncy.…”

Far infrared properties of Hickson compact groups of galaxies. I. High resolution IRAS maps and fluxes

“…Their average velocity dispersion of 150 km s −1 -which is less than one fifth of that observed in some cores of rich clusters of galaxies -renders the dynamical friction mechanism particularly effective and turns them into ideal test grounds where to study the effects of strong galactic interactions and, in some extreme cases, also of cannibalism and merging. In spite of the large amount of observational and theoretical work done in the last decade, the physical properties of compact groups of galaxies (hereafter referred to as CGs) still present oblivious aspects (Trimble & Leonard 1995) due to contradicting observational evidences. While referring to some recent reviews for up to date overviews of the field (Hickson 1993;Mamon 1995;Zepf 1995), we wish to focus here on the rather puzzling problems posed by the FIR luminosity function of the groups.…”