Cooling, dynamics and fragmentation of massive gas clouds: clues to the masses and radii of galaxies and clusters.
Abstract
This paper investigates the extent to which the characteristic masses and sizes of galaxies (and clusters) are determined by physical processes occurring at the epoch when the pregalactic material has stopped expanding with the background universe but has not yet fragmented into stars. The gravitational clustering picture of galaxy formation is summarized and the behavior of gravitating gas clouds is discussed emphasizing the significance of two mass-dependent radii the radius at which the cooling time is shorter than the collapse time scale. The extent to which earlier estimates of the epoch of galaxy formation might be affected by gasdynamical dissipation processes is studied.
- Publication:
-
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Pub Date:
- June 1977
- DOI:
- 10.1093/mnras/179.4.541
- Bibcode:
- 1977MNRAS.179..541R
- Keywords:
-
- Astronomical Models;
- Big Bang Cosmology;
- Galactic Clusters;
- Galactic Evolution;
- Lyman Alpha Radiation;
- Protostars;
- Clouds;
- Critical Mass;
- Fragmentation;
- Radiation Pressure;
- Stellar Evolution;
- Universe;
- Astrophysics