The Galactic Interstellar Medium: Saas-Fee Advanced Course 21. Lecture Notes 1991. Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy

ISBN-13: 9783642081439 / Angielski / Miękka / 2011 / 400 str.

W. B. Burton; B. G. Elmegreen; R. Genzel

Opis

The previous Saas-Fee Advanced Course dedicated to the interstellar medium took place in 1972. The tremendous scientific advances that have occurred in this field since then, in particular owing to the availabihty of receivers working at completely unexplored wavelength bands, fuUy justified a new set of lectures. As a consequence, the members of the Swiss Society for Astrophysics and As tronomy voted that "The Galactic Interstellar Medium" should be the subject of the 1991 course. The 21st Saas Fee Advanced Course took place in Les Diablerets from 18 to 23 March 1991, gathering together about 80 participants from all over the world, but mostly from Europe. According to a rule that has proved to lead to success, but also to chal lenge the lecturers' energy, the format of a Saas-Fee Advanced Course consists traditionally of 28 lectures of 45 minutes which take place in the morning and late afternoon, leaving ample time for discussions, self-study, hiking or skiing. Despite the inordinate work load imposed, this year's lecturers felt that the subject was sufficiently dense to increase the lecture time by 1/3 This proved judicious and left more time for questions and discussions during the lectures."

Spis treści

Distribution and Observational Properties of the ISM.- Observations of HI and Other Tracers of the Low-Latitude Morphology of the Interstellar Medium in Our Galaxy.- Galactic Rotation and the Constants Specifying the Kinematic and Linear Scales of the Milky Way; Line-broadening Mechanisms Determining Profile Shapes at Low Latitudes.- Global Structural Distribution of Low-Latitude Tracers of the Inner Galaxy.- Comparative Global Properties of Interstellar Dust and Gas in the Galaxy.- Kinematics and Distribution of Neutral Interstellar Gas in the Galactic Bulge Region.- The Warped and Flaring Layer of Atomic and Molecular Gas in the Outer Galaxy.- Large Scale Dynamics of the Interstellar Medium.- Basic State of the Interstellar Gas.- Large Scale Heating and Cooling.- Explosions.- Gas Flow in Spiral Density Waves.- Gas Instabilities.- Global Star Formation.- Physics and Chemistry of Molecular Clouds.- Tools of Infrared and Radio Astronomy.- Heating and Cooling Processes.- Interstellar Chemistry.- Structure and Dynamics of Molecular Clouds.- Circumstellar Clouds and Masers.- Molecular Clouds in the Galactic Center and External Galaxies.

O autorze

For years the Saas-Fee advanced courses have been greatly appreciated and highly regarded by astrophysicists and astronomers. In a form accessible to students this volume discusses interstellar matter, including the most recent theoretical and observational results.