Thursday 29 April 2010

Anomalous dust emission in NGC 6946

New paper out today...

The abstract:

We report new cm-wave measurements at five frequencies between 15 and
18 GHz of the continuum emission from the reportedly anomalous
"region 4" of the nearby galaxy NGC 6946. We find that the emission
in this frequency range is significantly in excess of that measured at
8.5 GHz, but has a spectrum from 15-18 GHz consistent with optically
thin free-free emission from a compact H II region. In combination
with previously published data we fit four emission models
containing different continuum components. These fits show that, in
combination with data at other frequencies, a model with a spinning
dust component is slightly preferred above those which possess more
well established emission mechanisms.

PDF:

http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~bn204/publications/2010/N6946.pdf

Software:

http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~bn204/galevol/speca/index.html