My first paper

[UFmbutler]

So far here I've mostly replied to threads, unfortunately primarily on a single topic which most of us are familiar with...but I thought I'd change things up a bit.&nbsp; I just submitted my first paper and thought people might be interested.&nbsp; It has to do with a fairly new field in massive star and star cluster formation in our galaxy.&nbsp; As with most papers, the details aren't really important, but it does have a lot of cool looking pictures.&nbsp; If anyone has the patience to read through it, let me know if you have any questions.&nbsp; http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.2882 <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[michaelmozina]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>So far here I've mostly replied to threads, unfortunately primarily on a single topic which most of us are familiar with...but I thought I'd change things up a bit.&nbsp; I just submitted my first paper and thought people might be interested.&nbsp; It has to do with a fairly new field in massive star and star cluster formation in our galaxy.&nbsp; As with most papers, the details aren't really important, but it does have a lot of cool looking pictures.&nbsp; If anyone has the patience to read through it, let me know if you have any questions.&nbsp; http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.2882 <br /> Posted by UFmbutler</DIV></p><p>Congradulations!&nbsp; I can't wait to pick it apart. &nbsp; Just kidding.&nbsp;&nbsp; I'll let you know if I find any typos.&nbsp; </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. - Kristian Birkeland </div>

 

[michaelmozina]

Ooops, nevermind.&nbsp; It was my reader that had a problem with the double ff's, not the PDF file.&nbsp; <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. - Kristian Birkeland </div>

 

[MeteorWayne]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>So far here I've mostly replied to threads, unfortunately primarily on a single topic which most of us are familiar with...but I thought I'd change things up a bit.&nbsp; I just submitted my first paper and thought people might be interested.&nbsp; It has to do with a fairly new field in massive star and star cluster formation in our galaxy.&nbsp; As with most papers, the details aren't really important, but it does have a lot of cool looking pictures.&nbsp; If anyone has the patience to read through it, let me know if you have any questions.&nbsp; http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.2882 <br />Posted by UFmbutler</DIV><br /><br />Excellent. Good journal, too.</p><p>As per your advice,&nbsp;I will ignore all the details </p><p>I have downloaded it and will read through a bit later. It's not my field of expertise, so I imagine my brain will hurt afterward! </p><p>MW</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[DrRocket]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>So far here I've mostly replied to threads, unfortunately primarily on a single topic which most of us are familiar with...but I thought I'd change things up a bit.&nbsp; I just submitted my first paper and thought people might be interested.&nbsp; It has to do with a fairly new field in massive star and star cluster formation in our galaxy.&nbsp; As with most papers, the details aren't really important, but it does have a lot of cool looking pictures.&nbsp; If anyone has the patience to read through it, let me know if you have any questions.&nbsp; http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.2882 <br />Posted by UFmbutler</DIV></p><p>Nice work.&nbsp; I anticipate that you will have many more such good pieces published.&nbsp; Congratulations.</p><p>For we non-specialists, a couple of dumb questions:</p><p>When you talk of mach number, what does that mean for these clouds ?&nbsp; From you description the clouds consist of dust grains, perhaps with icy mantles, and not molecules.&nbsp; I imagine that they are also quite rarified.&nbsp; How is the speed of sound definied in such a material ?&nbsp; Do you have thermodynamics characteristics that are analagous to temperature and ration of specific heats for these clouds?</p><p>In determining the background radiation intensity you used a survey of a region centered on the cloud, but much larger.&nbsp; Why so you include the cloud in the region, rather than an anular region surrounding the cloud ?&nbsp; Do you know what difference you would obtain in using an anular region rather than one that includes the cloud itself ?</p><p>Meteor Wayne noted that you were submiting this to a good journal.&nbsp; I could not discern to which journal the article is being submitted.&nbsp; Am I missing something ?<br /></p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[UFmbutler]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Nice work.&nbsp; I anticipate that you will have many more such good pieces published.&nbsp; Congratulations.For we non-specialists, a couple of dumb questions:When you talk of mach number, what does that mean for these clouds ?&nbsp; From you description the clouds consist of dust grains, perhaps with icy mantles, and not molecules.&nbsp; I imagine that they are also quite rarified.&nbsp; How is the speed of sound definied in such a material ?&nbsp; Do you have thermodynamics characteristics that are analagous to temperature and ration of specific heats for these clouds?</DIV></p><p>These "clouds" are actually condensations within giant molecular clouds, so there is quite a bit of molecular gas in them.&nbsp; For example, to get the kinematic distances we use, you need to look at the 13CO emission toward them - we just took these distances from another paper so I'm a little fuzzy on the exact details.&nbsp; However, the dense parts(primarily the regions inside the ellipses) are composed primarily of the icy dust grains.&nbsp; I'm not sure what the equation for sound speed is in a region like this. &nbsp; We base our conclusion that they are ~mach 5 because our mass surface density probability distribution functions most closely match the structure of a mach 5 driven turbulence simulation done by some other authors who were kind enough to let us use their results.&nbsp; However, they are also similar in structure to a non-turbulent model with a strong dynamical magnetic field, so its unclear which one it is.&nbsp; Based on the appearance, especially in the case of the filamentary clouds, it "looks" like they are shocked, but that may not be the case.&nbsp; The temperature is estimated from the millimeter emission, namely NH3. </p><p>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>In determining the background radiation intensity you used a survey of a region centered on the cloud, but much larger.&nbsp; Why so you include the cloud in the region, rather than an anular region surrounding the cloud ?&nbsp; Do you know what difference you would obtain in using an anular region rather than one that includes the cloud itself </DIV></p><p>I'm not sure I understand what you mean, but I think I might.&nbsp; In the first method described "LMF", we do include the cloud material.&nbsp; The advantage of this method is we don't need to know anything about the cloud to use it.&nbsp; However, because we include the cloud, we have to make it big enough so as to not underestimate the background intensity, yet small enough so we still capture some smaller scale variation - in other words, this is a very basic method that we didn't trust much.&nbsp; The next method, "SMF" does something similar to what your second sentence says.&nbsp; We eliminate all the pixels inside the dotted ellipses, and for each pixel inside we make an annular region, from which the background is interpolated using a 1/r^2 weighting scheme.&nbsp; We trust these values much more, and if you look in figure 12(I think) on the top, the masses we derive with each method are within ~10% of each other. &nbsp; </p><p>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>?Meteor Wayne noted that you were submiting this to a good journal.&nbsp; I could not discern to which journal the article is being submitted.&nbsp; Am I missing something ? <br /> Posted by DrRocket</DIV></p><p>In the arxiv posting below the abstract it says it.&nbsp; We submitted it to the Astrophysical Journal("ApJ"). </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[michaelmozina]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'> We base our conclusion that they are ~mach 5 because our mass surface density probability distribution functions most closely match the structure of a mach 5 driven turbulence simulation done by some other authors who were kind enough to let us use their results.&nbsp; However, they are also similar in structure to a <strong>non-turbulent model with a strong dynamical magnetic field</strong>, so its unclear which one it is.&nbsp; Based on the appearance, especially in the case of the filamentary clouds, it "looks" like they are shocked, but that may not be the case.<br /> Posted by UFmbutler</DIV></p><p>http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/09/990910080925.htm</p><p>http://www.spacedaily.com/news/stellar-chemistry-05g.html </p><p>Turbulance and dynamic magnetic fields both seem to be commonly associated with star formation.&nbsp; I don't know if this really relates to your work, but for some reason it reminded me of this article.&nbsp; Obviously I would tend to suspect a dynamic EM field. &nbsp;&nbsp; From the second article:</p><span class="BTX">Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>The surprise detection of X-rays from such a cold object reveals that matter is falling toward the protostar core 10 times faster than expected from gravity alone.</DIV></span><p>FYI, I do very much like the paper.&nbsp; I'm still wading through it as I get time today, but thus far it looks pretty good to me, and you know how picky I can be be.&nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. - Kristian Birkeland </div>

 

[UFmbutler]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/09/990910080925.htmhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/stellar-chemistry-05g.html Turbulance and dynamic magnetic fields both seem to be commonly associated with star formation.&nbsp; I don't know if this really relates to your work, but for some reason it reminded me of this article.&nbsp; Obviously I would tend to suspect a dynamic EM field. &nbsp; <br /> Posted by michaelmozina</DIV></p><p>That is why we are unsure.&nbsp; We know stars form here, but both features have similar density profiles.&nbsp; It is likely a combination of the two. &nbsp; A future paper will contain a more quantitative comparison to simulations.&nbsp; Currently though we are working on deriving the extinction law(i.e. mass surface density as a function of wavelength) as a function of core density, something that has never been done before. &nbsp; </p><p>edit:&nbsp; in response to your quote from the second article, we have had a successful XMM-Newton observation project targeting one of our clouds based on my work in the paper, so xrays are indeed important for studying star forming regions </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[jim48]

<strong>Wow! I'm impressed, and that's coming from the resident scientist out here.&nbsp;Outstanding paper for one right out of the gate. All I can do is echo all of the above praise and ask "How comes there was nothing about flying saucers in it?"<br /></strong><img src="http://sitelife.space.com/ver1.0/Content/images/store/5/2/55df2696-2bb0-4278-a281-de446caeded7.Medium.jpg" alt="" /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[UFmbutler]

You have to read in between the lines...how do you think the ice got there?&nbsp; We are clearly peering into the depths of alien freezers, specifically their icemakers. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[UFmbutler]

Update:&nbsp; After a very minor revision the paper is now accepted and will be published in the April 20th edition of ApJ.&nbsp; I feel like I just had a baby.. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[michaelmozina]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Update:&nbsp; After a very minor revision the paper is now accepted and will be published in the April 20th edition of ApJ.&nbsp; I feel like I just had a baby.. <br /> Posted by UFmbutler</DIV></p><p>Very cool.&nbsp; Congradulations. </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled with electrons and flying electric ions of all kinds. - Kristian Birkeland </div>