Galaxy formation and evolution

Abstract:

In this and a companion paper (Eisenhauer et al. 2003b), we discuss some of the scientific results obtained during the SPIFFI guest instrument runs at the VLT in March and April 2003. This paper concentrates on results for the Galactic Center. Section I discusses the stellar population of the Galactic Center, in which we clearly detect, for the first time, an early, hot WN star, as well as a large number of WC stars. Analysis of the stellar population indicates that the young stars in the Galactic Center originated in a high metalicity starburst about 5 Myr ago. A surprising result is that essentially all young stars in the central 10" belong to one of two well defined, rotating stellar rings/disks. Section 2 outlines a new determination of the distance to the Galactic Center which is essentially free of systematic uncertainties in the astrophysical modelling, and gives R. as 7.94 +/- 0.42 kpc.

Abstract:

This is the second of two papers (I: Horrobin et al. 2003) on the first scientific results from the SPIFFI integral field spectrometer at the VLT. Here we discuss the observations and properties of the prototypical luminous infrared galaxy NGC 6240 and the luminous sub-millimeter galaxy SMMJ 14011+0252. Taking full advantage of the excellent seeing conditions of 0.27", our integral field spectroscopy data allow us for the first time to study in detail the stellar and gas dynamics in NGC 6240 on scales of 125 pc, and to establish a galactic shock as the origin of the strong emission from molecular hydrogen. Our observations of SMMJ 14011+0252 provide us with deep, spatially resolved near infrared spectra of the SCUBA selected luminous submillimeter galaxy at a redshift of z=2.565, revealing a remarkably old, massive and metal-rich starburst galaxy for the early epoch at which it is observed.