The accelerations of stars orbiting the Milky Way's central black hole

Recent measurements of the velocities of stars near the centre of the Milky Way have provided the strongest evidence for the presence of a supermassive black hole in a galaxy, but the observational uncertainties poorly constrain many of the black hole's properties. Determining the accelerations of stars in their orbits around the centre provides much more precise information about the position and mass of the black hole. Here we report measurements of the accelerations of three stars located approximately 0.005 pc (projected on the sky) from the central radio source Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*); these accelerations are comparable to those experienced by the Earth as it orbits the Sun. These data increase the inferred minimum mass density in the central region of the Galaxy by an order of magnitude relative to previous results, and localize the dark mass to within 0.05 +/- 0.04 arcsec of the nominal position of Sgr A*. In addition, the orbital period of one of the observed stars could be as short as 15 years, allowing us the opportunity in the near future to observe an entire period.     

Detection of Jupiter's ring at 2.2 microm

FOLLOWING the announcement of the discovery of a ring around Jupiter by the Voyager spacecraft(1) a successful attempt was made to detect the reflected sunlight from this ring at 2.2microm. We describe here the results of this experiment and the precautions taken to separate the radiation from the ring and the scattered radiation from the planet.     

Substantial reservoirs of molecular hydrogen in the debris disks around young stars

Circumstellar accretion disks transfer matter from molecular clouds to young stars and to the sites of planet formation. The disks observed around pre-main-sequence stars have properties consistent with those expected for the pre-solar nebula from which our own Solar System formed 4.5 Gyr ago. But the 'debris' disks that encircle more than 15% of nearby main-sequence stars appear to have very small amounts of gas, based on observations of the tracer molecule carbon monoxide: these observations have yielded gas/dust ratios much less than 0.1, whereas the interstellar value is about 100 (ref. 9). Here we report observations of the lowest rotational transitions of molecular hydrogen (H2) that reveal large quantities of gas in the debris disks around the stars beta Pictoris, 49 Ceti and HD135344. The gas masses calculated from the data are several hundreds to a thousand times greater than those estimated from the CO observations, and yield gas/dust ratios of the same order as the interstellar value.     

Gorenstein平坦预包络和预解式

我们在［７］中引进了Ｇｏｒｅｎｓｔｅｉｎ平坦模。本文将这类模的刻画推广到任意ｎ－Ｇｏｒｅｎｓｔｅｉｎ环上，并利用这类模刻画了ｎ－Ｇｏｒｅｓｔｅｉｎ环。而且，我们证明了任意ｎ－Ｇｏｒｅｎｓｔｅｉｎ环上Ｇｏｒｅｎｓｔｅｉｎ平坦预包络的存在性，并证得得这种环关于Ｇｏｒｅｎｓｔｅｉｎ平坦模的内射类的整体维数至多为ｎ－２，当ｎ≤１时，该整体维数为零。     

Extreme collisions between planetesimals as the origin of warm dust around a Sun-like star

The slow but persistent collisions between asteroids in our Solar System generate a tenuous cloud of dust known as the zodiacal light (because of the light the dust reflects). In the young Solar System, such collisions were more common and the dust production rate should have been many times larger. Yet copious dust in the zodiacal region around stars much younger than the Sun has rarely been found. Dust is known to orbit around several hundred main-sequence stars, but this dust is cold and comes from a Kuiper-belt analogous region out beyond the orbit of Neptune. Despite many searches, only a few main-sequence stars reveal warm (> 120 K) dust analogous to zodiacal dust near the Earth. Signs of planet formation (in the form of collisions between bodies) in the regions of stars corresponding to the orbits of the terrestrial planets in our Solar System have therefore been elusive. Here we report an exceptionally large amount of warm, small, silicate dust particles around the solar-type star BD+20,307 (HIP 8920, SAO 75016). The composition and quantity of dust could be explained by recent frequent or huge collisions between asteroids or other 'planetesimals' whose orbits are being perturbed by a nearby planet.