Vertical scaleheights of stars and gas in the galaxy

dc.contributor.author	Narayan, C. A
dc.contributor.author	Jog, C. J
dc.date.accessioned	2008-07-22T11:17:28Z
dc.date.available	2008-07-22T11:17:28Z
dc.date.issued	2002-09
dc.identifier.citation	BASI, Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 703 - 704	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/2248/2808
dc.description.abstract	The vertical scaleheight of atomic hydrogen gas is observed to be nearly constant with radius in the inner Galaxy « 8.5 kpc). This has been a long-standing puzzle (Oort 1962) because the gas scaleheight should increase exponentially with radius as a response to the decreasing gravitational potential of the stellar disk alone. We treat the stars, H I and H2 as three gravitationally coupled components in the Galactic disk and find their scaleheights as a function of galactocentric radius. This approach not only explains the near-constancy of H I scaleheight but also reproduces the observed scaleheight variation for H2 and stars in the Galaxy.	en
dc.format.extent	80583 bytes
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf
dc.language.iso	en	en
dc.publisher	Astronomical Society of India	en
dc.subject	Vertical Scaleheights	en
dc.subject	Gas in the Galaxy	en
dc.subject	Galactocentric Radius	en
dc.title	Vertical scaleheights of stars and gas in the galaxy	en
dc.type	Article	en