Penetrating Bars through Masks of Cosmic Dust

THE EDITORS: DAVID L. BLOCK AND KENNETH C. FREEMAN (SOC CO-CHAIRS), IVANIO PUERARI, ROBERT GROESS AND LIZ K. BLOCK 1. Harvard College Observatory, 1958 The past century has truly brought about an explosive period of growth and discovery for the physical sciences as a whole, and for astronomy in particular. Galaxy morphology has reached a renaissance . . The year: 1958. The date: October 1. The venue: Harvard College Observatory. The lecturer: Walter Baade. With amazing foresight, Baade penned these words: "Young stars, supergiants and so on, make a terrific splash - lots of light. The total mass of these can be very small compared to the total mass of the system". Dr Layzer then asked the key question: " . . . the discussion raises the point of what this classification would look like if you were to ignore completely all the Population I, and just focus attention on the Population II . . . " We stand on the shoulders of giants. The great observer E. E. Barnard, in his pioneering efforts to photograph the Milky Way, devoted the major part of his life to identifying and numbering dusty "holes" and dust lanes in our Milky Way. No one could have dreamt that the pervasiveness of these cosmic dust masks (not only in our Galaxy but also in galaxies at high redshift) is so great, that their "penetration" is truly one of the pioneering challenges from both space-borne telescopes and from the ground.

Contains 20 review articles and over 75 invited papers by top scientists Focus on longevity of the bar phenomenon, the duty cycle of bars, bars at high redshift, the secular evolution of galaxies, galaxy disks as open systems...and much more Includes unique historical perspectives by Dr. Allan Sandage and a 90-minute panel discussion, transcribed from tape

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The country: South Africa. The period: early 1960s. Billions of snowflakes fell to the ground. Why is the snowflake six cornered, asked Kepler? To each researcher, there is the mystery of 'the thing itself'. South Africa. Some forty years later. 'The thing itself' is the subject of an International Conference held in the Pilanesberg National Park, attended by over 80 astronomers. The subject: the bar phenomenon. Why bars? Of all the spiral galaxies in our local Universe, over three quarters of them show elongated structures called 'bars'. Masks of cosmic dust have, in a very real sense, kept us in a scientific dark age about the true nature of bars: a cosmic fog has kept a large part of the story of the bar phenomenon untold. The story unfolds in this volume. How long lived is the ever pervasive 'bar phenomenon'? Do spiral galaxies experience bar duty cycles, presenting to us three to four bars during one Hubble time? The world of masks: the duality of spiral structure. In this volume, containing 20 in-depth review articles and over 75 invited papers and poster-papers, the reader can focus on the Chemical and Mass Masks of the Milky Way, morphological differences between galaxies in the early Universe and today, bar fraction as a function of look-back time, evolved stellar disks at high redshift, gravitational torques of bars, outer rings of carbon stars as evidence for continual gas accretion in spiral disks - and much more. Unique features of this volume include masterful historical insights from Dr. Allan Sandage on the role of Sir James Jeans, the inclusion of a 90-minute panel discussion (transcribed from tape), the J. Mayo-Greenberg Lecture (delivered by Jean-Loup Puget) and a keynote address of chaos in spiral galaxies, presented by the co-founder of the density-wave theory, F.H. Shu. The year 2004 marks the 40th anniversary since the publication of the Lin-Shu paper in 1964. 'The thing itself' ...its form, its structure, its origin...intrigued Husserl; to us, the bar phenomenon demands the attention of the greatest observers and theoreticians of our age, today. Read their thoughts and explore their mind-sets in this conference volume, exceeding over 850 pages in length. TOC:The Editors - Preface.- A Tribute to Cosmic Dust Pioneer J. Mayo Greenberg.- The Hubble Tuning Fork Strikes a New Note.- Episodes in the Development of the Hubble Galaxy Classification.- Secular Evolution Versus Hierarchical Merging: Galaxy Evolution along the Hubble-sequence, in the Fields and Rich Environments.- Dense Gas and Star Formation in Bars.- On the Origin of S0 Galaxies.- Gravitational Bar Torques in the Spiral/S0 Divide.- Direct Measurement of Pattern Speeds In Double-Barred SB0's.- Gas Flows, Star Formation and Galaxy Evolution.- Bar-Driven Evolution and 2D Spectroscopy of Bulges.- Bar-Driven Fueling of Galactic Nuclei: a 2D view.- Dust Penetrated Arm Classes: Insight form Rising and Falling Rotation Curves.- Bar Dissolution and Reformation Mechanisms.- Dynamics of Doubly Barred Galaxies, also with the Inner Bar Retrograde.- A Coordinated Episode of AGB Star Production at Large Galactocentric Distances in the Andromeda Galaxy.- Fuelling Starbursts and AGN.- Penetrating Dust Tori in AGN.- Bars from the Inside Out: An HST Study of their Dusty Circumnuclear Regions.- Morphology of Bar and Spiral Modes: do they relate?- Bar Formation by Galaxy-Galaxy Interactions.- Triggering AGN's - Interactions or Bars?- Triggered Star Formation: from Large to Small Scales.- Investigation of Age and Metallicity Gradients in Spiral Galaxies.- Secular Evolution and the Growth of Pseudobulges in Disk Galaxies.- Bars and Lences in Spiral Galaxies: Clues for Secular Evolution.- Evolution and Impact of Bars over the last nine Gyr: Early Results from GEMS.- First Phylogenetic Analysis of Galaxy Evolution.- A Unified Picture of Disk Galaxies where Bars, Spirals and Warps Result from the Same Fundamental Causes.- On the Generation of the Hubble Sequence trough an Internal Secular Dynamical Process.- The Angular Momentum Problem and the Formation of Bulge

Inhalt
The Editors Preface.- A Tribute to Cosmic Dust Pioneer J. Mayo Greenberg.- The Hubble Tuning Fork Strikes a New Note.- Episodes in the Development of the Hubble Galaxy Classification.- Secular Evolution Versus Hierarchical Merging: Galaxy Evolution along the Hubble-sequence, in the Fields and Rich Environments.- Dense Gas and Star Formation in Bars.- On the Origin of S0 Galaxies.- Gravitational Bar Torques in the Spiral/S0 Divide.- Direct Measurement of Pattern Speeds In Double-Barred SB0's.- Gas Flows, Star Formation and Galaxy Evolution.- Bar-Driven Evolution and 2D Spectroscopy of Bulges.- Bar-Driven Fueling of Galactic Nuclei: a 2D view.- Dust Penetrated Arm Classes: Insight form Rising and Falling Rotation Curves.- Bar Dissolution and Reformation Mechanisms.- Dynamics of Doubly Barred Galaxies, also with the Inner Bar Retrograde.- A Coordinated Episode of AGB Star Production at Large Galactocentric Distances in the Andromeda Galaxy.- Fuelling Starbursts and AGN.- Penetrating Dust Tori in AGN.- Bars from the Inside Out: An HST Study of their Dusty Circumnuclear Regions.- Morphology of Bar and Spiral Modes: do they relate?- Bar Formation by Galaxy-Galaxy Interactions.- Triggering AGN's - Interactions or Bars?- Triggered Star Formation: from Large to Small Scales.- Investigation of Age and Metallicity Gradients in Spiral Galaxies.- Secular Evolution and the Growth of Pseudobulges in Disk Galaxies.- Bars and Lences in Spiral Galaxies: Clues for Secular Evolution.- Evolution and Impact of Bars over the last nine Gyr: Early Results from GEMS.- First Phylogenetic Analysis of Galaxy Evolution.- A Unified Picture of Disk Galaxies where Bars, Spirals and Warps Result from the Same Fundamental Causes.- On the Generation of the Hubble Sequence trough an Internal Secular Dynamical Process.- The Angular Momentum Problem and the Formation of Bulgeless Galaxies.- Disks Evolution in a Cosmological Framework.- Galaxy Formation and the Cosmological Angular MomentumProblem.- The Problems with Galaxy Formation.- The Interp…