Session B14 - Galaxies, Supernovae, and Cosmology.
ORAL session, Saturday morning, April 28
Room 14, Renaissance Hotel$
Numerical simulations involving only basic physics are a powerful tool for understanding complex systems. We have performed a detailed study of the colliding galaxy system Arp 119 by comparing observations with a 3D computer simulation employing gravity and hydrodynamics. Morphological and velocity information yield a likely orientation for the system. Comparing the model at various times with observations taken at multiple wavelengths reveals the history of the large-scale, collision-induced star formation that occurred in the disk galaxy. We find that the star formation followed the passage of a single gas density wave through the disk, and that the star formation did not occur continuously, but only during discrete periods. Spatially, the star formation took place over long, continuous arcs and in a string of distinct knots. We present a summary of the types of physical information we have obtained through comparisons of observations and simulations, and we describe applications of these results to the evolution of galaxies.