With Fritz
Benedict (University of Texas)
and his collaborators,
I have completed two studies of the
the barred spiral galaxy NGC 4314:
The central region of NGC 4314, as
seen by the
Hubble Space Telescope.
The picture on the right is a map of the
inner region of NGC 4314 in the 2.3 millimeter
spectral line of carbon monoxide gas.
Most of the gas in NGC 4314 is molecular hydrogen;
the 2.3 mm CO line is a convenient tracer of this
gas. In NGC 4314, we find a ring of molecular
gas with a diameter of approximately 500 parsecs (10
arcseconds) encircling the nucleus. Notice
that this ring is very clumpy.
These observations were made using the
Owens Valley Radio Observatory
millimeter interferometer, which is operated
by Caltech.