ISO Status Report – February 2004
Active Archive Phase activities
The ISO Data Centre Active Archive Phase activities continue to run
smoothly. A new version of the ISO Data Archive (IDA V.6.1) was released,
associated with a new interoperability mechanism, fully compliant with the
Virtual Observatories standards. This was demonstrated at the XIII ADASS
conference hosted by CDS, Strasbourg, in October 2003 and will be an
important element of the second demo of the Astrophysical Virtual
Observatory planned for January 27-28 2004, now also including ISO.
Systematic data reduction projects of ISO spectroscopic modes have been
completed and the products are being ingested in the archive. Detailed
requirements for the observations. data quality reports have been
consolidated, for the next major release of the IDA, planned for spring
2004. The IDA continues to be heavily used, with about 60 users downloading
every month typically the equivalent of 5-10% of its scientific observations
content.
The legacy version of the ISO Handbook (5 volumes, 1200 pages) has been
released on the Web and is being distributed in hardcopy to all PIs of ISO
observing proposals as well as to some 300 libraries worldwide.
Science Highlights
ISO continues to have a significant presence in the refereed literature. ISO
papers cover all areas of astronomy. Recent results include:
The first detection of far-infrared emission associated with an extended HI
disk.
Spiral galaxies in the local universe are commonly observed to be embedded
in extended disks of neutral hydrogen – the so-called .extended HI disks..
Based on observations made with the ISOPHOT instrument, the first detection
of cold dust in the extended HI disk of a spiral galaxy has been reported.
This detection was achieved through a dedicated deep far-infrared
observation of a large field encompassing the entire HI disk of the edge-on
spiral galaxy NGC891. The discovery indicates that the extended HI disk of
NGC 891 is not primordial in origin.
New evolutionary synthesis models of M82 based on ISO spectroscopy.
The global starburst activity in M82 appears to have occurred in two
successive episodes each lasting a few million years. The first episode took
place throughout the central regions of M82 and was particularly intense at
the nucleus, while the second episode occurred predominantly in a
circumnuclear ring and along the stellar bar. This sequence is interpreted
as resulting from the gravitational interaction between M82 and its
neighbour M81, and subsequent bar-driven evolution. The short burst duration
on all spatial scales indicates strong negative feedback effects of
starburst activity, both locally and globally.
