Interesting Astrophysics: Mar 23 to Mar 31

Dwarfs and giants compete in this edition of Interesting Astrophysics. The dwarfs (or dwarves, as Tolkien would have us write it) are dwarf starburst galaxies and the giants are very very luminous starbursting galaxies.There are two very nice papers on the very popular (if somewhat atypical) dwarf starburst galaxy NGC 1569 (Kepley et al, and Westmoquette et al), both of interest with respect to its galactic wind. Monreal-Ibero et al present a paper on NGC 5253 (possibly the second most popular dwarf starburst galaxy judged by number of papers published). And yes, that region of nitrogen enrichment that is the one clear case of localized chemical enrichment by recently formed massive stars is still there.Younger et al discuss the physical sizes of the star forming regions in submillimeter galaxies, and argue that the data supports an interpretation as merger-driven starbursts rather than simply over-active disks. This is not particularly surprising, as the SMGs have long been thought to be semi-equivalent to local Ultraluminous IR galaxies (ULIRGs are merger driven starbursts).Not content with merely Ultraluminosity, Rowan-Robinson et al present a catalog of 179 Hyperluminous IR galaxies, and discuss their spectral energy distributions and star formation rates.Last but not least I'll mention ...