47 research outputs found

    A New Stellar Atmosphere Grid and Comparisons with HST/STIS Calspec Flux Distributions

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    The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) has measured the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) for several stars of types O, B, A, F, and G. These absolute fluxes from the CALSPEC database are fit with a new spectral grid computed from the ATLAS-APOGEE ATLAS9 model atmosphere database using a chi-square minimization technique in four parameters. The quality of the fits are compared for complete LTE grids by Castelli & Kurucz (CK04) and our new comprehensive LTE grid (BOSZ). For the cooler stars, the fits with the MARCS LTE grid are also evaluated, while the hottest stars are also fit with the NLTE Lanz & Hubeny OB star grids. Unfortunately, these NLTE models do not transition smoothly in the infrared to agree with our new BOSZ LTE grid at the NLTE lower limit of Teff =15,000K. The new BOSZ grid is available via the Space Telescope Institute MAST archive and has a much finer sampled IR wavelength scale than CK04, which will facilitate the modeling of stars observed by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Our result for the angular diameter of Sirius agrees with the ground- based interferometric value.Comment: 11 figure

    NGC 7789: An Open Cluster Case Study

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    We have obtained high-resolution spectra of 32 giants in the open cluster NGC 7789 using the Wisconsin-Indiana-Yale-NOAO Hydra spectrograph. We explore differences in atmospheric parameters and elemental abundances caused by the use of the linelist developed for the Gaia-ESO Survey (GES) compared to one based on Arcturus used in our previous work. [Fe/H] values decrease when using the GES linelist instead of the Arcturus-based linelist; these differences are probably driven by systematically lower (~ -0.1 dex) GES surface gravities. Using the GES linelist we determine abundances for 10 elements - Fe, Mg, Si, Ca, Ti, Na, Ni, Zr, Ba, and La. We find the cluster's average metallicity [Fe/H] = 0.03 +/- 0.07 dex, in good agreement with literature values, and a lower [Mg/Fe] abundance than has been reported before for this cluster (0.11 +/- 0.05 dex). We also find the neutron-capture element barium to be highly enhanced - [Ba/Fe] = +0.48 +/- 0.08 - and disparate from cluster measurements of neutron-capture elements La and Zr (-0.08 +/- 0.05 and 0.08 +/- 0.08, respectively). This is in accordance with recent discoveries of supersolar Ba enhancement in young clusters along with more modest enhancement of other neutron-capture elements formed in similar environments.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, Table 1 typo fixe

    Chemical Abundances in Field Red Giants from High-Resolution H-Band Spectra using the APOGEE Spectral Linelist

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    High-resolution H-band spectra of five bright field K, M, and MS giants, obtained from the archives of the Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS), are analyzed to determine chemical abundances of 16 elements. The abundances were derived via spectrum synthesis using the detailed linelist prepared for the SDSS III Apache Point Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE), which is a high-resolution near-infrared spectroscopic survey to derive detailed chemical abundance distributions and precise radial velocities for 100,000 red giants sampling all Galactic stellar populations. Measured chemical abundances include the cosmochemically important isotopes 12C, 13C, 14N, and 16O, along with Mg, Al, Si, K, Ca, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, and Cu. A comparison of the abundances derived here with published values for these stars reveals consistent results to ~0.1 dex. The APOGEE spectral region and linelist is, thus, well-suited for probing both Galactic chemical evolution, as well as internal nucleosynthesis and mixing in populations of red giants using high-resolution spectroscopy.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. 42 pages, 12 figure

    Chemical tagging can work: Identification of stellar phase-space structures purely by chemical-abundance similarity

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    Chemical tagging promises to use detailed abundance measurements to identify spatially separated stars that were in fact born together (in the same molecular cloud), long ago. This idea has not yielded much practical success, presumably because of the noise and incompleteness in chemical-abundance measurements. We have succeeded in substantially improving spectroscopic measurements with The Cannon, which has now delivered 15 individual abundances for ~100,000 stars observed as part of the APOGEE spectroscopic survey, with precisions around 0.04 dex. We test the chemical-tagging hypothesis by looking at clusters in abundance space and confirming that they are clustered in phase space. We identify (by the k-means algorithm) overdensities of stars in the 15-dimensional chemical-abundance space delivered by The Cannon, and plot the associated stars in phase space. We use only abundance-space information (no positional information) to identify stellar groups. We find that clusters in abundance space are indeed clusters in phase space. We recover some known phase-space clusters and find other interesting structures. This is the first-ever project to identify phase-space structures at survey-scale by blind search purely in abundance space; it verifies the precision of the abundance measurements delivered by The Cannon; the prospects for future data sets appear very good.Comment: accepted for publication in the Ap

    The PuZZling Li-Rich Red Giant Associated With NGC 6819

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    A Li-rich red giant (RG) star (2M19411367+4003382) recently discovered in the direction of NGC 6819 belongs to the rare subset of Li-rich stars that have not yet evolved to the luminosity bump, an evolutionary stage where models predict Li can be replenished. The currently favored model to explain Li enhancement in first-ascent RGs like 2M19411367+4003382 requires deep mixing into the stellar interior. Testing this model requires a measurement of C-12/C-13, which is possible to obtain from Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) spectra. However, the Li-rich star also has abnormal asteroseismic properties that call into question its membership in the cluster, even though its radial velocity and location on color-magnitude diagrams are consistent with membership. To address these puzzles, we have measured a wide array of abundances in the Li-rich star and three comparison stars using spectra taken as part of the APOGEE survey to determine the degree of stellar mixing, address the question of membership, and measure the surface gravity. We confirm that the Li-rich star is a RG with the same overall chemistry as the other cluster giants. However, its log g is significantly lower, consistent with the asteroseismology results and suggestive of a very low mass if the star is indeed a cluster member. Regardless of the cluster membership, the C-12/C-13 and C/N ratios of the Li-rich star are consistent with standard first dredge-up, indicating that Li dilution has already occurred, and inconsistent with internal Li enrichment scenarios that require deep mixing.National Science Foundation AST1109888NSF AST-1358862, AST 1109718, AST 1312863Alfred P. Sloan FoundationNational Science FoundationU.S. Department of Energy Office of ScienceUniversity of ArizonaBrazilian Participation GroupBrookhaven National LaboratoryCarnegie Mellon UniversityUniversity of FloridaFrench Participation GroupGerman Participation GroupHarvard UniversityInstituto de Astrofisica de CanariasMichigan State/NotreDame/JINA Participation GroupJohns Hopkins UniversityLawrence Berkeley National LaboratoryMax Planck Institute for AstrophysicsMax Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial PhysicsNew Mexico State UniversityNew York UniversityOhio State UniversityPennsylvania State UniversityUniversity of PortsmouthPrinceton UniversitySpanish Participation GroupUniversity of TokyoUniversity of UtahVanderbilt UniversityUniversity of VirginiaUniversity of WashingtonYale UniversityNational Aeronautics and Space AdministrationTwo Micron All Sky SurveyUniversity of MassachusettsInfrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of TechnologyU.S. Government NAG W-2166Astronom

    High-resolution, H band Spectroscopy of Be Stars with SDSS-III/APOGEE: I. New Be Stars, Line Identifications, and Line Profiles

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    APOGEE has amassed the largest ever collection of multi-epoch, high-resolution (R~22,500), H-band spectra for B-type emission line (Be) stars. The 128/238 APOGEE Be stars for which emission had never previously been reported serve to increase the total number of known Be stars by ~6%. We focus on identification of the H-band lines and analysis of the emission peak velocity separations (v_p) and emission peak intensity ratios (V/R) of the usually double-peaked H I and non-hydrogen emission lines. H I Br11 emission is found to preferentially form in the circumstellar disks at an average distance of ~2.2 stellar radii. Increasing v_p toward the weaker Br12--Br20 lines suggests these lines are formed interior to Br11. By contrast, the observed IR Fe II emission lines present evidence of having significantly larger formation radii; distinctive phase lags between IR Fe II and H I Brackett emission lines further supports that these species arise from different radii in Be disks. Several emission lines have been identified for the first time including ~16895, a prominent feature in the spectra for almost a fifth of the sample and, as inferred from relatively large v_p compared to the Br11-Br20, a tracer of the inner regions of Be disks. Unlike the typical metallic lines observed for Be stars in the optical, the H-band metallic lines, such as Fe II 16878, never exhibit any evidence of shell absorption, even when the H I lines are clearly shell-dominated. The first known example of a quasi-triple-peaked Br11 line profile is reported for HD 253659, one of several stars exhibiting intra- and/or extra-species V/R and radial velocity variation within individual spectra. Br11 profiles are presented for all discussed stars, as are full APOGEE spectra for a portion of the sample.Comment: accepted in A

    Chemical abundance gradients from open clusters in the Milky Way disk: results from the APOGEE survey

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    Metallicity gradients provide strong constraints for understanding the chemical evolution of the Galaxy. We report on radial abundance gradients of Fe, Ni, Ca, Si, and Mg obtained from a sample of 304 red-giant members of 29 disk open clusters, mostly concentrated at galactocentric distances between ~8 - 15 kpc, but including two open clusters in the outer disk. The observations are from the APOGEE survey. The chemical abundances were derived automatically by the ASPCAP pipeline and these are part of the SDSS III Data Release 12. The gradients, obtained from least squares fits to the data, are relatively flat, with slopes ranging from -0.026 to -0.033 dex/kpc for the alpha-elements [O/H], [Ca/H], [Si/H] and [Mg/H] and -0.035 dex/kpc and -0.040 dex/kpc for [Fe/H] and [Ni/H], respectively. Our results are not at odds with the possibility that metallicity ([Fe/H]) gradients are steeper in the inner disk (R_GC ~7 - 12 kpc) and flatter towards the outer disk. The open cluster sample studied spans a significant range in age. When breaking the sample into age bins, there is some indication that the younger open cluster population in our sample (log age < 8.7) has a flatter metallicity gradient when compared with the gradients obtained from older open clusters.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, To appear in Astronomische Nachrichten, special issue "Reconstruction the Milky Way's History: Spectroscopic surveys, Asteroseismology and Chemo-dynamical models", Guest Editors C. Chiappini, J. Montalb\'an, and M. Steffen, AN 2016 (in press)

    Sodium and Oxygen Abundances in the Open Cluster NGC 6791 from APOGEE H-Band Spectroscopy

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    The open cluster NGC 6791 is among the oldest, most massive and metal-rich open clusters in the Galaxy. High-resolution HH-band spectra from the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) of 11 red giants in NGC 6791 are analyzed for their chemical abundances of iron, oxygen, and sodium. The abundances of these three elements are found to be homogeneous (with abundance dispersions at the level of \sim 0.05 - 0.07 dex) in these cluster red giants, which span much of the red-giant branch (Teff_{\rm eff} \sim 3500K - 4600K), and include two red-clump giants. From the infrared spectra, this cluster is confirmed to be among the most metal-rich clusters in the Galaxy ( = 0.34 ±\pm 0.06), and is found to have a roughly solar value of [O/Fe] and slightly enhanced [Na/Fe]. Non-LTE calculations for the studied Na I lines in the APOGEE spectral region (λ\lambda16373.86\AA\ and λ\lambda16388.85\AA) indicate only small departures from LTE (\leq 0.04 dex) for the parameter range and metallicity of the studied stars. The previously reported double population of cluster members with different Na abundances is not found among the studied sample.Comment: Accepted for publication at ApJ Letter
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