2,254 research outputs found
An Application of Hierarchical Gaussian Processes to the Detection of Anomalies in Star Light Curves
The quadruple-lined, doubly-eclipsing system V482 Persei
We report spectroscopic and differential photometric observations of the
A-type system V482 Per that reveal it to be a rare hierarchical quadruple
system containing two eclipsing binaries. One has the previously known orbital
period of 2.4 days and a circular orbit, and the other a period of 6 days, a
slightly eccentric orbit (e = 0.11), and shallow eclipses only 2.3% deep. The
two binaries revolve around their common center of mass in a highly elongated
orbit (e = 0.85) with a period of 16.67 yr. Radial velocities are measured for
all components from our quadruple-lined spectra, and are combined with the
light curves and with measurements of times of minimum light for the 2.4 day
binary to solve for the elements of the inner and outer orbits simultaneously.
The line-of-sight inclination angles of the three orbits are similar,
suggesting they may be close to coplanar. The available observations appear to
indicate that the 6 day binary experiences significant retrograde apsidal
motion in the amount of about 60 degrees per century. We derive absolute masses
for the four stars good to better than 1.5%, along with radii with formal
errors of 1.1% and 3.5% for the 2.4 day binary and about 9% for the 6 day
binary. A comparison of these and other physical properties with current
stellar evolution models gives excellent agreement for a metallicity of [Fe/H]
= -0.15 and an age of 360 Myr.Comment: 15 pages in emulateapj format, including figures and tables. Accepted
for publication in The Astrophysical Journa
Small scale problems of the CDM model: a short review
The CDM model, or concordance cosmology, as it is often called, is a
paradigm at its maturity. It is clearly able to describe the universe at large
scale, even if some issues remain open, such as the cosmological constant
problem , the small-scale problems in galaxy formation, or the unexplained
anomalies in the CMB. CDM clearly shows difficulty at small scales,
which could be related to our scant understanding, from the nature of dark
matter to that of gravity; or to the role of baryon physics, which is not well
understood and implemented in simulation codes or in semi-analytic models. At
this stage, it is of fundamental importance to understand whether the problems
encountered by the DCM model are a sign of its limits or a sign of our
failures in getting the finer details right. In the present paper, we will
review the small-scale problems of the CDM model, and we will discuss
the proposed solutions and to what extent they are able to give us a theory
accurately describing the phenomena in the complete range of scale of the
observed universe.Comment: 48pp 19 figs, invited review, accepted by Galaxie
The prevalence of dust on the exoplanet HD 189733b from Hubble and Spitzer observations
The hot Jupiter HD189733b is the most extensively observed exoplanet. Its
atmosphere has been detected and characterised in transmission and eclipse
spectroscopy, and its phase curve measured at several wavelengths. This paper
brings together results of our campaign to obtain the complete transmission
spectrum of the atmosphere of this planet from UV to IR with HST, using STIS,
ACS and WFC3. We provide a new tabulation of the transmission spectrum across
the entire visible and IR range. The radius ratio in each wavelength band was
rederived to ensure a consistent treatment of the bulk transit parameters and
stellar limb-darkening. Special care was taken to correct for, and derive
realistic estimates of the uncertainties due to, both occulted and unocculted
star spots. The combined spectrum is very different from the predictions of
cloud-free models: it is dominated by Rayleigh scattering over the whole
visible and near infrared range, the only detected features being narrow Na and
K lines. We interpret this as the signature of a haze of condensate grains
extending over at least 5 scale heights. We show that a dust-dominated
atmosphere could also explain several puzzling features of the emission
spectrum and phase curves, including the large amplitude of the phase curve at
3.6um, the small hot-spot longitude shift and the hot mid-infrared emission
spectrum. We discuss possible compositions and derive some first-order
estimates for the properties of the putative condensate haze/clouds. We finish
by speculating that the dichotomy between the two observationally defined
classes of hot Jupiter atmospheres, of which HD189733b and HD209458b are the
prototypes, might not be whether they possess a temperature inversion, but
whether they are clear or dusty. We also consider the possibility of a
continuum of cloud properties between hot Jupiters, young Jupiters and L-type
brown dwarfs.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. 31 pages, 19 figures, 8 table
Numerical Simulations of the Dark Universe: State of the Art and the Next Decade
We present a review of the current state of the art of cosmological dark
matter simulations, with particular emphasis on the implications for dark
matter detection efforts and studies of dark energy. This review is intended
both for particle physicists, who may find the cosmological simulation
literature opaque or confusing, and for astro-physicists, who may not be
familiar with the role of simulations for observational and experimental probes
of dark matter and dark energy. Our work is complementary to the contribution
by M. Baldi in this issue, which focuses on the treatment of dark energy and
cosmic acceleration in dedicated N-body simulations. Truly massive dark
matter-only simulations are being conducted on national supercomputing centers,
employing from several billion to over half a trillion particles to simulate
the formation and evolution of cosmologically representative volumes (cosmic
scale) or to zoom in on individual halos (cluster and galactic scale). These
simulations cost millions of core-hours, require tens to hundreds of terabytes
of memory, and use up to petabytes of disk storage. The field is quite
internationally diverse, with top simulations having been run in China, France,
Germany, Korea, Spain, and the USA. Predictions from such simulations touch on
almost every aspect of dark matter and dark energy studies, and we give a
comprehensive overview of this connection. We also discuss the limitations of
the cold and collisionless DM-only approach, and describe in some detail
efforts to include different particle physics as well as baryonic physics in
cosmological galaxy formation simulations, including a discussion of recent
results highlighting how the distribution of dark matter in halos may be
altered. We end with an outlook for the next decade, presenting our view of how
the field can be expected to progress. (abridged)Comment: 54 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables; invited contribution to the special
issue "The next decade in Dark Matter and Dark Energy" of the new Open Access
journal "Physics of the Dark Universe". Replaced with accepted versio
An automated search for transiting exocomets
This paper discusses an algorithm for detecting single transits in photometric time-series data. Specifically, we aim to identify asymmetric transits with ingress that is more rapid than egress, as expected for cometary bodies with a significant tail. The algorithm is automated, so can be applied to large samples and only a relatively small number of events need to be manually vetted. We applied this algorithm to all long cadence light curves from the Kepler mission, finding 16 candidate transits with significant asymmetry, 11 of which were found to be artefacts or symmetric transits after manual inspection. Of the 5 remaining events, four are the 0.1% depth events previously identified for KIC 3542116 and 11084727. We identify HD 182952 (KIC 8027456) as a third system showing a potential comet transit. All three stars showing these events have H-R diagram locations consistent with 100Myr-old open cluster stars, as might be expected given that cometary source regions deplete with age, and giving credence to the comet hypothesis. If these events are part of the same population of events as seen for KIC 8462852, the small increase in detections at 0.1% depth compared to 10% depth suggests that future work should consider whether the distribution is naturally flat, or if comets with symmetric transits in this depth range remain undiscovered. Future searches relying on asymmetry should be more successful if they focus on larger samples and young stars, rather than digging further into the noise
Galaxy Masses
Galaxy masses play a fundamental role in our understanding of structure
formation models. This review addresses the variety and reliability of mass
estimators that pertain to stars, gas, and dark matter. The different sections
on masses from stellar populations, dynamical masses of gas-rich and gas-poor
galaxies, with some attention paid to our Milky Way, and masses from weak and
strong lensing methods, all provide review material on galaxy masses in a
self-consistent manner.Comment: 145 pages, 28 figures, to appear in Reviews of Modern Physics. Figure
22 is missing here, and Figs. 15, 26-28 are at low resolution. This version
has a slightly different title and some typos fixed in Chapter 5. For the
full review with figures, please consult:
http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~courteau/GalaxyMasses_28apr2014.pd
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