98,118 research outputs found
Sparsity and morphological diversity for hyperspectral data analysis
Recently morphological diversity and sparsity have
emerged as new and effective sources of diversity for
Blind Source Separation. Based on these new concepts,
novelmethods such as Generalized Morphological Component
Analysis have been put forward. The latter takes
advantage of the very sparse representation of structured
data in large overcomplete dictionaries, to separate
sources based on their morphology. Building on GMCA,
the purpose of this contribution is to describe a new algorithm
for hyperspectral data processing. Large-scale
hyperspectral data refers to collected data that exhibit
sparse spectral signatures in addition to sparse spatial
morphologies, in specified dictionaries of spectral and
spatial waveforms. Numerical experiments are reported
which demonstrate the validity of the proposed extension
for solving source separation problems involving
hyperspectral data
Joint Planck and WMAP CMB Map Reconstruction
We present a novel estimate of the cosmological microwave background (CMB)
map by combining the two latest full-sky microwave surveys: WMAP nine-year and
Planck PR1. The joint processing benefits from a recently introduced component
separation method coined "local-generalized morphological component analysis''
(LGMCA) based on the sparse distribution of the foregrounds in the wavelet
domain. The proposed estimation procedure takes advantage of the IRIS 100
micron as an extra observation on the galactic center for enhanced dust
removal. We show that this new CMB map presents several interesting aspects: i)
it is a full sky map without using any inpainting or interpolating method, ii)
foreground contamination is very low, iii) the Galactic center is very clean,
with especially low dust contamination as measured by the cross-correlation
between the estimated CMB map and the IRIS 100 micron map, and iv) it is free
of thermal SZ contamination.Comment: Astronomy and Astrophysics, accepte
Spitzer/MIPS Imaging of NGC 650: Probing the History of Mass Loss on the Asymptotic Giant Branch
We present the far-infrared (IR) maps of a bipolar planetary nebula (PN), NGC
650, at 24, 70, and 160 micron taken with the Multiband Imaging Photometer for
Spitzer (MIPS) on-board the Spitzer Space Telescope. While the two-peak
emission structure seen in all MIPS bands suggests the presence of a near
edge-on dusty torus, the distinct emission structure between the 24 micron map
and the 70/160 micron maps indicates the presence of two distinct emission
components in the central torus. Based on the spatial correlation of these two
far-IR emission components with respect to various optical line emission, we
conclude that the 24 micron emission is largely due to the [O IV] line at 25.9
micron arising from highly ionized regions behind the ionization front, whereas
the 70 and 160 micron emission is due to dust continuum arising from
low-temperature dust in the remnant asymptotic giant branch (AGB) wind shell.
The far-IR nebula structure also suggests that the enhancement of mass loss at
the end of the AGB phase has occurred isotropically, but has ensued only in the
equatorial directions while ceasing in the polar directions. The present data
also show evidence for the prolate spheroidal distribution of matter in this
bipolar PN. The AGB mass loss history reconstructed in this PN is thus
consistent with what has been previously proposed based on the past optical and
mid-IR imaging surveys of the post-AGB shells.Comment: 9 pages in the emulated ApJ format with 6 figures, to appear in Ap
A Search for OH Megamasers at z > 0.1. I. Preliminary Results
We present the preliminary results of a survey for OH megamasers underway at
the Arecibo Observatory. The goals of the survey are to calibrate the
luminosity function of OH megamasers to the low-redshift galaxy merger rate
(0.1 < z < 0.2), and to use the enhanced sample of OH megamasers provided by
the survey to study OH megamaser environments, engines, lifetimes, and
structure. The survey should double the known OH megamaser sample to roughly
100 objects. Survey results will be presented in installments to facilitate
community access to the data. Here we report the discovery of 11 OH megamasers
and one OH absorber, and include upper limits on the isotropic 1667 MHz OH line
luminosity of 53 other luminous infrared galaxies at z > 0.1. The new
megamasers show a wide range of spectral properties, but are consistent with
the extant set of 55 previously reported objects, only 8 of which have z > 0.1.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in the Astronomical
Journa
Morphologically-Identified Merging Galaxies in the SWIRE Fields
We investigate the evolutional and environmental effects on star formation
efficiency for more than 400 merging galaxies. The ~400 merging systems, with
photometric redshifts smaller than 0.7, are obtained from a catalog of ~15000
morphologically identified merging galaxies derived from observations of the
Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. We also obtained the IR data of the merging
galaxies from the Spitzer Wide-area InfraRed Extragalactic Survey (SWIRE). The
redshift differences \Delta z between the member galaxies of these merging
pairs show a large distribution with 0 < \Delta z < 0.4. We divide our merging
pairs into two sub-samples with \Delta z 0.05 for further
analyses. We find a statistically significant anti-correlation between the
specific star formation rate (SSFR) and the separation of the merging galaxies
for both sub-samples. Our analyses also show that although most of the merging
systems do have enhanced star formation activity, only very rare ones display
extremely high SFRs. Additionally, the SSFR of the merging galaxies also
decreases when the magnitude difference between two member galaxies becomes
large. However, we find that for the merging pairs with large luminosity
contrast, the fainter components show higher SSFR than the brighter ones.
Finally, there is a higher fraction of gas-poor mergers in galaxy clusters, and
the SSFR of gas-rich mergers is reduced in cluster environments.Comment: 32 pages, 12 figures and 7 tables; accepted for publication in Ap
New insights to the photometric structure of Blue Compact Dwarf Galaxies from deep Near-Infrared studies: II. The sample of northern BCDs
This paper is part of a series of publications which present a systematic
study of Blue Compact Dwarf (BCD) Galaxies in the Near Infrared (NIR). Compared
to the visible light, NIR data allow a better separation of the starburst
emission from the light distribution of the old stellar low-surface brightness
(LSB) host galaxy. We analyze deep NIR broad band images of a sample of 11
BCDs, observed with the Calar Alto 3.6m telescope. This work enlarges the
samples presented in preceding papers of this study (Noeske et al. 2003, Cairos
et al. 2003) by BCDs of the most common morphological type, displaying a
regular elliptical LSB host galaxy. The data presented here allow the detection
and quantitative study of the extended stellar LSB host galaxy in all sample
BCDs. The NIR surface brightness profiles (SBPs) of the LSB host galaxies agree
at large galactocentric radii with those from optical studies, showing also an
exponential intensity decrease and compatible scale lengths. Similar to Noeske
et al. (2003), we find centrally flattening exponential (type V) SBPs of the
host galaxy for several BCDs. Such SBPs remain mostly undetected in optical
bands, due to the comparatively stronger starburst emission at these
wavelengths. We apply a modified exponential distribution to decompose and
quantitatively analyze SBPs of LSB hosts with a type V intensity distribution.
We present the results of the surface photometry and the decomposition of SBPs,
and discuss individual objects with respect to morphological details of their
star-forming regions.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures; accepted for publication in Astronomy &
Astrophysics; postscript file with full resolution images available at
http://www.ucolick.org/~kai/PUB/noeske_nirbcds_2.ps.g
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