28,535 research outputs found
A Precise Distance to IRAS 00420+5530 via H2O Maser Parallax with the VLBA
We have used the VLBA to measure the annual parallax of the H2O masers in the
star-forming region IRAS 00420+5530. This measurement yields a direct distance
estimate of 2.17 +/- 0.05 kpc (<3%), which disagrees substantially with the
standard kinematic distance estimate of ~4.6 kpc (according to the rotation
curve of Brand and Blitz 1993), as well as most of the broad range of distances
(1.7-7.7 kpc) used in various astrophysical analyses in the literature. The
3-dimensional space velocity of IRAS 00420+5530 at this new, more accurate
distance implies a substantial non-circular and anomalously slow Galactic
orbit, consistent with similar observations of W3(OH) (Xu et al., 2006;
Hachisuka et al. 2006), as well as line-of-sight velocity residuals in the
rotation curve analysis of Brand and Blitz (1993). The Perseus spiral arm of
the Galaxy is thus more than a factor of two closer than previously presumed,
and exhibits motions substantially at odds with axisymmetric models of the
rotating Galaxy.Comment: 33 pages, 12 figures; Accepted by ApJ (to appear March 2009
The Panchromatic High-Resolution Spectroscopic Survey of Local Group Star Clusters - I. General Data Reduction Procedures for the VLT/X-shooter UVB and VIS arm
Our dataset contains spectroscopic observations of 29 globular clusters in
the Magellanic Clouds and the Milky Way performed with VLT/X-shooter. Here we
present detailed data reduction procedures for the VLT/X-shooter UVB and VIS
arm. These are not restricted to our particular dataset, but are generally
applicable to different kinds of X-shooter data without major limitation on the
astronomical object of interest. ESO's X-shooter pipeline (v1.5.0) performs
well and reliably for the wavelength calibration and the associated
rectification procedure, yet we find several weaknesses in the reduction
cascade that are addressed with additional calibration steps, such as bad pixel
interpolation, flat fielding, and slit illumination corrections. Furthermore,
the instrumental PSF is analytically modeled and used to reconstruct flux
losses at slit transit and for optimally extracting point sources. Regular
observations of spectrophotometric standard stars allow us to detect
instrumental variability, which needs to be understood if a reliable absolute
flux calibration is desired. A cascade of additional custom calibration steps
is presented that allows for an absolute flux calibration uncertainty of less
than ten percent under virtually every observational setup provided that the
signal-to-noise ratio is sufficiently high. The optimal extraction increases
the signal-to-noise ratio typically by a factor of 1.5, while simultaneously
correcting for resulting flux losses. The wavelength calibration is found to be
accurate to an uncertainty level of approximately 0.02 Angstrom. We find that
most of the X-shooter systematics can be reliably modeled and corrected for.
This offers the possibility of comparing observations on different nights and
with different telescope pointings and instrumental setups, thereby
facilitating a robust statistical analysis of large datasets.Comment: 22 pages, 18 figures, Accepted for publication in Astronomy &
Astrophysics; V2 contains a minor change in the abstract. We note that we did
not test X-shooter pipeline versions 2.0 or later. V3 contains an updated
referenc
Demodulation of Spatial Carrier Images: Performance Analysis of Several Algorithms Using a Single Image
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11340-013-9741-6#Optical full-field techniques have a great importance in modern experimental mechanics. Even if they are reasonably spread among the university laboratories, their diffusion in industrial companies remains very narrow for several reasons, especially a lack of metrological performance assessment. A full-field measurement can be characterized by its resolution, bias, measuring range, and by a specific quantity, the spatial resolution. The present paper proposes an original procedure to estimate in one single step the resolution, bias and spatial resolution for a given operator (decoding algorithms such as image correlation, low-pass filters, derivation tools ...). This procedure is based on the construction of a particular multi-frequential field, and a Bode diagram representation of the results. This analysis is applied to various phase demodulating algorithms suited to estimate in-plane displacements.GDR CNRS 2519 “Mesures de Champs et Identification en Mécanique des Solide
Compressive and Noncompressive Power Spectral Density Estimation from Periodic Nonuniform Samples
This paper presents a novel power spectral density estimation technique for
band-limited, wide-sense stationary signals from sub-Nyquist sampled data. The
technique employs multi-coset sampling and incorporates the advantages of
compressed sensing (CS) when the power spectrum is sparse, but applies to
sparse and nonsparse power spectra alike. The estimates are consistent
piecewise constant approximations whose resolutions (width of the piecewise
constant segments) are controlled by the periodicity of the multi-coset
sampling. We show that compressive estimates exhibit better tradeoffs among the
estimator's resolution, system complexity, and average sampling rate compared
to their noncompressive counterparts. For suitable sampling patterns,
noncompressive estimates are obtained as least squares solutions. Because of
the non-negativity of power spectra, compressive estimates can be computed by
seeking non-negative least squares solutions (provided appropriate sampling
patterns exist) instead of using standard CS recovery algorithms. This
flexibility suggests a reduction in computational overhead for systems
estimating both sparse and nonsparse power spectra because one algorithm can be
used to compute both compressive and noncompressive estimates.Comment: 26 pages, single spaced, 9 figure
Spectral estimation on a sphere in geophysics and cosmology
We address the problem of estimating the spherical-harmonic power spectrum of
a statistically isotropic scalar signal from noise-contaminated data on a
region of the unit sphere. Three different methods of spectral estimation are
considered: (i) the spherical analogue of the one-dimensional (1-D)
periodogram, (ii) the maximum likelihood method, and (iii) a spherical analogue
of the 1-D multitaper method. The periodogram exhibits strong spectral leakage,
especially for small regions of area , and is generally unsuitable
for spherical spectral analysis applications, just as it is in 1-D. The maximum
likelihood method is particularly useful in the case of nearly-whole-sphere
coverage, , and has been widely used in cosmology to estimate
the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiation from spacecraft
observations. The spherical multitaper method affords easy control over the
fundamental trade-off between spectral resolution and variance, and is easily
implemented regardless of the region size, requiring neither non-linear
iteration nor large-scale matrix inversion. As a result, the method is ideally
suited for most applications in geophysics, geodesy or planetary science, where
the objective is to obtain a spatially localized estimate of the spectrum of a
signal from noisy data within a pre-selected and typically small region.Comment: Submitted to the Geophysical Journal Internationa
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