4,696 research outputs found
Multiple populations in Omega Centauri: a cluster analysis of spectroscopic data
Omega Cen is composed of several stellar populations. Their history might
allow us to reconstruct the evolution of this complex object. We performed a
statistical cluster analysis on the large data set provided by Johnson and
Pilachowski (2010). Stars in Omega Cen divide into three main groups. The
metal-poor group includes about a third of the total. It shows a moderate O-Na
anticorrelation, and similarly to other clusters, the O-poor second generation
stars are more centrally concentrated than the O-rich first generation ones.
This whole population is La-poor, with a pattern of abundances for n-capture
elements which is very close to a scaled r-process one. The metal-intermediate
group includes the majority of the cluster stars. This is a much more complex
population, with an internal spread in the abundances of most elements. It
shows an extreme O-Na anticorrelation, with a very numerous population of
extremely O-poor and He-rich second generation stars. This second generation is
very centrally concentrated. This whole population is La-rich, with a pattern
of the abundances of n-capture elements that shows a strong contribution by the
s-process. The spread in metallicity within this metal-intermediate population
is not very large, and we might attribute it either to non uniformities of an
originally very extended star forming region, or to some ability to retain a
fraction of the ejecta of the core collapse SNe that exploded first, or both.
As previously noticed, the metal-rich group has an Na-O correlation, rather
than anticorrelation. There is evidence for the contribution of both massive
stars ending their life as core-collapse SNe, and intermediate/low mass stars,
producing the s-capture elements. Kinematics of this population suggests that
it formed within the cluster rather than being accreted.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic
The role of planets in shaping planetary nebulae
In 1997 Soker laid out a framework for understanding the formation and
shaping of planetary nebulae (PN). Starting from the assumption that
non-spherical PN cannot be formed by single stars, he linked PN morphologies to
the binary mechanisms that may have formed them, basing these connections
almost entirely on observational arguments. In light of the last decade of
discovery in the field of PN, we revise this framework, which, although
simplistic, can still serve as a benchmark against which to test theories of PN
origin and shaping. Within the framework, we revisit the role of planets in
shaping PN. Soker invoked a planetary role in shaping PN because there are not
enough close binaries to shape the large fraction of non-spherical PN. In this
paper we adopt a model whereby only ~20% of all 1-8 solar mass stars make a PN.
This reduces the need for planetary shaping. Through a propagation of
percentages argument, and starting from the assumption that planets can only
shape mildly elliptical PN, we conclude, like in Soker, that ~20% of all PN
were shaped via planetary and other substellar interactions but we add that
this corresponds to only ~5% of all 1-8 solar mass stars. This may be in line
with findings of planets around main sequence stars. PN shaping by planets is
made plausible by the recent discovery of planets that have survived
interactions with red giant branch (RGB) stars. Finally, we conclude that of
the ~80% of 1-8 solar mass stars that do not make a PN, about one quarter do
not even ascend the AGB due to interactions with stellar and substellar
companions, while three quarters ascend the AGB but do not make a PN. Once
these stars leave the AGB they evolve normally and can be confused with
post-RGB, extreme horizontal branch stars. We propose tests to identify them.Comment: 23 pages, accepted by PAS
The Na-O anticorrelation in horizontal branch stars. IV. M22
We obtained high-resolution spectra for 94 candidate stars belonging to the
HB of M22 with FLAMES. The HB stars we observed span a restricted temperature
range (7,800<Teff<11,000 K), where about 60% of the HB stars of M22 are. Within
our sample, we can distinguish three groups of stars segregated (though
contiguous) in colours: Group 1 (49 stars) is metal-poor, N-normal, Na-poor and
O-rich with abundances that match those determined for the primordial group of
RGB stars from previous studies. Group 2 (23 stars) is still metal-poor, but it
is N- and Na-rich, though only very mildly depleted in O. We can identify this
intermediate group as the progeny of the metal-poor RGB stars that occupy an
intermediate location along the Na-O anti-correlation. The third group (20
stars) is metal-rich, Na-rich, and O-rich and likely corresponds to the most
O-rich component of the previously found metal-rich RGB population. We did not
observe any severely O-depleted stars and we think that the progeny of these
stars falls on the hotter part of the HB. The metal-rich population is also
over-abundant in Sr, in agreement with results for corresponding RGB and SGB
stars. However, we do not find any significant variation in the ratio between
the sum of N and O abundances to Fe. There is some evidence of an enhancement
of He content for Groups 2 and 3 stars (Y=0.338\pm 0.014\pm 0.05). Our results
agree with the proposition that chemical composition drives the location of
stars along the HB of a GC. Furthermore, we found a number of fast rotators.
They are concentrated in a restricted temperature range along the HB of M22.Comment: Accepted for publication on Astronomy and Astrophysics. 23 pages, 21
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Learning single-image 3D reconstruction by generative modelling of shape, pose and shading
We present a unified framework tackling two problems: class-specific 3D
reconstruction from a single image, and generation of new 3D shape samples.
These tasks have received considerable attention recently; however, most
existing approaches rely on 3D supervision, annotation of 2D images with
keypoints or poses, and/or training with multiple views of each object
instance. Our framework is very general: it can be trained in similar settings
to existing approaches, while also supporting weaker supervision. Importantly,
it can be trained purely from 2D images, without pose annotations, and with
only a single view per instance. We employ meshes as an output representation,
instead of voxels used in most prior work. This allows us to reason over
lighting parameters and exploit shading information during training, which
previous 2D-supervised methods cannot. Thus, our method can learn to generate
and reconstruct concave object classes. We evaluate our approach in various
settings, showing that: (i) it learns to disentangle shape from pose and
lighting; (ii) using shading in the loss improves performance compared to just
silhouettes; (iii) when using a standard single white light, our model
outperforms state-of-the-art 2D-supervised methods, both with and without pose
supervision, thanks to exploiting shading cues; (iv) performance improves
further when using multiple coloured lights, even approaching that of
state-of-the-art 3D-supervised methods; (v) shapes produced by our model
capture smooth surfaces and fine details better than voxel-based approaches;
and (vi) our approach supports concave classes such as bathtubs and sofas,
which methods based on silhouettes cannot learn.Comment: Extension of arXiv:1807.09259, accepted to IJCV. Differentiable
renderer available at https://github.com/pmh47/dir
Joint segmentation of color and depth data based on splitting and merging driven by surface fitting
This paper proposes a segmentation scheme based on the joint usage of color and depth data together with a 3D surface estimation scheme. Firstly a set of multi-dimensional vectors is built from color, geometry and surface orientation information. Normalized cuts spectral clustering is then applied in order to recursively segment the scene in two parts thus obtaining an over-segmentation. This procedure is followed by a recursive merging stage where close segments belonging to the same object are joined together. At each step of both procedures a NURBS model is fitted on the computed segments and the accuracy of the fitting is used as a measure of the plausibility that a segment represents a single surface or object. By comparing the accuracy to the one at the previous step, it is possible to determine if each splitting or merging operation leads to a better scene representation and consequently whether to perform it or not. Experimental results show how the proposed method provides an accurate and reliable segmentation
Segmentation and semantic labelling of RGBD data with convolutional neural networks and surface fitting
We present an approach for segmentation and semantic labelling of RGBD data exploiting together geometrical cues and deep learning techniques. An initial over-segmentation is performed using spectral clustering and a set of non-uniform rational B-spline surfaces is fitted on the extracted segments. Then a convolutional neural network (CNN) receives in input colour and geometry data together with surface fitting parameters. The network is made of nine convolutional stages followed by a softmax classifier and produces a vector of descriptors for each sample. In the next step, an iterative merging algorithm recombines the output of the over-segmentation into larger regions matching the various elements of the scene. The couples of adjacent segments with higher similarity according to the CNN features are candidate to be merged and the surface fitting accuracy is used to detect which couples of segments belong to the same surface. Finally, a set of labelled segments is obtained by combining the segmentation output with the descriptors from the CNN. Experimental results show how the proposed approach outperforms state-of-the-art methods and provides an accurate segmentation and labelling
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