5,728 research outputs found
A Parallax Distance to the Microquasar GRS 1915+105 and a Revised Estimate of its Black Hole Mass
Using the Very Long Baseline Array, we have measured a trigonometric parallax
for the micro quasar GRS 1915+105, which contains a black hole and a K-giant
companion. This yields a direct distance estimate of 8.6 (+2.0,-1.6) kpc and a
revised estimate for the mass of the black hole of 12.4 (+2.0,-1.8) Msun. GRS
1915+105 is at about the same distance as some HII regions and water masers
associated with high-mass star formation in the Sagittarius spiral arm of the
Galaxy. The absolute proper motion of GRS 1915+105 is -3.19 +/- 0.03 mas/y and
-6.24 +/- 0.05 mas/y toward the east and north, respectively, which corresponds
to a modest peculiar speed of 22 +/-24 km/s at the parallax distance,
suggesting that the binary did not receive a large velocity kick when the black
hole formed. On one observational epoch, GRS 1915+105 displayed superluminal
motion along the direction of its approaching jet. Considering previous
observations of jet motions, the jet in GRS 1915+105 can be modeled with a jet
inclination to the line of sight of 60 +/- 5 deg and a variable flow speed
between 0.65c and 0.81c, which possibly indicates deceleration of the jet at
distances from the black hole >2000 AU. Finally, using our measurements of
distance and estimates of black hole mass and inclination, we provisionally
confirm our earlier result that the black hole is spinning very rapidly.Comment: 20 pages; 2 tables; 6 figure
Recognizing the fingerprints of the Galactic bar: a quantitative approach to comparing model (l,v) distributions to observation
We present a new method for fitting simple hydrodynamical models to the (l,v)
distribution of atomic and molecular gas observed in the Milky Way. The method
works by matching features found in models and observations. It is based on the
assumption that the large-scale features seen in (l,v) plots, such as
ridgelines and the terminal velocity curve, are influenced primarily by the
underlying large-scale Galactic potential and are only weakly dependent on
local ISM heating and cooling processes. In our scheme one first identifies by
hand the features in the observations: this only has to be done once. We
describe a procedure for automatically extracting similar features from simple
hydrodynamical models and quantifying the "distance" between each model's
features and the observations. Application to models of the Galactic Bar region
(|l|<30deg) shows that our feature-fitting method performs better than \chi^2
or envelope distances at identifying the correct underlying galaxy model.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA
3D reconstruction of ribcage geometry from biplanar radiographs using a statistical parametric model approach
Rib cage 3D reconstruction is an important prerequisite for thoracic spine modelling, particularly for studies of the deformed thorax in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. This study proposes a new method for rib cage 3D reconstruction from biplanar radiographs, using a statistical parametric model approach. Simplified parametric models were defined at the hierarchical levels of rib cage surface, rib midline and rib surface, and applied on a database of 86 trunks. The resulting parameter database served to statistical models learning which were used to quickly provide a first estimate of the reconstruction from identifications on both radiographs. This solution was then refined by manual adjustments in order to improve the matching between model and image. Accuracy was assessed by comparison with 29 rib cages from CT scans in terms of geometrical parameter differences and in terms of line-to-line error distance between the rib midlines. Intra and inter-observer reproducibility were determined regarding 20 scoliotic patients. The first estimate (mean reconstruction time of 2’30) was sufficient to extract the main rib cage global parameters with a 95% confidence interval lower than 7%, 8%, 2% and 4° for rib cage volume, antero-posterior and lateral maximal diameters and maximal rib hump, respectively. The mean error distance was 5.4 mm (max 35mm) down to 3.6 mm (max 24 mm) after the manual adjustment step (+3’30). The proposed method will improve developments of rib cage finite element modeling and evaluation of clinical outcomes.This work was funded by Paris Tech BiomecAM chair on subject specific muscular skeletal modeling, and we express our acknowledgments to the chair founders: Cotrel foundation, Société générale, Protéor Company and COVEA consortium. We extend your acknowledgements to Alina Badina for medical imaging data, Alexandre Journé for his advices, and Thomas Joubert for his technical support
Stellar Proper Motions in the Galactic Bulge from deep HST ACS/WFC Photometry
We present stellar proper motions in the Galactic bulge from the Sagittarius
Window Eclipsing Extrasolar Search (SWEEPS) project using ACS/WFC on HST.
Proper motions are extracted for more than 180,000 objects, with >81,000
measured to accuracy better than 0.3 mas/yr in both coordinates. We report
several results based on these measurements: 1. Kinematic separation of bulge
from disk allows a sample of >15,000 bulge objects to be extracted based on
>6-sigma detections of proper motion, with <0.2% contamination from the disk.
This includes the first detection of a candidate bulge Blue Straggler
population. 2. Armed with a photometric distance modulus on a star by star
basis, and using the large number of stars with high-quality proper motion
measurements to overcome intrinsic scatter, we dissect the kinematic properties
of the bulge as a function of distance along the line of sight. This allows us
to extract the stellar circular speed curve from proper motions alone, which we
compare with the circular speed curve obtained from radial velocities. 3. We
trace the variation of the {l,b} velocity ellipse as a function of depth. 4.
Finally, we use the density-weighted {l,b} proper motion ellipse produced from
the tracer stars to assess the kinematic membership of the sixteen transiting
planet candidates discovered in the Sagittarius Window; the kinematic
distribution of the planet candidates is consistent with that of the disk and
bulge stellar populations.Comment: 71 pages, 30 figures, ApJ Accepte
Morphology of Hydrodynamic Winds: A Study of Planetary Winds in Stellar Environments
Bathed in intense ionizing radiation, close-in gaseous planets undergo
hydrodynamic atmospheric escape, which ejects the upper extent of their
atmospheres into the interplanetary medium. Ultraviolet detections of escaping
gas around transiting planets corroborate such a framework. Exposed to the
stellar environment, the outflow is shaped by its interaction with the stellar
wind and by the planet's orbit. We model these effects using Athena to perform
3-D radiative-hydrodynamic simulations of tidally-locked hydrogen atmospheres
receiving large amounts of ionizing extreme-ultraviolet flux in various stellar
environments for the low-magnetic-field case. Through a step-by-step
exploration of orbital and stellar wind effects on the planetary outflow, we
find three structurally distinct stellar wind regimes: weak, intermediate, and
strong. We perform synthetic Lyman- observations and find unique
observational signatures for each regime. A weak stellar
windwhich cannot confine the planetary outflow, leading to a
torus of material around the starhas a pre-transit, red-shifted
dayside arm and a slightly redward-skewed spectrum during transit. The
intermediate regime truncates the dayside outflow at large distances from the
planet and causes periodic disruptions of the outflow, producing observational
signatures that mimic a double transit. The first of these dips is blue-shifted
and precedes the optical transit. Finally, strong stellar winds completely
confine the outflow into a cometary tail and accelerate the outflow outwards,
producing large blue-shifted signals post-transit. Across all three regimes,
large signals occur far outside of transit, offering motivation to continue
ultraviolet observations outside of direct transit.Comment: 33 pages, 21 figures (7 of which have embedded movies viewable with
Adobe Acrobat Pro), Submitted to Ap
Coherent Network Analysis of Gravitational Waves from Three-Dimensional Core-Collapse Supernova Models
Using predictions from three-dimensional (3D) hydrodynamics simulations of
core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe), we present a coherent network analysis to
detection, reconstruction, and the source localization of the
gravitational-wave (GW) signals. We use the {\tt RIDGE} pipeline for the
analysis, in which the network of LIGO Hanford, LIGO Livingston, VIRGO, and
KAGRA is considered. By combining with a GW spectrogram analysis, we show that
several important hydrodynamics features in the original waveforms persist in
the waveforms of the reconstructed signals. The characteristic excess in the
spectrograms originates not only from rotating core-collapse, bounce and the
subsequent ring down of the proto-neutron star (PNS) as previously identified,
but also from the formation of magnetohydrodynamics jets and non-axisymmetric
instabilities in the vicinity of the PNS. Regarding the GW signals emitted near
at the rotating core bounce, the horizon distance extends up to 18 kpc
for the most rapidly rotating 3D model in this work. Following the rotating
core bounce, the dominant source of the GW emission shifts to the
non-axisymmetric instabilities. The horizon distances extend maximally up to
40 kpc seen from the spin axis. With an increasing number of 3D models
trending towards explosion recently, our results suggest that in addition to
the best studied GW signals due to rotating core-collapse and bounce, the time
is ripe to consider how we can do science from GWs of CCSNe much more seriously
than before. Particularly the quasi-periodic signals due to the
non-axisymmetric instabilities and the detectability should deserve further
investigation to elucidate the inner-working of the rapidly rotating CCSNe.Comment: PRD in pres
Estimating Anthropometric Marker Locations from 3-D LADAR Point Clouds
An area of interest for improving the identification portion of the system is in extracting anthropometric markers from a Laser Detection and Ranging (LADAR) point cloud. Analyzing anthropometrics markers is a common means of studying how a human moves and has been shown to provide good results in determining certain demographic information about the subject. This research examines a marker extraction method utilizing principal component analysis (PCA), self-organizing maps (SOM), alpha hulls, and basic anthropometric knowledge. The performance of the extraction algorithm is tested by performing gender classification with the calculated markers
Gravitational Waves in G4v
Gravitational coupling of the propagation four-vectors of matter wave
functions is formulated in flat space-time. Coupling at the momentum level
rather than at the "force-law" level greatly simplifies many calculations. This
locally Lorentz-invariant approach (G4v) treats electromagnetic and
gravitational coupling on an equal footing. Classical mechanics emerges from
the incoherent aggregation of matter wave functions. The theory reproduces, to
first order beyond Newton, the standard GR results for Gravity-Probe B,
deflection of light by massive bodies, precession of orbits, gravitational red
shift, and total gravitational-wave energy radiated by a circular binary
system. Its predictions of total radiated energy from highly eccentric Kepler
systems are slightly larger than those of similar GR treatments. G4v
predictions differ markedly from those of GR for the gravitational-wave
radiation patterns from rotating massive systems, and for the LIGO antenna
pattern. The predicted antenna patterns have been shown to be highly
distinguishable in the case of continuous gravitational-wave sources, and
should therefore be testable as data from Advanced LIGO becomes available over
the next few years.Comment: 37 pages, 14 figure
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