40,750 research outputs found
Robust Geometry Estimation using the Generalized Voronoi Covariance Measure
The Voronoi Covariance Measure of a compact set K of R^d is a tensor-valued
measure that encodes geometric information on K and which is known to be
resilient to Hausdorff noise but sensitive to outliers. In this article, we
generalize this notion to any distance-like function delta and define the
delta-VCM. We show that the delta-VCM is resilient to Hausdorff noise and to
outliers, thus providing a tool to estimate robustly normals from a point cloud
approximation. We present experiments showing the robustness of our approach
for normal and curvature estimation and sharp feature detection
MOJAVE: Monitoring of Jets in Active Galactic Nuclei with VLBA Experiments. VI. Kinematics Analysis of a Complete Sample of Blazar Jets
We discuss the jet kinematics of a complete flux-density-limited sample of
135 radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGN) resulting from a 13 year program to
investigate the structure and evolution of parsec-scale jet phenomena. Our
analysis is based on new 2 cm Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) images obtained
between 2002 and 2007, but includes our previously published observations made
at the same wavelength, and is supplemented by VLBA archive data. In all, we
have used 2424 images spanning the years 1994-2007 to study and determine the
motions of 526 separate jet features in 127 jets. The data quality and temporal
coverage (a median of 15 epochs per source) of this complete AGN jet sample
represents a significant advance over previous kinematics surveys. In all but
five AGNs, the jets appear one-sided, most likely the result of differential
Doppler boosting. In general the observed motions are directed along the jet
ridge line, outward from the optically thick core feature. We directly observe
changes in speed and/or direction in one third of the well-sampled jet
components in our survey. While there is some spread in the apparent speeds of
separate features within an individual jet, the dispersion is about three times
smaller than the overall dispersion of speeds among all jets. This supports the
idea that there is a characteristic flow that describes each jet, which we have
characterized by the fastest observed component speed. The observed maximum
speed distribution is peaked at ~10c, with a tail that extends out to ~50c.
This requires a distribution of intrinsic Lorentz factors in the parent
population that range up to ~50. We also note the presence of some rare
low-pattern speeds or even stationary features in otherwise rapidly flowing
jets... (abridged)Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables, accepted by the Astronomical Journal;
online only material is available from
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/2cmVLBA/pub/MOJAVE_VI_suppl.zi
Automated preparation of Kepler time series of planet hosts for asteroseismic analysis
One of the tasks of the Kepler Asteroseismic Science Operations Center
(KASOC) is to provide asteroseismic analyses on Kepler Objects of Interest
(KOIs). However, asteroseismic analysis of planetary host stars presents some
unique complications with respect to data preprocessing, compared to pure
asteroseismic targets. If not accounted for, the presence of planetary transits
in the photometric time series often greatly complicates or even hinders these
asteroseismic analyses. This drives the need for specialised methods of
preprocessing data to make them suitable for asteroseismic analysis. In this
paper we present the KASOC Filter, which is used to automatically prepare data
from the Kepler/K2 mission for asteroseismic analyses of solar-like planet host
stars. The methods are very effective at removing unwanted signals of both
instrumental and planetary origins and produce significantly cleaner
photometric time series than the original data. The methods are automated and
can therefore easily be applied to a large number of stars. The application of
the filter is not restricted to planetary hosts, but can be applied to any
solar-like or red giant stars observed by Kepler/K2.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA
Subdivision surface fitting to a dense mesh using ridges and umbilics
Fitting a sparse surface to approximate vast dense data is of interest for many applications: reverse engineering, recognition and compression, etc. The present work provides an approach to fit a Loop subdivision surface to a dense triangular mesh of arbitrary topology, whilst preserving and aligning the original features. The natural ridge-joined connectivity of umbilics and ridge-crossings is used as the connectivity of the control mesh for subdivision, so that the edges follow salient features on the surface. Furthermore, the chosen features and connectivity characterise the overall shape of the original mesh, since ridges capture extreme principal curvatures and ridges start and end at umbilics. A metric of Hausdorff distance including curvature vectors is proposed and implemented in a distance transform algorithm to construct the connectivity. Ridge-colour matching is introduced as a criterion for edge flipping to improve feature alignment. Several examples are provided to demonstrate the feature-preserving capability of the proposed approach
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