Living in the Milky Way

It’s finally here. Today, June 20 at 6:34 p.m., is the the summer solstice, also known as the first day of summer and, confusingly enough, midsummer’s eve. From a scientific perspective, it marks the moment the sun reaches its northernmost point in our sky. As a result of that position, it’s the shortest night and longest day if you live north of the equator. [excerpt

Back Half of the Year

Here we are in the back half of 2016, and the days are getting shorter. We have, as of today, lost 18 minutes since the solstice on June 20, and the speed of that change is quickening. You may wonder why it is that we have our hottest weather after our longest day is behind us. The simple answer is that it takes time for land and water masses to warm up. That’s the reason that Sept. 21 is likely to be a lot warmer than March 21, even though they have the same amount of daylight. [excerpt

University Scholar Series: Michael Kaufman

H2O in Interstellar Space: How the Universe Conspires to Make Water Everywhere On October 28, 2015, Dr. Michael Kaufman spoke in the University Scholar Series hosted by Provost Andy Feinstein at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library. His talk was titled “H2O in Interstellar Space: How the Universe Conspires to Make Water, Water Everywhere.” Dr. Kaufman\u27s astrophysics research focuses on the interactions and feedback between newly formed stars and the interstellar medium—the raw material from which stars form. He constructs computational models of the radiative transfer, dynamics and chemistry that occur in regions of active star formation, and uses these models to interpret observations with ground-based, airborne, and space-based telescopes. Dr. Kaufman is Professor and Chair in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/uss/1024/thumbnail.jp

A Possible Detection of Occultation by a Proto-planetary Clump in GM Cephei

GM Cep in the young (~ 4 Myr) open cluster Trumpler 37 has been known to be an abrupt variable and to have a circumstellar disk with very active accretion. Our monitoring observations in 2009–2011 revealed the star to show sporadic ?are events, each with brightening of . 0.5 mag lasting for days. These brightening events, associated with a color change toward the blue, should originate from an increased accretion activity. Moreover, the star also underwent a brightness drop of ~ 1 mag lasting for about a month, during which the star became bluer when fainter. Such brightness drops seem to have a recurrence time scale of a year, as evidenced in our data and the photometric behavior of GM Cep over a century. Between consecutive drops, the star brightened gradually by about 1 mag and became blue at peak luminosity. We propose that the drop is caused by obscuration of the central star by an orbiting dust concentration. The UX Orionis type of activity in GM Cep therefore exemplifies the disk inhomogeneity process in transition between grain coagulation and planetesimal formation in a young circumstellar disk

Photometry of the Young Open Cluster Trumpler 37

Photoelectric UBV observations of 120 stars in the young open cluster Trumpler 37 are presented, primarily in the magnitude range 10.0\u3c

Radial-Velocity and Light Variations of IR Cephei

Radical-velocity observations of the short-period Cepheid, IR Cephei, have been used to derive a complete radial-velocity versus phase curve for the variable, to investigate the presence of a possible binary companion, and to address the question of its membership in the Cepheus OB2 association. The observations are consistent with the absence of a close binary companion and shed doubt on its membership in the association. Photoelectric observations made with the Phoenix 10 Automated Photometric Telescope confirm the single nature of the star. We present simulations to show the effects of an equiluminous companion on the light curve of a Cepheid, concluding that the light curve of IR Cephei, whether or not it is corrected for a possible companion, exhibits the low-amplitude, sinusoidal variations characteristic of an s-type Cepheid

Interferometric Studies of Interstellar Calcium Lines

Interferometric, photoelectric scans of the interstellar calcium K-lines in the spectra of 65 stars are presented. The scans were obtained with a PEPSIOS spectrometer having a passband with a full half-intensity width of 1.0 kms(-1) or 0.013A. The fivefold improvement in resolution over that used by Adams reveals numerous line components which correspond very well to those of the interstellar sodium lines, apart from frequent differences in relative intensities

Galactic Structure from Faint Stromgren Photometry: The Catalog of Observations

We have initiated the faint photometric survey in the Stromgren system covering about 1 square degree and including 1238 objects in order to develop samples which best probe the thick disk population. The catalog of observations are presented here. They were acquired without kinematic or metallicity biases and are complete to V=17.3-18.5, depending on the field, for 810 early to relatively late type stars. Photometric metallicities were derived for 508 stars and indicate a metal-poor stellar population, consistent with a mixture of thick disk and halo stars. While the Stromgren u-band was not part of the survey, follow-up u-band observations of 32 survey objects indicate that intermediate color survey stars are main-sequence or slightly evolved stars, while redder survey stars are giants

CCD Photometry of the Old Open Cluster M67

We present a CCD photometric survey of the central one-half degree of the old open cluster, M67, in U, B, V, and I colors to magnitude V=20. Extensive comparison of our photometry with other published datasets shows excellent agreement, indicating that CCD photometry is capable of producing a uniform set of measurements consistent with the photometric system defined primarily by the Landolt standard sequence. The color-magnitude diagram of the cluster shows a well-defined main sequence extending at least to the limit of the photometry at Mv=10.55 and a substantial binary sequence. At least 38% of cluster stars are binaries. The current generation of theoretical isochrones cannot be fit to the observed sequences with the observational errors. We find a tendency for more massive members of the cluster to be more centrally concentrated, along with a turnover in the cluster luminosity function at low masses, which may be due to dynamical relaxation of the cluster. To the limit of our photometry, we find a mass of the cluster of 724 solar masses. In addition, we present a sample of stars of well-determined standard magnitudes that are suitable as photometric standards for further studies of this cluster and for general calibration of UBVI photometry using CCDs. [excerpt