Perspective acceleration and gravitational redshift. Measuring masses of individual white dwarfs using Gaia + SIM astrometry

According to current plans, the SIM/NASA mission will be launched just after the end of operations for the Gaia/ESA mission. This is a new situation which enables long term astrometric projects that could not be achieved by either mission alone. Using the well-known perspective acceleration effect on astrometric measurements, the true heliocentric radial velocity of a nearby star can be measured with great precision if the time baseline of the astrometric measurements is long enough. Since white dwarfs are compact objects, the gravitational redshift can be quite large (40-80 km/s), and is the predominant source of any shift in wavelength. The mismatch of the true radial velocity with the spectroscopic shift thus leads to a direct measure of the Mass--Radius relation for such objects. Using available catalog information about the known nearby white dwarfs, we estimate how many masses/gravitational redshift measurements can be obtained with an accuracy better than 2%. Nearby white dwarfs are relatively faint objects (10 < V < 15), which can be easily observed by both missions. We also briefly discuss how the presence of a long period planet can mask the astrometric signal of perspective acceleration.Comment: 3 pages, 2 Figures. Proceedings of the IAU Symposium 261 : Relativity in Fundamental Astronomy. 27 April - 1 May 2009, Virginia Beach, VA, USA. refereed and accepted versio

Astrometric Light-Travel Time signature of sources in nonlinear motion

Context:Very precise planned space astrometric missions and recent improvements on imaging capabilities require a detailed review of the assumptions of classical astrometric modeling. Aims:We show that Light-Travel Time must be taken into account to model the kinematics of astronomical objects in nonlinear motion, even at stellar distances. Methods:A closed expression to include Light-Travel Time in the actual astrometric models with nonlinear motion is provided. Using a perturbative approach the expression of the Light-Travel Time signature is derived. We propose a practical form of the astrometric modelling to be applied in astrometric data reduction of sources at stellar distances($d>1 pc$). Results :We show that the Light-Travel Time signature is relevant at \muas accuracy (or even at $mas$) depending on the time span of the astrometric measurements. We explain how information about the radial motion of a source can be obtained. Some estimative numbers are provided for known nearby binary systems Conclusions :In the light of the obtained results, it is clear that this effect must be taken into account to interpret any kind of precise astrometric measurements. The effect is particularly interesting in measurements performed by the planned astrometric space missions (GAIA, SIM, JASMINE, TPF/DARWIN). Finally an objective criterion is provided to quickly evaluate whether the Light-Travel Time modeling is required for a given source or system.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

Regular triangulations of dynamic sets of points

The Delaunay triangulations of a set of points are a class of triangulations which play an important role in a variety of different disciplines of science. Regular triangulations are a generalization of Delaunay triangulations that maintain both their relationship with convex hulls and with Voronoi diagrams. In regular triangulations, a real value, its weight, is assigned to each point. In this paper a simple data structure is presented that allows regular triangulations of sets of points to be dynamically updated, that is, new points can be incrementally inserted in the set and old points can be deleted from it. The algorithms we propose for insertion and deletion are based on a geometrical interpretation of the history data structure in one more dimension and use lifted flips as the unique topological operation. This results in rather simple and efficient algorithms. The algorithms have been implemented and experimental results are given.Postprint (published version

The HARPS-TERRA project I. Description of the algorithms, performance and new measurements on a few remarkable stars observed by HARPS

Doppler spectroscopy has uncovered or confirmed all the known planets orbiting nearby stars. Two main techniques are used to obtain precision Doppler measurements at optical wavelengths. The first approach is the gas cell method, which consists on the least-squares matching of the spectrum of Iodine imprinted on the spectrum of the star. The second method relies on the construction of a stabilized spectrograph externally calibrated in wavelength. The most precise stabilized spectrometer in operation is HARPS, operated by ESO in La Silla Observatory/Chile. The Doppler measurements obtained with HARPS are typically obtained using the Cross-Correlation Function technique (CCF). It consists of multiplying the stellar spectrum with a weighted binary mask and finding the minimum of such product as a function of the Doppler shift. It is known that CCF is suboptimal in exploiting the Doppler information in the stellar spectrum. Here, we describe an algorithm to obtain precision RV measurements using least-squares matching of each observed spectrum to a high signal-to-noise ratio template derived from the same observations. Such algorithm is implemented in our software called HARPS-TERRA (Template Enhanced Radial velocity Re-analysis Application). New radial velocity measurements on a representative sample of stars observed by HARPS is used to illustrate the benefits of the proposed method. We show that, compared to CCF, template matching provides a significant improvement in accuracy, specially when applied to M dwarfs.Comment: Accepted in ApJ supplement series. Main manuscript contains 40 pages, 17 figures and 6 Tables. Table 7 to 14 (page 41-90) contain the relevant time series. Table 15 contains the HARPS-TERRA, HIRES and PFS RV measurements used in http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.0446. Machine readable tables will the provided in the journal version of the manuscrip

Optimal Fourier filtering of a function that is strictly confined within a sphere

We present an alternative method to filter a distribution, that is strictly confined within a sphere of given radius $r_c$, so that its Fourier transform is optimally confined within another sphere of radius $k_c$. In electronic structure methods, it can be used to generate optimized pseudopotentials, pseudocore charge distributions, and pseudo atomic orbital basis sets.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figure

High Angular Resolution Radio Observations of the HL/XZ Tau Region: Mapping the 50 AU Protoplanetary Disk around HL Tau and Resolving XZ Tau S into a 13 AU Binary

We present new 7 mm and archive 1.3 cm high angular resolution observations of the HL/XZ Tau region made with the VLA. At 7 mm, the emission from HL Tau seems to be arising in a clumpy disk with radius of order 25 AU. The 1.3 cm emission from XZ Tau shows the emission from a binary system with 0"3 (42 AU) separation, known from previous optical/IR observations. However, at 7 mm, the southern radio component resolves into a binary with 0"09 (13 AU) separation, suggesting that XZ Tau is actually a triple star system. We suggest that the remarkable ejection of gas from the XZ Tau system observed with the HST may be related to a periastron passage of this newly discovered close binary system.Comment: Accepted by The Astrophysical Journal Letters (23 Jan 2009