1,356 research outputs found
Recombination Induced Softening and Reheating of the Cosmic Plasma
The atomic recombination process leads to a softening of the matter equation
of state as reflected by a reduced generalized adiabatic index, with
accompanying heat release. We study the effects of this recombination softening
and reheating of the cosmic plasma on the ionization history, visibility
function, Cold Dark Matter (CDM) transfer function, and the Cosmic Microwave
Background (CMB) spectra. The resulting modifications of the CMB spectrm is
1/10 of WMAP's current error and is comparable to PLANCK's error. Therefore,
this effect should be considered when data with higher accuracy are analysed.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of
the Royal Astronomical Society; as advised by referee, omit high-baryon mode
A Search for Stellar Obscuration Events due to Dark Clouds
The recent detections of a large population of faint submillimetre sources,
an excess halo gamma-ray background, and the extreme scattering events observed
for extragalactic radio sources have been explained as being due to baryonic
dark matter in the form of small, dark, gas clouds. In this paper we present
the results of a search for the transient stellar obscurations such clouds are
expected to cause. We examine the Macho project light curves of 48 x 10^6 stars
toward the Galactic bulge, LMC and SMC for the presence of dark cloud
extinction events. We find no evidence for the existence of a population of
dark gas clouds with Av > 0.2 and masses between ~ 10^-4 and 10^-2 M_solar in
the Galactic disk or halo. However, it is possible that such dark cloud
populations could exist if they are clustered in regions away from the observed
lines of sight.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Ap
From 'River Cottage' to 'Chicken Run': Hugh Fearnley-Whttingstall and the class politics of ethical consumption
Lifestyle television provides a key site through which to explore the dilemmas of ethical consumption, as the genre shifts to consider the ethics of different consumption practices and taste cultures. UK television cook Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's TV programmes offer fertile ground not only for thinking about television personalities as lifestyle experts and moral entrepreneurs, but also for thinking about how the meanings and uses of their television image are inflected by genre. In this article we explore how the shift from the lifestyled downshifting narrative of the River Cottage series to the 'campaigning culinary documentary' Hugh's Chicken Run exposes issues of celebrity, class and ethics. While both series are concerned with ethical consumption, they work in different ways to reveal a distinction between 'ethical' and 'unethical' consumption practices and positions - positions that are inevitably classed
Signals From the Epoch of Cosmological Recombination
The physical ingredients to describe the epoch of cosmological recombination
are amazingly simple and well-understood. This fact allows us to take into
account a very large variety of physical processes, still finding potentially
measurable consequences for the energy spectrum and temperature anisotropies of
the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). In this contribution we provide a short
historical overview in connection with the cosmological recombination epoch and
its connection to the CMB. Also we highlight some of the detailed physics that
were studied over the past few years in the context of the cosmological
recombination of hydrogen and helium. (abrigded)Comment: 39 pages, 22 figures, Proceedings of JENAM 2008 Vienn
The MACHO Project HST Follow-Up: The Large Magellanic Cloud Microlensing Source Stars
We present Hubble Space Telescope (HST) WFPC2 photometry of 13 microlensed
source stars from the 5.7 year Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) survey conducted by
the MACHO Project. The microlensing source stars are identified by deriving
accurate centroids in the ground-based MACHO images using difference image
analysis (DIA) and then transforming the DIA coordinates to the HST frame. None
of these sources is coincident with a background galaxy, which rules out the
possibility that the MACHO LMC microlensing sample is contaminated with
misidentified supernovae or AGN in galaxies behind the LMC. This supports the
conclusion that the MACHO LMC microlensing sample has only a small amount of
contamination due to non-microlensing forms of variability. We compare the
WFPC2 source star magnitudes with the lensed flux predictions derived from
microlensing fits to the light curve data. In most cases the source star
brightness is accurately predicted. Finally, we develop a statistic which
constrains the location of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) microlensing source
stars with respect to the distributions of stars and dust in the LMC and
compare this to the predictions of various models of LMC microlensing. This
test excludes at > 90% confidence level models where more than 80% of the
source stars lie behind the LMC. Exotic models that attempt to explain the
excess LMC microlensing optical depth seen by MACHO with a population of
background sources are disfavored or excluded by this test. Models in which
most of the lenses reside in a halo or spheroid distribution associated with
either the Milky Way or the LMC are consistent which these data, but LMC halo
or spheroid models are favored by the combined MACHO and EROS microlensing
results.Comment: 28 pages with 10 included PDF figures, submitted to Ap
Discovery and Characterization of a Caustic Crossing Microlensing Event in the SMC
We present photometric observations and analysis of the second microlensing
event detected towards the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), MACHO Alert 98-SMC-1.
This event was detected early enough to allow intensive observation of the
lightcurve. These observations revealed 98-SMC-1 to be the first caustic
crossing, binary microlensing event towards the Magellanic Clouds to be
discovered in progress.
Frequent coverage of the evolving lightcurve allowed an accurate prediction
for the date of the source crossing out of the lens caustic structure. The
caustic crossing temporal width, along with the angular size of the source
star, measures the proper motion of the lens with respect to the source, and
thus allows an estimate of the location of the lens. Lenses located in the
Galactic halo would have a velocity projected to the SMC of v^hat ~1500 km/s,
while an SMC lens would typically have v^hat ~60 km/s.
We have performed a joint fit to the MACHO/GMAN data presented here,
including recent EROS data of this event. These joint data are sufficient to
constrain the time for the lens to move an angle equal to the source angular
radius; 0.116 +/- 0.010 days. We estimate a radius for the lensed source of 1.4
+/- 0.1 R_sun. This yields a projected velocity of v^hat = 84 +/- 9 km/s. Only
0.15% of halo lenses would be expected to have a v^hat value at least as small
as this, while 31% of SMC lenses would be expected to have v^hat as large as
this. This implies that the lensing system is more likely to reside in the SMC
than in the Galactic halo.Comment: 16 pages, including 3 tables and 3 figures; submitted to The
Astrophysical Journa
Searching for periodicities in the MACHO light curve of LMC X-2
Using the exceptional long-term monitoring capabilities of the MACHO project,
we present here the optical history of LMC X-2 for a continuous 6-yr period.
These data were used to investigate the previously claimed periodicities for
this source of 8.15 h and 12.54 d : we find upper amplitude limits of 0.10 mag
and 0.09 mag, respectively.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Minor changes, including title. MNRAS, in pres
The MACHO project: Microlensing Optical Depth towards the Galactic Bulge from Difference Image Analysis
We present the microlensing optical depth towards the Galactic bulge based on
the detection of 99 events found in our Difference Image Analysis (DIA) survey.
This analysis encompasses three years of data, covering ~ 17 million stars in ~
4 deg^2, to a source star baseline magnitude limit of V = 23. The DIA technique
improves the quality of photometry in crowded fields, and allows us to detect
more microlensing events with faint source stars. We find this method increases
the number of detection events by 85% compared with the standard analysis
technique. DIA light curves of the events are presented and the microlensing
fit parameters are given. The total microlensing optical depth is estimated to
be tau_(total)= 2.43^(+0.39/-0.38) x 10^(-6) averaged over 8 fields centered at
l=2.68 and b=-3.35. For the bulge component we find
tau_(bulge)=3.23^(+0.52/-0.50) x 10^(-6) assuming a 25% stellar contribution
from disk sources. These optical depths are in good agreement with the past
determinations of the MACHO Alcock et al. (1997) and OGLE Udalski et al. (1994)
groups, and are higher than predicted by contemporary Galactic models. We show
that our observed event timescale distribution is consistent with the
distribution expected from normal mass stars, if we adopt the stellar mass
function of Scalo (1986) as our lens mass function. However, we note that as
there is still disagreement about the exact form of the stellar mass function,
there is uncertainty in this conclusion. Based on our event timescale
distribution we find no evidence for the existence of a large population of
brown dwarfs in the direction of the Galactic bulge.Comment: Updated references and corrected optical depth values. tau_tot=
[2.91(+0.47/-0.45) -> 2.43^(+0.39/-0.38)] x 10^(-6) tau_bul =
[3.88(+0.63/-0.60) -> 3.23^(+0.52/-0.50)] x 10^(-6
- …