225 research outputs found
Copy of Remarks of keynote speaker at National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia 43rd Annual Meeting
Copy of Remarks of keynote speaker at National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia 43rd Annual Meeting.https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/sdfrancisco_documents/1013/thumbnail.jp
The SkyMapper Transient Survey
The SkyMapper 1.3 m telescope at Siding Spring Observatory has now begun
regular operations. Alongside the Southern Sky Survey, a comprehensive digital
survey of the entire southern sky, SkyMapper will carry out a search for
supernovae and other transients. The search strategy, covering a total
footprint area of ~2000 deg2 with a cadence of days, is optimised for
discovery and follow-up of low-redshift type Ia supernovae to constrain cosmic
expansion and peculiar velocities. We describe the search operations and
infrastructure, including a parallelised software pipeline to discover variable
objects in difference imaging; simulations of the performance of the survey
over its lifetime; public access to discovered transients; and some first
results from the Science Verification data.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures; submitted to PAS
The ANU WiFeS SuperNovA Program (AWSNAP)
This paper presents the first major data release and survey description for
the ANU WiFeS SuperNovA Program (AWSNAP). AWSNAP is an ongoing supernova
spectroscopy campaign utilising the Wide Field Spectrograph (WiFeS) on the
Australian National University (ANU) 2.3m telescope. The first and primary data
release of this program (AWSNAP-DR1) releases 357 spectra of 175 unique objects
collected over 82 equivalent full nights of observing from July 2012 to August
2015. These spectra have been made publicly available via the WISeREP supernova
spectroscopy repository. We analyse the AWSNAP sample of Type Ia supernova
spectra, including measurements of narrow sodium absorption features afforded
by the high spectral resolution of the WiFeS instrument. In some cases we were
able to use the integral-field nature of the WiFeS instrument to measure the
rotation velocity of the SN host galaxy near the SN location in order to obtain
precision sodium absorption velocities. We also present an extensive time
series of SN 2012dn, including a near-nebular spectrum which both confirms its
"super-Chandrasekhar" status and enables measurement of the sub-solar host
metallicity at the SN site.Comment: Submitted to Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia
(PASA). Spectra publicly released via WISeREP at
http://wiserep.weizmann.ac.il
Measuring nickel masses in Type Ia supernovae using cobalt emission in nebular phase spectra
The light curves of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are powered by the
radioactive decay of Ni to Co at early times, and the decay of
Co to Fe from ~60 days after explosion. We examine the evolution
of the [Co III] 5892 A emission complex during the nebular phase for SNe Ia
with multiple nebular spectra and show that the line flux follows the square of
the mass of Co as a function of time. This result indicates both
efficient local energy deposition from positrons produced in Co decay,
and long-term stability of the ionization state of the nebula. We compile 77
nebular spectra of 25 SN Ia from the literature and present 17 new nebular
spectra of 7 SNe Ia, including SN2014J. From these we measure the flux in the
[Co III] 5892 A line and remove its well-behaved time dependence to infer the
initial mass of Ni () produced in the explosion. We then examine
Ni yields for different SN Ia ejected masses ( - calculated
using the relation between light curve width and ejected mass) and find the
Ni masses of SNe Ia fall into two regimes: for narrow light curves (low
stretch s~0.7-0.9), is clustered near ~ 0.4 and
shows a shallow increase as increases from ~1-1.4; at high
stretch, clusters at the Chandrasekhar mass (1.4) while
spans a broad range from 0.6-1.2. This could constitute
evidence for two distinct SN Ia explosion mechanisms.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures (main text), plus data tables in appendix.
Spectra released on WISeREP. Submitted to MNRAS, comments welcom
Early ultraviolet emission in the Type Ia supernova LSQ12gdj: No evidence for ongoing shock interaction
We present photospheric-phase observations of LSQ12gdj, a slowly declining, UV-bright Type Ia supernova. Classified well before maximum light, LSQ12gdj has extinction-corrected absolute magnitude MB = -19.8, and pre-maximum spectroscopic evolution similar to SN 1991T and the super-Chandrasekhar-mass SN 2007if. We use ultraviolet photometry from Swift, ground-based optical photometry, and corrections from a near-infrared photometric template to construct the bolometric (1600-23 800 Å) light curve out to 45 d past B-band maximum light. We estimate that LSQ12gdj produced 0.96 ± 0.07 M· of 56Ni, with an ejected mass near or slightly above the Chandrasekhar mass. As much as 27 per cent of the flux at the earliest observed phases, and 17 per cent at maximum light, is emitted bluewards of 3300 Å. The absence of excess luminosity at late times, the cutoff of the spectral energy distribution bluewards of 3000 Å and the absence of narrow line emission and strong Na I D absorption all argue against a significant contribution from ongoing shock interaction. However, ~10 per cent of LSQ12gdj's luminosity near maximum light could be produced by the release of trapped radiation, including kinetic energy thermalized during a brief interaction with a compact, hydrogen-poor envelope (radius <1013 cm) shortly after explosion; such an envelope arises generically in double-degenerate merger scenarios
Analysis of individual items on the attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptom rating scale in children and adults: the effects of age and sex in pivotal trials of lisdexamfetamine dimesylate
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptom presentation across age and sex has not been fully elucidated. The present post hoc analyses qualitatively explored the baseline levels of ADHD symptomatology across subgroups in two clinical trials of children and adults with ADHD to elucidate differences in participant presentation. The response to treatment was examined to determine patterns of response among items of the ADHD Rating Scale IV
OzDES multifibre spectroscopy for the Dark Energy Survey: First-year operation and results
The Australian Dark Energy Survey (OzDES) is a five-year, 100-night, spectroscopic survey on the Anglo-Australian Telescope, whose primary aim is to measure redshifts of approximately 2500 Type Ia supernovae host galaxies over the redshift range 0.1 < z < 1.2, and derive reverberation-mapped black hole masses for approximately 500 active galactic nuclei and quasars over 0.3 < z < 4.5. This treasure trove of data forms a major part of the spectroscopic follow-up for the Dark Energy Survey for which we are also targeting cluster galaxies, radio galaxies, strong lenses, and unidentified transients, as well as measuring luminous red galaxies and emission line galaxies to help calibrate photometric redshifts. Here, we present an overview of the OzDES programme and our first-year results. Between 2012 December and 2013 December, we observed over 10 000 objects and measured more than 6 000 redshifts. Our strategy of retargeting faint objects across many observing runs has allowed us to measure redshifts for galaxies as faint as mr = 25 mag. We outline our target selection and observing strategy, quantify the redshift success rate for different types of targets, and discuss the implications for our main science goals. Finally, we highlight a few interesting objects as examples of the fortuitous yet not totally unexpected discoveries that can come from such a large spectroscopic survey
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