251 research outputs found
Observational hints of radial migration in disc galaxies from CALIFA
Context. According to numerical simulations, stars are not always kept at their birth galactocentric distances but they have a tendency to migrate. The importance of this radial migration in shaping galactic light distributions is still unclear. However, if radial migration is indeed important, galaxies with different surface brightness (SB) profiles must display differences in their stellar population properties.
Aims: We investigate the role of radial migration in the light distribution and radial stellar content by comparing the inner colour, age, and metallicity gradients for galaxies with different SB profiles. We define these inner parts, avoiding the bulge and bar regions and up to around three disc scale lengths (type I, pure exponential) or the break radius (type II, downbending; type III, upbending).
Methods: We analysed 214 spiral galaxies from the CALIFA survey covering different SB profiles. We made use of GASP2D and SDSS data to characterise the light distribution and obtain colour profiles of these spiral galaxies. The stellar age and metallicity profiles were computed using a methodology based on full-spectrum fitting techniques (pPXF, GANDALF, and STECKMAP) to the Integral Field Spectroscopic CALIFA data.
Results: The distributions of the colour, stellar age, and stellar metallicity gradients in the inner parts for galaxies displaying different SB profiles are unalike as suggested by Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Anderson-Darling tests. We find a trend in which type II galaxies show the steepest profiles of all, type III show the shallowest, and type I display an intermediate behaviour.
Conclusions: These results are consistent with a scenario in which radial migration is more efficient for type III galaxies than for type I systems, where type II galaxies present the lowest radial migration efficiency. In such a scenario, radial migration mixes the stellar content, thereby flattening the radial stellar properties and shaping different SB profiles. However, in light of these results we cannot further quantify the importance of radial migration in shaping spiral galaxies, and other processes, such as recent star formation or satellite accretion, might play a role
The Fornax3D project: Environmental effects on the assembly of dynamically cold disks in Fornax cluster galaxies
We apply a population-orbit superposition method to 16 galaxies in the Fornax
cluster observed with MUSE/VLT in the context of the Fornax3D project. By
fitting the luminosity distribution, stellar kinematics, and age and
metallicity maps simultaneously, we obtained the internal stellar orbit
distribution, as well as the age and metallicity distribution of stars on
different orbits for each galaxy. Based on the model, we decompose each galaxy
into a dynamically cold disk (orbital circularity ) and a
dynamically hot non-disk component (orbital circularity ), and
obtain the surface-brightness, age, and metallicity radial profiles of each
component. The galaxy infall time into the cluster is strongly correlated with
galaxy cold-disk age with older cold disks in ancient infallers. We quantify
the infall time of each galaxy with its cold-disk age using a
correlation calibrated with TNG50 cosmological simulations. For galaxies in the
Fornax cluster, we found that the luminosity fraction of cold disk in galaxies
with Gyr are a factor of lower than in more recent
infallers while controlling for total stellar mass. Nine of the 16 galaxies
have spatially extended cold disks, and most of them show positive or zero age
gradients; stars in the inner disk are Gyr younger than that in the
outer disk, in contrast to the expectation of inside-out growth. Our results
indicate that the assembly of cold disks in galaxies is strongly affected by
their infall into clusters, by either removal of gas in outer regions or even
tidally stripping or heating part of the pre-existing disks. Star formation in
outer disks can stop quickly after the galaxy falls into the cluster, while
star formation in the inner disks can last for a few Gyrs more, building the
positive age gradient measured in cold disks.Comment: 31 pages, 32 figures, Accepted to A&
Near-infrared spectroscopic indices for unresolved stellar populations. III. Composite indices definition as age and metallicity tracers and model comparison
Recent advances in the stellar population studies of unresolved galaxies in the NIR domain demonstrated that it contains several line-strength indices to be potentially used as diagnostics for stellar population properties. Reduction of the extinction and possibility to disentangle different stellar populations dominating different spectral ranges are obviously beneficial. To this aim, we have investigated the connections between 19 Lick/IDS indices and 39 NIR indices measured in the central regions of 32 galaxies observed with X-shooter. We adopted a systematic approach deriving a correlation matrix using all the optical and NIR indices measured for the galaxies and building new NIR composite indices to maximise their correlations with the best age and metallicity optical tracers. We found that the new T1 and [AlFeCr] composite indices are promising age and metallicity diagnostics in NIR, respectively. We finally tested the T1 and [AlFeCr] indices with the predictions of simple stellar populations models and we found that models show a general agreement with the data. Some fine tuning and further comparison between models and data, that are now largely available, is necessary to reach the prediction level of the optical line-strength indices
Unresolved Gamma-Ray Sky through its Angular Power Spectrum
The gamma-ray sky has been observed with unprecedented accuracy in the last decade by the Fermi -large area telescope (LAT), allowing us to resolve and understand the high-energy Universe. The nature of the remaining unresolved emission [unresolved gamma-ray background (UGRB)] below the LAT source detection threshold can be uncovered by characterizing the amplitude and angular scale of the UGRB fluctuation field. This Letter presents a measurement of the UGRB autocorrelation angular power spectrum based on eight years of Fermi-LAT Pass 8 data products. The analysis is designed to be robust against contamination from resolved sources and noise systematics. The sensitivity to subthreshold sources is greatly enhanced with respect to previous measurements. We find evidence (with ∼3.7σ significance) that the scenario in which two classes of sources contribute to the UGRB signal is favored over a single class. A double power law with exponential cutoff can explain the anisotropy energy spectrum well, with photon indices of the two populations being 2.55±0.23 and 1.86±0.15
Fermi and Swift Observations of GRB 190114C: Tracing the Evolution of High-energy Emission from Prompt to Afterglow
We report on the observations of gamma-ray burst (GRB) 190114C by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. The prompt gamma-ray emission was detected by the Fermi GRB Monitor (GBM), the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT), and the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) and the long-lived afterglow emission was subsequently observed by the GBM, LAT, Swift X-ray Telescope (XRT), and Swift UV Optical Telescope. The early-time observations reveal multiple emission components that evolve independently, with a delayed power-law component that exhibits significant spectral attenuation above 40 MeV in the first few seconds of the burst. This power-law component transitions to a harder spectrum that is consistent with the afterglow emission observed by the XRT at later times. This afterglow component is clearly identifiable in the GBM and BAT light curves as a slowly fading emission component on which the rest of the prompt emission is superimposed. As a result, we are able to observe the transition from internal-shock- to external-shock-dominated emission. We find that the temporal and spectral evolution of the broadband afterglow emission can be well modeled as synchrotron emission from a forward shock propagating into a wind-like circumstellar environment. We estimate the initial bulk Lorentz factor using the observed high-energy spectral cutoff. Considering the onset of the afterglow component, we constrain the deceleration radius at which this forward shock begins to radiate in order to estimate the maximum synchrotron energy as a function of time. We find that even in the LAT energy range, there exist high-energy photons that are in tension with the theoretical maximum energy that can be achieved through synchrotron emission from a shock. These violations of the maximum synchrotron energy are further compounded by the detection of very high-energy (VHE) emission above 300 GeV by MAGIC concurrent with our observations. We conclude that the observations of VHE photons from GRB 190114C necessitates either an additional emission mechanism at very high energies that is hidden in the synchrotron component in the LAT energy range, an acceleration mechanism that imparts energy to the particles at a rate that is faster than the electron synchrotron energy-loss rate, or revisions of the fundamental assumptions used in estimating the maximum photon energy attainable through the synchrotron process
On the nature of disks at high redshift seen by JWST/CEERS with contrastive learning and cosmological simulations
Visual inspections of the first optical rest-frame images from JWST have
indicated a surprisingly high fraction of disk galaxies at high redshifts. Here
we alternatively apply self-supervised machine learning to explore the
morphological diversity at . Our proposed data-driven representation
scheme of galaxy morphologies, calibrated on mock images from the TNG50
simulation, is shown to be robust to noise and to correlate well with physical
properties of the simulated galaxies, including their 3D structure. We apply
the method simultaneously to F200W and F356W galaxy images of a mass-complete
sample () at from the first JWST/NIRCam CEERS data
release. We find that the simulated and observed galaxies do not populate the
same manifold in the representation space from contrastive learning, partly
because the observed galaxies tend to be more compact and more elongated than
the simulated galaxies. We also find that about half the galaxies that were
visually classified as disks based on their elongated images actually populate
a similar region of the representation space than spheroids, which according to
the TNG50 simulation is occupied by objects with low stellar specific angular
momentum and non-oblate structure. This suggests that the disk fraction at as evaluated by visual classification may be severely overestimated by
misclassifying compact, elongated galaxies as disks. Deeper imaging and/or
spectroscopic follow-ups as well as comparisons with other simulations will
help to unambiguously determine the true nature of these galaxies.Comment: 25 pages, 23 figures. Submitted to ApJ. Comments welcom
High-energy emission from a magnetar giant flare in the Sculptor galaxy
Magnetars are the most highly magnetized neutron stars in the cosmos (with magnetic field 1013–1015 G). Giant flares from magnetars are rare, short-duration (about 0.1 s) bursts of hard X-rays and soft γ rays1,2. Owing to the limited sensitivity and energy coverage of previous telescopes, no magnetar giant flare has been detected at gigaelectronvolt (GeV) energies. Here, we report the discovery of GeV emission from a magnetar giant flare on 15 April 2020 (refs. 3,4 and A. J. Castro-Tirado et al., manuscript in preparation). The Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected GeV γ rays from 19 s until 284 s after the initial detection of a signal in the megaelectronvolt (MeV) band. Our analysis shows that these γ rays are spatially associated with the nearby (3.5 megaparsecs) Sculptor galaxy and are unlikely to originate from a cosmological γ-ray burst. Thus, we infer that the γ rays originated with the magnetar giant flare in Sculptor. We suggest that the GeV signal is generated by an ultra-relativistic outflow that first radiates the prompt MeV-band photons, and then deposits its energy far from the stellar magnetosphere. After a propagation delay, the outflow interacts with environmental gas and produces shock waves that accelerate electrons to very high energies; these electrons then emit GeV γ rays as optically thin synchrotron radiation. This observation implies that a relativistic outflow is associated with the magnetar giant flare, and suggests the possibility that magnetars can power some short γ-ray bursts
Probing the earliest phases in the formation of massive galaxies with simulated HST+JWST imaging data from Illustris
We use the Illustris-1 simulation to explore the capabilities of the
and data to analyze the
stellar populations in high-redshift galaxies, taking advantage of the combined
depth, spatial resolution, and wavelength coverage. For that purpose, we use
simulated broad-band ACS, WFC3 and NIRCam data and 2-dimensional stellar
population synthesis (2D-SPS) to derive the integrated star formation history
(SFH) of massive (MM) simulated galaxies at
M galaxy. In
particular, we explore the potential of HST and JWST datasets reaching a depth
similar to those of the CANDELS and ongoing CEERS observations, respectively,
and concentrate on determining the capabilities of this dataset for
characterizing the first episodes in the SFH of local
MM galaxies by studying their progenitors at
. The 2D-SPS method presented in this paper has been calibrated to
robustly recover the cosmic times when the first star formation episodes
occurred in massive galaxies, i.e., the first stages in their integrated SFHs.
In particular, we discuss the times when the first 1% to 50% of their total
stellar mass formed in the simulation. We demonstrate that we can recover these
ages with typical median systematic offset of less than 5% and scatter around
20%-30%. According to our measurements on Illustris data, we are able to
recover that local MM galaxies would have started
their formation by , forming the first 5% of their stellar mass present
at by , 10% by , and 25% by .Comment: 28 pages, 13 figures, 4 tables. ApJ in press. Summary of changes from
original submission: the major change is that we now include in Sec. 6 the
comparison of the results obtained for our sample of massive 1 < z < 4
progenitors with those obtained by considering all massive galaxies at 1 < z
< 4 in the simulated images. Several figures and sections have been update
Variability and Period Analysis for BL Lac AO 0235+164
© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.Variability is one of the extreme observational properties of BL Lacertae objects. AO 0235+164 is a well-studied BL Lac throughout allelectromagnetic wavebands. In the present work, we show its optical R-band photometric observations carried out during the period from 2006 November to 2012 December using the Ap6E CCD camera attached to the primary focus of the 70 cm meniscus telescope at Abastumani Observatory, Georgia. During our monitoring period, it showed a large variation of DR = 4.88 mag (14.19- 19.07 mag) and a short timescale of DT- 73.5 minutes. During the period of 2006 December to 2009 November, we made radio observations of the source using the 25 m radio telescope at Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory. By adopting adiscrete correlation function to the optical and radio observations we found that the optical variation leads a?radio variation of 23 2 12.9 days
A few StePS forward in unveiling the complexity of galaxy evolution: Light-weighted stellar ages of intermediate-redshift galaxies with WEAVE
The upcoming new generation of optical spectrographs on four-meter-class
telescopes will provide invaluable information for reconstructing the history
of star formation in individual galaxies up to redshifts of about 0.7. We aim
at defining simple but robust and meaningful physical parameters that can be
used to trace the coexistence of widely diverse stellar components: younger
stellar populations superimposed on the bulk of older ones. We produce spectra
of galaxies closely mimicking data from the forthcoming Stellar Populations at
intermediate redshifts Survey (StePS), a survey that uses the WEAVE
spectrograph on the William Herschel Telescope. First, we assess our ability to
reliably measure both ultraviolet and optical spectral indices in galaxies of
different spectral types for typically expected signal-to-noise levels. Then,
we analyze such mock spectra with a Bayesian approach, deriving the probability
density function of r- and u-band light-weighted ages as well as of their
difference. We find that the ultraviolet indices significantly narrow the
uncertainties in estimating the r- and u-band light-weighted ages and their
difference in individual galaxies. These diagnostics, robustly retrievable for
large galaxy samples even when observed at moderate signal-to-noise ratios,
allow us to identify secondary episodes of star formation up to an age of ~0.1
Gyr for stellar populations older than ~1.5 Gyr, pushing up to an age of ~1 Gyr
for stellar populations older than ~5 Gyr. The difference between r-band and
u-band light-weighted ages is shown to be a powerful diagnostic to characterize
and constrain extended star-formation histories and the presence of young
stellar populations on top of older ones. This parameter can be used to explore
the interplay between different galaxy star-formation histories and physical
parameters such as galaxy mass, size, morphology, and environment
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