1,000 research outputs found
High-energy Astrophysics and the Virtual Observatory
The Virtual Observatory (VO) will revolutionise the way we do Astronomy by
allowing easy access to all astronomical data and by making the handling and
analysis of datasets at various locations across the globe much simpler and
faster. I report here on the need for the VO and its status in Europe,
concentrating on the recently started EURO-VO project, and then give two
specific applications of VO tools to high-energy astrophysics.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, invited talk at the Workshop ``Multifrequency
Behaviour of High Energy Cosmic Sources'', Vulcano, Italy, May 2005, F.
Giovannelli et al., in pres
NEOWISE observations of comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) as it approaches Mars
The Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) mission
observed comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) three times at 3.4 {\mu}m and 4.6
{\mu}m as the comet approached Mars in 2014. The comet is an extremely
interesting target since its close approach to Mars in late 2014 will be
observed by various spacecraft in-situ. The observations were taken in 2014
Jan., Jul. and Sep. when the comet was at heliocentric distances of 3.82 AU,
1.88 AU, and 1.48 AU. The level of activity increased significantly between the
Jan. and Jul. visits but then decreased by the time of the observations in
Sep., approximately 4 weeks prior to its close approach to Mars. In this work
we calculate Af\r{ho} values, and CO/CO2 production rates.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, accepted by Astrophysical Journal Letter
The WISE AGN Catalog
We present two large catalogs of AGN candidates identified across ~75% of the
sky from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer's AllWISE Data Release. Both
catalogs, some of the largest such catalogs published to date, are selected
purely on the basis of mid-IR photometry in the WISE W1 and W2 bands. The
catalogs are designed to be appropriate for a broad range of scientific
investigations, with one catalog emphasizing reliability while the other
emphasizes completeness. Specifically, the R90 catalog consists of 4,543,530
AGN candidates with 90% reliability, while the C75 catalog consists of
20,907,127 AGN candidates with 75% completeness. We provide a detailed
discussion of potential artifacts, and excise portions of the sky close to the
Galactic Center, Galactic Plane, nearby galaxies, and other expected
contaminating sources. Our final catalogs cover 30,093 deg^2 of extragalactic
sky. These catalogs are expected to enable a broad range of science, and we
present a few simple illustrative cases. From the R90 sample we identify 45
highly variable AGN lacking radio counterparts in the FIRST survey, implying
they are unlikely to be blazars. One of these sources, WISEA
J142846.71+172353.1, is a mid-IR-identified changing-look quasar at z=0.104. We
characterize our catalogs by comparing them to large, wide-area AGN catalogs in
the literature, specifically UV-to-near-IR quasar selections from SDSS and
XDQSOz, mid-IR selection from Secrest et al. (2015) and X-ray selection from
ROSAT. From the latter work, we identify four ROSAT X-ray sources that each are
matched to three WISE-selected AGN in the R90 sample within 30". Palomar
spectroscopy reveals one of these systems, 2RXS J150158.6+691029, to consist of
a triplet of quasars at z=1.133 +/- 0.004, suggestive of a rich group or
forming galaxy cluster.(Abridged)Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Supplements.
Updated with comments from the referee. 20 pages, 15 figures, 8 tables. The
WISE AGN Catalogs can be made available upon request by writing to
[email protected]
X-ray emission from the field of the hyperluminous IRAS galaxy IRASF15307+3252
We report on a 20-ks observation of the z = 0.93 hyperluminous galaxy IRAS F15307+3252 with the ROSAT HRI. No X-ray source is detected at the position of F15307+3252 at an upper limit of ∼4 × 10⁴³ erg s⁻¹. This is less than 2 × 10⁻⁴ of the bolometric luminosity of the object, and indicates either that the nucleus emits an unusually small fraction of its total power in X-rays, or that little of the nuclear X-ray flux is scattered into our line of sight by electrons. The lack of an X-ray detection around F15307+3252 also rules out it being at the centre of a cluster, such as is observed for IRAS P09104+4109. A weak, possibly extended, X-ray source is detected 13 arcsec south of the galaxy, spatially coincident with a clump of faint objects visible in a Keck K_s-band image of the field. This may be the core of a cluster near the line of sight to F15307+3252
Structure Function Scaling of a 2MASS Extinction Map of Taurus
We compute the structure function scaling of a 2MASS extinction map of the
Taurus molecular cloud complex. The scaling exponents of the structure
functions of the extinction map follow the Boldyrev's velocity structure
function scaling of supersonic turbulence. This confirms our previous result
based on a spectral map of 13CO J=1-0 covering the same region and suggests
that supersonic turbulence is important in the fragmentation of this
star--forming cloud.Comment: submitted to Ap
SDSSJ14584479+3720215: A Benchmark JHK Blazar Light Curve from the 2MASS Calibration Scans
Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are well-known to exhibit flux variability
across a wide range of wavelength regimes, but the precise origin of the
variability at different wavelengths remains unclear. To investigate the
relatively unexplored near-IR variability of the most luminous AGNs, we conduct
a search for variability using well sampled JHKs-band light curves from the
2MASS survey calibration fields. Our sample includes 27 known quasars with an
average of 924 epochs of observation over three years, as well as one
spectroscopically confirmed blazar (SDSSJ14584479+3720215) with 1972 epochs of
data. This is the best-sampled NIR photometric blazar light curve to date, and
it exhibits correlated, stochastic variability that we characterize with
continuous auto-regressive moving average (CARMA) models. None of the other 26
known quasars had detectable variability in the 2MASS bands above the
photometric uncertainty. A blind search of the 2MASS calibration field light
curves for AGN candidates based on fitting CARMA(1,0) models (damped-random
walk) uncovered only 7 candidates. All 7 were young stellar objects within the
{\rho} Ophiuchus star forming region, five with previous X-ray detections. A
significant {\gamma}-ray detection (5{\sigma}) for the known blazar using 4.5
years of Fermi photon data is also found. We suggest that strong NIR
variability of blazars, such as seen for SDSSJ14584479+3720215, can be used as
an efficient method of identifying previously-unidentified {\gamma}-ray
blazars, with low contamination from other AGN.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, ApJ Accepte
NEOWISE Reactivation Mission Year One: Preliminary Asteroid Diameters and Albedos
We present preliminary diameters and albedos for 7,959 asteroids detected in
the first year of the NEOWISE Reactivation mission. 201 are near-Earth
asteroids (NEAs). 7,758 are Main Belt or Mars-crossing asteroids. 17% of these
objects have not been previously characterized using WISE or NEOWISE thermal
measurements. Diameters are determined to an accuracy of ~20% or better. If
good-quality H magnitudes are available, albedos can be determined to within
~40% or better.Comment: 42 pages, 5 figure
- …