1,675 research outputs found
Spitzer IRS observations of k plus a galaxies: a link between polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon emission properties and active galactic nucleus feedback?
We have performed Spitzer InfraRed Spectrograph (IRS) low-resolution 5-12 mu m spectroscopy on a sample of galaxies selected to be at three distinct poststarburst evolutionary stages based on their optical spectral indices. The resulting IRS spectra show distinctive polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emission line structures at 6.2, 7.7, 8.6, and 11.3 mu m and little silicate absorption, indicative of ongoing star formation. However, the PAH interline ratios, in particular the 11.3/6.2 mu m and 7.7/6.2 mu m ratio, show large variations. These variations are found to correlate with both time since the most recent starburst and active galactic nucleus (AGN) activity. We speculate that the evolution observed in these PAH ratios is related to an increase in AGN activity with time since starburst
The Civic-Minded Instructional Designers (CMID) framework: Educating instructional designers with community-based service-learning approaches
This dissertation examines the issue of academic preparation of future professional instructional designers in the context of higher academic institutions. It is presented in non-traditional dissertation format as approved by the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Iowa State University. The dissertation is comprised of three publishable journal articles that would represent Chapters 2, 3 and 4 of a more traditional dissertation, along with introduction and conclusion chapters. The dissertation argues that current approaches to educate instructional designers are career-centered and technically-oriented, resulting in production of an elite group of instructional designers - designers whose services become exclusively available only to selective clients and therefore disregarding the majority of others. The first study is therefore focused on understanding the concept of civic professionalism in Instructional Design and Technology (IDT). A novel framework based on synthesis of literature is proposed to educate civic-minded instructional designers. Using this proposed Civic-Minded Instructional Designers (CMID) framework to design an instructional experience, the second ethnographic study investigates just how a group of three IDT students enacted their civic-minded agencies and discusses the challenges they faced in their roles as consultants to three non-profit organizations. Data were gathered through participant-observation techniques and complemented with participants\u27 interviews, analyses of their works, and a researcher\u27s reflective journal. Findings reveal that students enacted their civic-minded activity by addressing community members\u27 needs, giving voices to their community partners, addressing issue of projects\u27 sustainability, being sensitive to community partners\u27 perspectives while diplomatically voicing professional opinions, and acknowledging their community partners as design partners . In navigating these challenges, they were found to continuously make adjustments, to reconfigured their roles, and to built trusting relationships with their community partners as civic-minded agents. This second study contributes towards better understanding of instructional designers\u27 roles within larger social contexts. The third study additionally explores the potential use of a service-learning pedagogical approach to educate civic-minded instructional designers. Using a naturalistic inquiry approach, it explores the benefits and challenges of integrating service-learning in the context of an introductory IDT course. Data were gathered via observations, participants\u27 interviews, and analyses of participants\u27 artifacts, including their online discussions, written reflections, and project work. Findings revealed that the service-learning approach allows students to gain a better understanding of the course content and to escalate their civic values. Two main challenges identified were in the form of severe group conflicts triggered by a combination of relationship, task, and processes related to the project work, and problems in gaining access to resources. While these challenges impacted students\u27 quality of work, they were also found to prompt students to better understand themselves as instructional designers and as individuals. Together, these research elements provide insights on the concept of civic professionalism, a critical yet unexplored aspect of IDT literature, in the IDT field. Most importantly, it provides a reconceptualization by looking at IDT as a profession, and offers an alternative way of preparing professional instructional designers at higher education institutions
Starburst and AGN activity in ultraluminous infrared galaxies
(Abridged) We examine the power source of 41 local Ultraluminous Infrared
Galaxies using archival infrared and optical photometry. We fit the observed
Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs) with starburst and AGN components; each
component being drawn from a family of templates. We find all of the sample
require a starburst, whereas only half require an AGN. In 90% of the sample the
starburst provides over half the IR emission, with a mean fractional luminosity
of 82%. When combined with other galaxy samples we find that starburst and AGN
luminosities correlate over 6 decades in IR luminosity suggesting that a common
factor governs both luminosities, plausibly the gas masses in the nuclear
regions. We find that the mid-IR 7.7 micron line-continuum ratio is no
indication of the starburst luminosity, or the fractional AGN luminosity, and
therefore that this ratio is not a reliable diagnostic of the power source in
ULIRGs. We propose that the scatter in the radio-IR correlation in ULIRGs is
due to a skewed starburst IMF and/or relic relativistic electrons from a
previous starburst, rather than contamination from an obscured AGN. We show
that most ULIRGs undergo multiple starbursts during their lifetime, and by
inference that mergers between more than two galaxies may be common amongst
ULIRGs. Our results support the evolutionary model for ULIRGs proposed by
Farrah et al 2001, where they can follow many different evolutionary paths of
starburst and AGN activity in transforming merging spiral galaxies into
elliptical galaxies, but that most do not go through an optical QSO phase. The
lower level of AGN activity in our local sample than in z~1 HLIRGs implies that
the two samples are distinct populations. We postulate that different galaxy
formation processes at high-z are responsible for this difference.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA
HST imaging of hyperluminous infrared galaxies
We present HST WFPC2 I band imaging for a sample of 9 Hyperluminous Infrared
Galaxies spanning a redshift range 0.45 < z < 1.34. Three of the sample have
morphologies showing evidence for interactions, six are QSOs. Host galaxies in
the QSOs are reliably detected out to z ~ 0.8. The detected QSO host galaxies
have an elliptical morphology with scalelengths spanning 6.5 < r_{e}(Kpc) < 88
and absolute k corrected magnitudes spanning -24.5 < M_{I} < -25.2. There is no
clear correlation between the IR power source and the optical morphology. None
of the sources in the sample, including F15307+3252, show any evidence for
gravitational lensing. We infer that the IR luminosities are thus real. Based
on these results, and previous studies of HLIRGs, we conclude that this class
of object is broadly consistent with being a simple extrapolation of the ULIRG
population to higher luminosities; ULIRGs being mainly violently interacting
systems powered by starbursts and/or AGN. Only a small number of sources whose
infrared luminosities exceed 10^{13}Lsun are intrinsically less luminous
objects which have been boosted by gravitational lensing.Comment: 16 Pages. Accepted for publication in MNRA
Sub-millimetre observations of hyperluminous infrared galaxies
We present sub-mm photometry for 11 Hyperluminous Infrared Galaxies (HLIRGs)
and use radiative transfer models for starbursts and AGN to investigate the IR
emission. In all sources both a starburst and AGN are required to explain the
IR emission. The mean starburst fraction is 35%, with a range spanning 80%
starburst dominated to 80% AGN dominated. In all cases the starburst dominates
at rest-frame wavelengths >50 microns, with star formation rates >500 solar
masses per year. The trend of increasing AGN fraction with increasing IR
luminosity seen in IRAS galaxies peaks in HLIRGs, and is not higher than the
fraction seen in bright ULIRGs. The AGN and starburst luminosities correlate,
suggesting that a common physical factor, plausibly the dust masses, governs
their luminosities. Our results suggest that the HLIRG population is comprised
both of ULIRG-like galaxy mergers, and of young galaxies going through their
maximal star formation periods whilst harbouring an AGN. The coeval AGN and
starburst activity in our sources implies that starburst and AGN activity, and
the peak starburst and AGN luminosities, can be coeval in active galaxies
generally. When extrapolated to high-z our sources have comparable sub-mm
fluxes to sub-mm survey sources. At least some sub-mm survey sources are
therefore likely to be comprised of similar galaxy populations to those found
in the HLIRG population. It is also plausible from these results that high-z
sub-mm sources harbour heavily obscured AGN. The differences in X-ray and
sub-mm properties between HLIRGs at z~1 and sub-mm sources at z~3 implies
evolution between the two epochs. Either the mean AGN obscuration level is
greater at z~3 than at z~1, or the fraction of IR-luminous sources at z~3 that
contain AGN is smaller than that at z~1.Comment: 15 pages. Accepted for publication in MNRA
Principal Component Analysis and Radiative Transfer modelling of Spitzer IRS Spectra of Ultra Luminous Infrared Galaxies
The mid-infrared spectra of ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) contain
a variety of spectral features that can be used as diagnostics to characterise
the spectra. However, such diagnostics are biased by our prior prejudices on
the origin of the features. Moreover, by using only part of the spectrum they
do not utilise the full information content of the spectra. Blind statistical
techniques such as principal component analysis (PCA) consider the whole
spectrum, find correlated features and separate them out into distinct
components.
We further investigate the principal components (PCs) of ULIRGs derived in
Wang et al.(2011). We quantitatively show that five PCs is optimal for
describing the IRS spectra. These five components (PC1-PC5) and the mean
spectrum provide a template basis set that reproduces spectra of all z<0.35
ULIRGs within the noise. For comparison, the spectra are also modelled with a
combination of radiative transfer models of both starbursts and the dusty torus
surrounding active galactic nuclei. The five PCs typically provide better fits
than the models. We argue that the radiative transfer models require a colder
dust component and have difficulty in modelling strong PAH features.
Aided by the models we also interpret the physical processes that the
principal components represent. The third principal component is shown to
indicate the nature of the dominant power source, while PC1 is related to the
inclination of the AGN torus.
Finally, we use the 5 PCs to define a new classification scheme using 5D
Gaussian mixtures modelling and trained on widely used optical classifications.
The five PCs, average spectra for the four classifications and the code to
classify objects are made available at: http://www.phys.susx.ac.uk/~pdh21/PCA/Comment: 11 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
The X-ray Spectrum of the z=6.30 QSO SDSS J1030+0524
We present a deep XMM-Newton observation of the z=6.30 QSO SDSS J1030+0524,
the second most distant quasar currently known. The data contain sufficient
counts for spectral analysis, demonstrating the ability of XMM-Newton to
measure X-ray spectral shapes of z~6 QSOs with integration times >100ks. The
X-ray spectrum is well fit by a power law with index Gamma=2.12 +/- 0.11, an
optical-X-ray spectral slope of a_{ox}=-1.80, and no absorption excess to the
Galactic value, though our data are also consistent with a power law index in
the range 2.02 < Gamma < 2.5 and excess absorption in the range 0 < N_H(cm^-2)
< 8x10^22. There is also a possible detection (2 sigma) of FeKa emission. The
X-ray properties of this QSO are, overall, similar to those of lower-redshift
radio-quiet QSOs. This is consistent with the statement that the X-ray
properties of radio-quiet QSOs show no evolution over 0<z<6.3. Combined with
previous results, this QSO appears indistinguishable in any way from lower
redshift QSOs, indicating that QSOs comparable to those seen locally existed
less than one Gyr after the Big Bang.Comment: ApJ Letters, accepte
Learning the fundamental mid-infrared spectral components of galaxies with non-negative matrix factorization
The mid-infrared (MIR) spectra observed with the Spitzer Infrared Spectrograph (IRS) provide a valuable data set for untangling the physical processes and conditions within galaxies. This paper presents the first attempt to blindly learn fundamental spectral components of MIR galaxy spectra, using non-negative matrix factorization (NMF). NMF is a recently developed multivariate technique shown to be successful in blind source separation problems. Unlike the more popular multivariate analysis technique, principal component analysis, NMF imposes the condition that weights and spectral components are non-negative. This more closely resembles the physical process of emission in the MIR, resulting in physically intuitive components. By applying NMF to galaxy spectra in the Cornell Atlas of Spitzer/IRS sources, we find similar components amongst different NMF sets. These similar components include two for active galactic nucleus (AGN) emission and one for star formation. The first AGN component is dominated by fine structure emission lines and hot dust, the second by broad silicate emission at 10 and 18 ÎĽm. The star formation component contains all the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon features and molecular hydrogen lines. Other components include rising continuums at longer wavelengths, indicative of colder grey-body dust emission. We show an NMF set with seven components can reconstruct the general spectral shape of a wide variety of objects, though struggle to fit the varying strength of emission lines. We also show that the seven components can be used to separate out different types of objects. We model this separation with Gaussian mixtures modelling and use the result to provide a classification tool. We also show that the NMF components can be used to separate out the emission from AGN and star formation regions and define a new star formation/AGN diagnostic which is consistent with all MIR diagnostics already in use but has the advantage that it can be applied to MIR spectra with low signal-to-noise ratio or with limited spectral range. The seven NMF components and code for classification are available at https://github.com/pdh21/NMF_software/
On the far-infrared metallicity diagnostics: applications to high-redshift galaxies
In an earlier paper we modeled the far-infrared emission from a star-forming
galaxy using the photoionisation code CLOUDY and presented metallicity
sensitive diagnostics based on far-infrared fine structure line ratios. Here,
we focus on the applicability of the [OIII]88/[NII]122 microns line ratio as a
gas phase metallicity indicator in high redshift submillimetre luminous
galaxies. The [OIII]88/[NII]122 microns ratio is strongly dependent on the
ionization parameter (which is related to the total number of ionizing photons)
as well as the gas electron density. We demonstrate how the ratio of 88/$122
continuum flux measurements can provide a reasonable estimate of the ionization
parameter while the availability of the [NII]205 microns line can constrain the
electron density. Using the [OIII]88/[NII]122 microns line ratios from a sample
of nearby normal and star-forming galaxies we measure their gas phase
metallicities and find that their mass metallicity relation is consistent with
the one derived using optical emission lines. Using new, previously
unpublished, Herschel spectroscopic observations of key far-infrared fine
structure lines of the z~3 galaxy HLSW-01 and additional published measurements
of far-infrared fine structure lines of high-z submillimetre luminous galaxies
we derive gas phase metallicities using their [OIII]88/[NII]122 microns line
ratio. We find that the metallicities of these z~3 submm luminous galaxies are
consistent with solar metallicities and that they appear to follow the
mass-metallicity relation expected for z~3 systems.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, MNRAS in pres
Spectral energy distributions of quasars selected in the mid-infrared
We present preliminary results on fitting of SEDs to 142 z>1 quasars selected
in the mid-infrared. Our quasar selection finds objects ranging in extinction
from highly obscured, type-2 quasars, through more lightly reddened type-1
quasars and normal type-1s. We find a weak tendency for the objects with the
highest far-infrared emission to be obscured quasars, but no bulk systematic
offset between the far-infrared properties of dusty and normal quasars as might
be expected in the most naive evolutionary schemes. The hosts of the type-2
quasars have stellar masses comparable to those of radio galaxies at similar
redshifts. Many of the type-1s, and possibly one of the type-2s require a very
hot dust component in addition to the normal torus emission.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the proceedings of The Spectral
Energy Distribution of Galaxies, Preston, September 2011, eds R.J. Tuffs &
C.C. Popesc
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