62 research outputs found
Missing Lensed Images and the Galaxy Disk Mass in CXOCY J220132.8-320144
The CXOCY J220132.8-320144 system consists of an edge-on spiral galaxy
lensing a background quasar into two bright images. Previous efforts to
constrain the mass distribution in the galaxy have suggested that at least one
additional image must be present (Castander et al. 2006). These extra images
may be hidden behind the disk which features a prominent dust lane. We present
and analyze Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of the system. We do not
detect any extra images, but the observations further narrow the observable
parameters of the lens system. We explore a range of models to describe the
mass distribution in the system and find that a variety of acceptable model
fits exist. All plausible models require 2 magnitudes of dust extinction in
order to obscure extra images from detection, and some models may require an
offset between the center of the galaxy and the center of the dark matter halo
of 1 kiloparsec. Currently unobserved images will be detectable by future James
Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations and will provide strict constraints on
the fraction of mass in the disk.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, 6 tables. Minor changes, version accepted for
publication in Ap
CosmoHub : Interactive exploration and distribution of astronomical data on Hadoop
We present CosmoHub (https://cosmohub.pic.es), a web application based on Hadoop to perform interactive exploration and distribution of massive cosmological datasets. Recent Cosmology seeks to unveil the nature of both dark matter and dark energy mapping the large-scale structure of the Universe, through the analysis of massive amounts of astronomical data, progressively increasing during the last (and future) decades with the digitization and automation of the experimental techniques. CosmoHub, hosted and developed at the Port d'Informacio Científica (PIC), provides support to a worldwide community of scientists, without requiring the end user to know any Structured Query Language (SQL). It is serving data of several large international collaborations such as the Euclid space mission, the Dark Energy Survey (DES), the Physics of the Accelerating Universe Survey (PAUS) and the Marenostrum Institut de Ciencies de l'Espai (MICE) numerical simulations. While originally developed as a PostgreSQL relational database web frontend, this work describes the current version of CosmoHub, built on top of Apache Hive, which facilitates scalable reading, writing and managing huge datasets. As CosmoHub's datasets are seldomly modified, Hive it is a better fit. Over 60 TiB of catalogued information and 50 × 109 astronomical objects can be interactively explored using an integrated visualization tool which includes 1D histogram and 2D heatmap plots. In our current implementation, online exploration of datasets of 109 objects can be done in a timescale of tens of seconds. Users can also download customized subsets of data in standard formats generated in few minutes
The PAU survey: Estimating galaxy photometry with deep learning
With the dramatic rise in high-quality galaxy data expected from Euclid and
Vera C. Rubin Observatory, there will be increasing demand for fast
high-precision methods for measuring galaxy fluxes. These will be essential for
inferring the redshifts of the galaxies. In this paper, we introduce Lumos, a
deep learning method to measure photometry from galaxy images. Lumos builds on
BKGnet, an algorithm to predict the background and its associated error, and
predicts the background-subtracted flux probability density function. We have
developed Lumos for data from the Physics of the Accelerating Universe Survey
(PAUS), an imaging survey using 40 narrow-band filter camera (PAUCam). PAUCam
images are affected by scattered light, displaying a background noise pattern
that can be predicted and corrected for. On average, Lumos increases the SNR of
the observations by a factor of 2 compared to an aperture photometry algorithm.
It also incorporates other advantages like robustness towards distorting
artifacts, e.g. cosmic rays or scattered light, the ability of deblending and
less sensitivity to uncertainties in the galaxy profile parameters used to
infer the photometry. Indeed, the number of flagged photometry outlier
observations is reduced from 10% to 2%, comparing to aperture photometry.
Furthermore, with Lumos photometry, the photo-z scatter is reduced by ~10% with
the Deepz machine learning photo-z code and the photo-z outlier rate by 20%.
The photo-z improvement is lower than expected from the SNR increment, however
currently the photometric calibration and outliers in the photometry seem to be
its limiting factor.Comment: 20 pages, 22 figure
Galaxy clusters and groups in the ALHAMBRA Survey
We present a catalogue of 348 galaxy clusters and groups with
selected in the 2.78 ALHAMBRA Survey. The high precision of our
photometric redshifts, close to , and the wide spread of the seven
ALHAMBRA pointings ensure that this catalogue has better mass sensitivity and
is less affected by cosmic variance than comparable samples.
The detection has been carried out with the Bayesian Cluster Finder (BCF),
whose performance has been checked in ALHAMBRA-like light-cone mock catalogues.
Great care has been taken to ensure that the observable properties of the mocks
photometry accurately correspond to those of real catalogues. From our
simulations, we expect to detect galaxy clusters and groups with both
completeness and purity down to dark matter halo masses of
for . Cluster redshifts are
expected to be recovered with precision for . We also expect
to measure cluster masses with
precision down to , masses which are
smaller than those reached by similar work.
We have compared these detections with previous optical, spectroscopic and
X-rays work, finding an excellent agreement with the rates reported from the
simulations. We have also explored the overall properties of these detections
such as the presence of a colour-magnitude relation, the evolution of the
photometric blue fraction and the clustering of these sources in the different
ALHAMBRA fields. Despite the small numbers, we observe tentative evidence that,
for a fixed stellar mass, the environment is playing a crucial role at lower
redshifts (z0.5).Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Catalogues and figures available
online and under the following link:
http://bascaso.net46.net/ALHAMBRA_clusters.htm
The impact from survey depth and resolution on the morphological classification of galaxies
We consistently analyse for the first time the impact of survey depth and spatial resolution on the most used morphological parameters for classifying galaxies through non-parametric methods: Abraham and Conselice-Bershady concentration indices, Gini, M20moment of light, asymmetry, and smoothness. Three different non-local data sets are used, Advanced Large Homogeneous Area Medium Band Redshift Astronomical (ALHAMBRA) and Subaru/XMMNewton Deep Survey (SXDS, examples of deep ground-based surveys), and Cosmos Evolution Survey (COSMOS, deep space-based survey). We used a sample of 3000 local, visually classified galaxies, measuring their morphological parameters at their real redshifts (z ~ 0). Then we simulated them to match the redshift and magnitude distributions of galaxies in the non-local surveys. The comparisons of the two sets allow us to put constraints on the use of each parameter for morphological classification and evaluate the effectiveness of the commonly used morphological diagnostic diagrams. All analysed parameters suffer from biases related to spatial resolution and depth, the impact of the former being much stronger. When including asymmetry and smoothness in classification diagrams, the noise effects must be taken into account carefully, especially for ground-based surveys. M20 is significantly affected, changing both the shape and range of its distribution at all brightness levels. We suggest that diagnostic diagrams based on 2-3 parameters should be avoided when classifying galaxies in ground-based surveys, independently of their brightness; for COSMOS they should be avoided for galaxies fainter than F814 = 23.0. These results can be applied directly to surveys similar to ALHAMBRA, SXDS and COSMOS, and also can serve as an upper/lower limit for shallower/deeper ones.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad AYA2010-15169, AYA2013-42227-P, AYA2013-4318
The Multi-Object, Fiber-Fed Spectrographs for SDSS and the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey
We present the design and performance of the multi-object fiber spectrographs
for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and their upgrade for the Baryon
Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). Originally commissioned in Fall 1999
on the 2.5-m aperture Sloan Telescope at Apache Point Observatory, the
spectrographs produced more than 1.5 million spectra for the SDSS and SDSS-II
surveys, enabling a wide variety of Galactic and extra-galactic science
including the first observation of baryon acoustic oscillations in 2005. The
spectrographs were upgraded in 2009 and are currently in use for BOSS, the
flagship survey of the third-generation SDSS-III project. BOSS will measure
redshifts of 1.35 million massive galaxies to redshift 0.7 and Lyman-alpha
absorption of 160,000 high redshift quasars over 10,000 square degrees of sky,
making percent level measurements of the absolute cosmic distance scale of the
Universe and placing tight constraints on the equation of state of dark energy.
The twin multi-object fiber spectrographs utilize a simple optical layout
with reflective collimators, gratings, all-refractive cameras, and
state-of-the-art CCD detectors to produce hundreds of spectra simultaneously in
two channels over a bandpass covering the near ultraviolet to the near
infrared, with a resolving power R = \lambda/FWHM ~ 2000. Building on proven
heritage, the spectrographs were upgraded for BOSS with volume-phase
holographic gratings and modern CCD detectors, improving the peak throughput by
nearly a factor of two, extending the bandpass to cover 360 < \lambda < 1000
nm, and increasing the number of fibers from 640 to 1000 per exposure. In this
paper we describe the original SDSS spectrograph design and the upgrades
implemented for BOSS, and document the predicted and measured performances.Comment: 43 pages, 42 figures, revised according to referee report and
accepted by AJ. Provides background for the instrument responsible for SDSS
and BOSS spectra. 4th in a series of survey technical papers released in
Summer 2012, including arXiv:1207.7137 (DR9), arXiv:1207.7326 (Spectral
Classification), and arXiv:1208.0022 (BOSS Overview
Redshift distributions of galaxies in the Dark Energy Survey Science Verification shear catalogue and implications for weak lensing
We present photometric redshift estimates for galaxies used in the weak lensing analysis of the Dark Energy Survey Science Verification (DES SV) data. Four model- or machine learning-based photometric redshift methods—ANNZ2, BPZ calibrated against BCC-Ufig simulations, SKYNET, and TPZ—are analyzed. For training, calibration, and testing of these methods, we construct a catalogue of spectroscopically confirmed galaxies matched against DES SV data. The performance of the methods is evaluated against the matched spectroscopic catalogue, focusing on metrics relevant for weak lensing analyses, with additional validation against COSMOS photo-z’s. From the galaxies in the DES SV shear catalogue, which have mean redshift 0.72 0.01 over the range 0.3 < z < 1.3, we construct three tomographic bins with means of z ¼ f0.45; 0.67; 1.00g. These bins each have systematic uncertainties δz ≲ 0.05 in the mean of the fiducial SKYNET photo-z nðzÞ. We propagate the errors in the redshift distributions through to their impact on cosmological parameters estimated with cosmic shear, and find that they cause shifts in the value of σ8 of approximately 3%. This shift is within the one sigma statistical errors on σ8 for the DES SV shear catalogue. We further study the potential impact of systematic differences on the critical surface density, Σcrit, finding levels of bias safely less than the statistical power of DES SV data. We recommend a final Gaussian prior for the photo-z bias in the mean of nðzÞ of width 0.05 for each of the three tomographic bins, and show that this is a sufficient bias model for the corresponding cosmology analysis
The Dark Energy Survey : more than dark energy – an overview
This overview paper describes the legacy prospect and discovery potential of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) beyond cosmological studies, illustrating it with examples from the DES early data. DES is using a wide-field camera (DECam) on the 4 m Blanco Telescope in Chile to image 5000 sq deg of the sky in five filters (grizY). By its completion, the survey is expected to have generated a catalogue of 300 million galaxies with photometric redshifts and 100 million stars. In addition, a time-domain survey search over 27 sq deg is expected to yield a sample of thousands of Type Ia supernovae and other transients. The main goals of DES are to characterize dark energy and dark matter, and to test alternative models of gravity; these goals will be pursued by studying large-scale structure, cluster counts, weak gravitational lensing and Type Ia supernovae. However, DES also provides a rich data set which allows us to study many other aspects of astrophysics. In this paper, we focus on additional science with DES, emphasizing areas where the survey makes a difference with respect to other current surveys. The paper illustrates, using early data (from ‘Science Verification’, and from the first, second and third seasons of observations), what DES can tell us about the Solar system, the Milky Way, galaxy evolution, quasars and other topics. In addition, we show that if the cosmological model is assumed to be +cold dark matter, then important astrophysics can be deduced from the primary DES probes. Highlights from DES early data include the discovery of 34 trans-Neptunian objects, 17 dwarf satellites of the Milky Way, one published z > 6 quasar (and more confirmed) and two published superluminous supernovae (and more confirmed)
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