Eight new Milky Way companions discovered in first-year Dark Energy Survey data

We report the discovery of eight new Milky Way companions in ~1800 deg2 of optical imaging data collected during the first year of the Dark Energy Survey (DES). Each system is identified as a statistically significant overdensity of individual stars consistent with the expected isochrone and luminosity function of an old and metal-poor stellar population. The objects span a wide range of absolute magnitudes (MV from -2.2 to -7.4 mag), physical sizes (10-170 pc), and heliocentric distances (30-330 kpc). Based on the low surface brightnesses, large physical sizes, and/or large Galactocentric distances of these objects, several are likely to be new ultra-faint satellite galaxies of the Milky Way and/or Magellanic Clouds. We introduce a likelihood-based algorithm to search for and characterize stellar over-densities, as well as identify stars with high satellite membership probabilities. We also present completeness estimates for detecting ultra-faint galaxies of varying luminosities, sizes, and heliocentric distances in the first-year DES data

OzDES Reverberation Mapping Programme: the first Mg II lags from 5 yr of monitoring

Reverberation mapping is a robust method to measure the masses of supermassive black holes outside of the local Universe. Measurements of the radius–luminosity (R−L) relation using the Mg ii emission line are critical for determining these masses near the peak of quasar activity at z ≈ 1−2, and for calibrating secondary mass estimators based on Mg ii that can be applied to large samples with only single-epoch spectroscopy. We present the first nine Mg ii lags from our 5-yr Australian Dark Energy Survey reverberation mapping programme, which substantially improves the number and quality of Mg ii lag measurements. As the Mg ii feature is somewhat blended with iron emission, we model and subtract both the continuum and iron contamination from the multiepoch spectra before analysing the Mg ii line. We also develop a new method of quantifying correlated spectroscopic calibration errors based on our numerous, contemporaneous observations of F-stars. The lag measurements for seven of our nine sources are consistent with both the H β and Mg ii R−L relations reported by previous studies. Our simulations verify the lag reliability of our nine measurements, and we estimate that the median false positive rate of the lag measurements is 4 per cen

Dark energy survey operations: years 4 and 5

The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is an operating optical survey aimed at understanding the accelerating expansion of the universe using four complementary methods: weak gravitational lensing, galaxy cluster counts, baryon acoustic oscillations, and Type Ia supernovae. To perform the 5000 sq-degree wide field and 30 sq-degree supernova surveys, the DES Collaboration built the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), a 3 square-degree, 570-Megapixel CCD camera that was installed at the prime focus of the Blanco 4-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO). DES has completed its third observing season out of a nominal five. This paper describes DES "Year 4" (Y4) and "Year 5" (Y5), the survey strategy, an outline of the survey operations procedures, the efficiency of operations and the causes of lost observing time. It provides details about the quality of these two-season's data, a summary of the overall status, and plans for the final survey season.U.S. Department of Energy; U.S. National Science Foundation; Ministry of Science and Education of Spain; Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom; Higher Education Funding Council for England; National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago; Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics at the Ohio State University; Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas AM University; Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, Fundacao Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico; Ministerio da Ciencia, Tecnologia e Inovacao; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; Dark Energy Survey; National Science Foundation [AST-1138766, AST-1536171]; MINECO [AYA2015-71825, ESP2015-66861, FPA2015-68048, SEV-2016-0588, SEV-2016-0597, MDM-2015-0509]; European Union; CERCA program of the Generalitat de Catalunya; European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013) including ERC grant [240672, 291329, 306478]; Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO) [CE110001020]; Brazilian Instituto Nacional de Ciencia e Tecnologia (INCT) e-Universe (CNPq) [465376/2014-2]; U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics [DE-AC02-07CH11359]; Argonne National Laboratory; University of California at Santa Cruz; University of Cambridge; Centro de Investigaciones Energeticas; Medioambientales y Tecnologicas-Madrid; University of Chicago; University College London; DES-Brazil Consortium; University of Edinburgh; Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zurich; Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Institut de Ciencies de l'Espai (IEEC/CSIC); Institut de Fisica d'Altes Energies; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Ludwig-Maximilians Universitat Munchen; associated Excellence Cluster Universe; University of Michigan; National Optical Astronomy Observatory; University of Nottingham; Ohio State University; University of Pennsylvania; University of Portsmouth; SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; Stanford University; University of Sussex; OzDES Membership Consortium; Texas AM UniversityThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]