The Multiple Timescales of Optical Variability of the Blazar 3C 279 During the 2001-2002 Outburst

During 2001-2002 the optically violent variable (OVV) blazar 3C 279 un- derwent the most intense outburst seen during the entire fourteen year history that this quasar has been studied at Colgate University's Foggy Bottom Obser- vatory (FBO). This study concentrates on ~1600 R-filter images taken during this period of activity. This data set includes twenty-nine nights of microvari- ability coverage. The outburst began in March 2001, after 3C 279 had faded to its faintest level, R = 15.5, in four years. The source reached its brightest level, R = 12.5, in the fourteen years of our study in August 2001, at which time it became unobservable due to its proximity to the Sun. Upon becoming observable again in mid-December 2001, 3C 279 fluctuated between R = 13.9 and R = 14.7, until a dramatic decrease in flux level in June-July 2002 brought the source back down to a level comparable to its pre-outburst state. The source exhibited numerous week-long flares of approximately one magnitude during the outburst period. Superposed on these flares were night-to-night variations of up to one half magnitude and intra-night microvariability of up to 0.13 magnitude in three hours. We use visual inspection of the light curve as well as numerical timescale analysis tools (the autocorrelation function, the structure function, and the power spectrum) to characterize the multiple timescales of variability ranging from 1.5 years to several hours.Comment: 44 pages, 21 figures, 3 tables Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journa

The Dependence of Galaxy Properties on the Underlying 3D Matter Density Field at 2.0<z<2.5

We study the environmental effect of galaxy evolution as a function of the underlying 3D dark matter density for the first time at $z=2-2.5$, in which the underlying matter density is reconstructed from galaxy and Ly$\alpha$ forest spectroscopy through dynamical forward modeling techniques. Utilizing these maps, we investigate the dependence of the star formation activities and galaxy types (mergers, submillimeter galaxies, active galactic nuclei, and quiescent galaxies) on the matter overdensity $\Delta$ and stellar mass. For the first time, we are able to probe underdense regions ($\Delta <1$) in addition to overdensities. We find that star formation activity generally depend on the stellar mass, not the matter density, except for high-mass galaxies ($M_*\geq10^{10.5}$ M$_\odot$) which show a drop in star formation activities by a factor of more than $30$ if they reside in high density regions with $\Delta\geq4-6$. We also find: (1) an absence of mergers and submillimeter galaxies in higher-density regions but otherwise no trend across lower-density bins, (2) the increase of active galactic nuclei and quiescent galaxy prevalence as a function of matter density, and (3) the increase of all aforementioned categories with the stellar mass. These results indicate that mass is the main driver of galaxy evolution. Nonetheless, we also find evidence for environmental quenching, particularly for high-mass galaxies in high-density environments. Our novel approach directly using reconstructed dark matter density maps demonstrates the new capability of the environmental effect studies in galaxy evolution at higher redshift.Comment: 21 pages, 11 figures, submitted to ApJ, comments welcom

A Multiwavelength Study of a Sample of 70 μm Selected Galaxies in the COSMOS Field. II. The Role of Mergers in Galaxy Evolution

We analyze the morphological properties of a large sample of 1503 70 μm selected galaxies in the COSMOS field spanning the redshift range 0.01 10^(12) L_☉) being up to ~50%. We also find that the fraction of spirals drops dramatically with L_(IR). Minor mergers likely play a role in boosting the infrared luminosity for sources with low luminosities (L_(IR) 1 being difficult to classify and subject to the effects of bandpass shifting; therefore, these numbers can only be considered lower limits. At z 1, the fraction of major mergers is lower, but is at least 30%-40% for ULIRGs. In a comparison of our visual classifications with several automated classification techniques we find general agreement; however, the fraction of identified mergers is underestimated due to automated classification methods being sensitive to only certain timescales of a major merger. Although the general morphological trends agree with what has been observed for local (U)LIRGs, the fraction of major mergers is slightly lower than seen locally. This is in part due to the difficulty of identifying merger signatures at high redshift. The distribution of the U – V color of the galaxies in our sample peaks in the green valley (= 1.1) with a large spread at bluer and redder colors and with the major mergers peaking more strongly in the green valley than the rest of the morphological classes. We argue that, given the number of major gas-rich mergers observed and the relatively short timescale that they would be observable in the (U)LIRG phase, it is plausible for the observed red sequence of massive ellipticals (<10^(12) M_☉) to have been formed entirely by gas-rich major mergers

Mock Galaxy Surveys for HST and JWST from the IllustrisTNG Simulations

We present and analyze a series of synthetic galaxy survey fields based on the IllustrisTNG Simulation suite. With the Illustris public data release and JupyterLab service, we generated a set of twelve lightcone catalogs covering areas from 5 to 365 square arcminutes, similar to several JWST Cycle 1 programs, including JADES, CEERS, PRIMER, and NGDEEP. From these catalogs, we queried the public API to generate simple mock images in a series of broadband filters used by JWST-NIRCam and the Hubble Space Telescope cameras. This procedure generates wide-area simulated mosaic images that can support investigating the predicted evolution of galaxies alongside real data. Using these mocks, we demonstrate a few simple science cases, including morphological evolution and close pair selection. We publicly release the catalogs and mock images through MAST, along with the code used to generate these projects, so that the astrophysics community can make use of these products in their scientific analyses of JWST deep field observations.Comment: Accepted to MNRA

A Far-infrared Characterization of 24 μm Selected Galaxies at 0 < z < 2.5 using Stacking at 70 μm and 160 μm in the COSMOS Field

We present a study of the average properties of luminous infrared galaxies detected directly at 24 μm in the COSMOS field using a median stacking analysis at 70 μm and 160 μm. Over 35,000 sources spanning 0 ≤ z ≤ 3 and 0.06 mJy ≤ S_(24) ≤ 3.0 mJy are stacked, divided into bins of both photometric redshift and 24 μm flux. We find no correlation of S_(70)/S_(24) flux density ratio with S_(24), but find that galaxies with higher S_(24) have a lower S_(160)/S_(24) flux density ratio. These observed ratios suggest that 24 μm selected galaxies have warmer spectral energy distributions (SEDs) at higher mid-IR fluxes, and therefore have a possible higher fraction of active galactic nuclei. Comparisons of the average S_(70)/S_(24) and S_(160)/S_(24) colors with various empirical templates and theoretical models show that the galaxies detected at 24 μm are consistent with "normal" star-forming galaxies and warm mid-IR galaxies such as Mrk 231, but inconsistent with heavily obscured galaxies such as Arp 220. We perform a χ^2 analysis to determine best-fit galactic model SEDs and total IR luminosities for each of our bins. We compare our results to previous methods of estimating L IR and find that previous methods show considerable agreement over the full redshift range, except for the brightest S_(24) sources, where they overpredict the bolometric IR luminosity at high redshift, most likely due to their warmer dust SED. We present a table that can be used as a more accurate and robust method for estimating bolometric infrared luminosity from 24 μm flux densities