735 research outputs found
The identification of the optical companion to the binary millisecond pulsar J0610-2100 in the Galactic field
We have used deep V and R images acquired at the ESO Very Large Telescope to
identify the optical companion to the binary pulsar PSR J0610-2100, one of the
black-widow millisecond pulsars recently detected by the Fermi Gamma-ray
Telescope in the Galactic plane. We found a faint star (V~26.7) nearly
coincident (\delta r ~0".28) with the pulsar nominal position. This star is
visible only in half of the available images, while it disappears in the
deepest ones (those acquired under the best seeing conditions), thus indicating
that it is variable. Although our observations do not sample the entire orbital
period (P=0.28 d) of the pulsar, we found that the optical modulation of the
variable star nicely correlates with the pulsar orbital period and describes a
well defined peak (R~25.6) at \Phi=0.75, suggesting a modulation due to the
pulsar heating. We tentatively conclude that the companion to PSR J0610-2100 is
a heavily ablated very low mass star (~ 0.02Msun) that completely filled its
Roche Lobe.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures - Accepted for pubblication in Ap
Pictor A (PKS 0518-45) - From Nucleus to Lobes
We present radio and optical imaging and kinematic data for the radio galaxy
Pictor A, including HST continuum and [OIII], emission-line images (at a
resolution of 25 - 100 mas) and ground-based imaging and spectroscopy (at a
resolution of ~ 1.5". The radio data include 3 cm Australia Telescope images of
the core, at a resolution comparable to that of the optical, ground-based
images, and a VLBI image of a jet in the compact core (at a resolution of 2 -
25 mas), which seems to align with a continuum ``jet'' found in the HST images.
The core radio jet, the HST optical continuum ``jet'', and the NW H-alpha
filaments all appear to point toward the optical-synchrotron hot-spot in the NW
lobe of this object and are associated with a disrupted velocity field in the
extended ionized gas. The ground-based spectra which cover this trajectory also
yield line ratios for the ionized gas which have anomalously low [NII] (6564),
suggesting either a complex, clumpy structure in the gas with a higher
cloud-covering factor at larger radii and with denser clouds than is found in
the nuclear regions of most NLRG and Seyfert 2 galaxies, or some other,
unmodeled, mechanism for the emergent spectrum from this region. The H-alpha
emission-line filaments to the N appear to be associated with a 3 cm radio
continuum knot which lies in a gap in the filaments ~ 4" from the nucleus.
Altogether, the data in this paper provide good circumstantial evidence for
non-disruptive redirection of a radio jet by interstellar gas clouds in the
host galaxy.Comment: 19 pages, 6 ps.gz fig pages, to appear in the Ap.J. Supp
The 3D Structure of N132D in the LMC: A Late-Stage Young Supernova Remnant
We have used the Wide Field Spectrograph (WiFeS) on the 2.3m telescope at
Siding Spring Observatory to map the [O III] 5007{\AA} dynamics of the young
oxygen-rich supernova remnant N132D in the Large Magellanic Cloud. From the
resultant data cube, we have been able to reconstruct the full 3D structure of
the system of [O III] filaments. The majority of the ejecta form a ring of
~12pc in diameter inclined at an angle of 25 degrees to the line of sight. We
conclude that SNR N132D is approaching the end of the reverse shock phase
before entering the fully thermalized Sedov phase of evolution. We speculate
that the ring of oxygen-rich material comes from ejecta in the equatorial plane
of a bipolar explosion, and that the overall shape of the SNR is strongly
influenced by the pre-supernova mass loss from the progenitor star. We find
tantalizing evidence of a polar jet associated with a very fast oxygen-rich
knot, and clear evidence that the central star has interacted with one or more
dense clouds in the surrounding ISM.Comment: Accepted for Publication in Astrophysics & Space Science, 18pp, 8
figure
The Biological Standard of Living in the two Germanies.
Physical stature is used as a proxy for the biological standard of living in the two Germanies before and after unification in an analysis of a cross-sectional sample (1998) of adult heights, as well as among military recruits of the 1990s. West Germans tended to be taller than East Germans throughout the period under consideration. Contrary to official proclamations of a classless society, there were substantial social differences in physical stature in East-Germany. Social differences in height were greater in the East among females, and less among males than in the West. The difficulties experienced by the East-German population after 1961 is evident in the increase in social inequality of physical stature thereafter, as well as in the increasing gap relative to the height of the West-German population. After unification, however, there is a tendency for East-German males, but not of females, to catch up with their West-German counterparts
Shell formation and star formation in superbubble DEM 192
Was star formation in the OB associations, LH 51 and LH 54, triggered by the
growth of the superbubble DEM 192? To examine this possibility, we investigate
the stellar contents and star formation history, and model the evolution of the
shell. H-R diagrams constructed from UBV photometry and spectral
classifications indicate highly coeval star formation, with the entire massive
star population having an age of ~< 2-3 Myr. However, LH 54 is constrained to
an age of ~3 Myr by the presence of a WR star, and the IMF for LH 51 suggests a
lower-mass limit implying an age of 1-2 Myr. There is no evidence of an earlier
stellar population to create the superbubble, but the modeled shell kinematics
are consistent with an origin due to the strongest stellar winds of LH 54. It
might therefore be possible that LH 54 created the superbubble, which in turn
may have triggered the creation of LH 51. Within the errors, the spatial
distribution of stellar masses and IMF appear uniform within the associations.
We reinvestigate the estimates for stellar wind power L_w(t), during the
H-burning phase, and note that revised mass-loss rates yield a significantly
different form for L_w(t), and may affect stellar evolution timescales. We also
model superbubble expansion into an ambient medium with a sudden, discontinuous
drop in density, and find that this can easily reproduce the anomalously high
shell expansion velocities seen in many superbubbles.Comment: 18 pages, 12 figures, AASTeX; Figure 1 bitmapped. Accepted to AJ.
Table of Contents and preprint, including hi-resolution version of Figure 1,
available at: http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~oey/oeypubs.htm
An extension of the SHARC survey
We report on our search for distant clusters of galaxies based on optical and
X-ray follow up observations of X-ray candidates from the SHARC survey. Based
on the assumption that the absence of bright optical or radio counterparts to
possibly extended X-ray sources could be distant clusters. We have obtained
deep optical images and redshifts for several of these objects and analyzed
archive XMM-Newton or Chandra data where applicable. In our list of candidate
clusters, two are probably galaxy structures at redshifts of z0.51 and
0.28. Seven other structures are possibly galaxy clusters between z0.3
and 1. Three sources are identified with QSOs and are thus likely to be X-ray
point sources, and six more also probably fall in this category. One X-ray
source is spurious or variable. For 17 other sources, the data are too sparse
at this time to put forward any hypothesis on their nature. We also
serendipitously detected a cluster at z=0.53 and another galaxy concentration
which is probably a structure with a redshift in the [0.15-0.6] range. We
discuss these results within the context of future space missions to
demonstrate the necessity of a wide field of view telescope optimized for the
0.5-2 keV range.Comment: Accepted in A&
Constraining the optical emission from the double pulsar system J0737-3039
We present the first optical observations of the unique system J0737-3039
(composed of two pulsars, hereafter PSR-A and PSR-B). Ultra-deep optical
observations, performed with the High Resolution Camera of the Advanced Camera
for Surveys on board the Hubble Space Telescope could not detect any optical
emission from the system down to m_F435W=27.0 and m_F606W=28.3. The estimated
optical flux limits are used to constrain the three-component (two thermal and
one non-thermal) model recently proposed to reproduce the XMM-Newton X-ray
spectrum. They suggest the presence of a break at low energies in the
non-thermal power law component of PSR-A and are compatible with the expected
black-body emission from the PSR-B surface. The corresponding efficiency of the
optical emission from PSR-A's magnetosphere would be comparable to that of
other Myr-old pulsars, thus suggesting that this parameter may not dramatically
evolve over a time-scale of a few Myr.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, ApJ accepte
ABSOLUTE PROPER MOTIONS OUTSIDE the PLANE (APOP) - A STEP TOWARD the GSC2.4
Zhaoxiang Qi, et al, ABSOLUTE PROPER MOTIONS OUTSIDE THE PLANE (APOP)âA STEP TOWARD THE GSC2.4, The Astronomical Journal, 150:137 (12pp), October 2015, doi:10.1088/0004-6256/150/4/137. © 2015. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present a new catalog of absolute proper motions and updated positions derived from the same Space Telescope Science Institute digitized Schmidt survey plates utilized for the construction of Guide Star Catalog II. As special attention was devoted to the absolutization process and the removal of position, magnitude, and color dependent systematic errors through the use of both stars and galaxies, this release is solely based on plate data outside the galactic plane, i.e., ?b? â„ 27°. The resulting global zero point error is less than 0.6 mas yr-1, and the precision is better than 4.0 mas yr-1 for objects brighter than RF = 18.5, rising to 9.0 mas yr-1 for objects with magnitudes in the range 18.5 < RF < 20.0. The catalog covers 22,525 square degrees and lists 100,774,153 objects to the limiting magnitude of RF ⌠20.8. Alignment with the International Celestial Reference System was made using 1288 objects common to the second realization of the International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF2) at radio wavelengths. As a result, the coordinate axes realized by our astrometric data are believed to be aligned with the extragalactic radio frame to within ±0.2 mas at the reference epoch J2000.0. This makes our compilation one of the deepest and densest ICRF-registered astrometric catalogs outside the galactic plane. Although the Gaia mission is poised to set the new standard in catalog astronomy and will in many ways supersede this catalog, the methods and procedures reported here will prove useful to remove astrometric magnitude- and color-dependent systematic errors from the next generation of ground-based surveys reaching significantly deeper than the Gaia catalog.Peer reviewe
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