316 research outputs found
The Infrared Surface Brightness Fluctuation Distances to the Hydra and Coma Clusters
We present IR surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) distance measurements to
NGC 4889 in the Coma cluster and to NGC 3309 and NGC 3311 in the Hydra cluster.
We explicitly corrected for the contributions to the fluctuations from globular
clusters, background galaxies, and residual background variance. We measured a
distance of 85 +/- 10 Mpc to NGC 4889 and a distance of 46 +/- 5 Mpc to the
Hydra cluster. Adopting recession velocities of 7186 +/- 428 km/s for Coma and
4054 +/- 296 km/s for Hydra gives a mean Hubble constant of H_0 = 87 +/- 11
km/s/Mpc. Corrections for residual variances were a significant fraction of the
SBF signal measured, and, if underestimated, would bias our measurement towards
smaller distances and larger values of H_0. Both NICMOS on the Hubble Space
Telescope and large-aperture ground-based telescopes with new IR detectors will
make accurate SBF distance measurements possible to 100 Mpc and beyond.Comment: 24 pages, 4 PostScript figures, 2 JPEG images; accepted for
publication in Ap
The SBF Survey of Galaxy Distances. IV. SBF Magnitudes, Colors, and Distances
We report data for band Surface Brightness Fluctuation (SBF) magnitudes,
V-I colors, and distance moduli for 300 galaxies. The Survey contains E, S0 and
early-type spiral galaxies in the proportions of 49:42:9, and is essentially
complete for E galaxies to Hubble velocities of 2000 km/s, with a substantial
sampling of E galaxies out to 4000 km/s. The median error in distance modulus
is 0.22 mag.
We also present two new results from the Survey. (1) We compare the mean
peculiar flow velocity (bulk flow) implied by our distances with predictions of
typical cold dark matter transfer functions as a function of scale, and find
very good agreement with cold, dark matter cosmologies if the transfer function
scale parameter , and the power spectrum normalization are
related by . Derived directly from
velocities, this result is independent of the distribution of galaxies or
models for biasing. The modest bulk flow contradicts reports of large-scale,
large-amplitude flows in the Mpc diameter volume surrounding our
Survey volume. (2) We present a distance-independent measure of absolute galaxy
luminosity, \Nbar, and show how it correlates with galaxy properties such as
color and velocity dispersion, demonstrating its utility for measuring galaxy
distances through large and unknown extinction.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ (10 January 2001); 23 page
Galaxy Halo Masses from Galaxy-Galaxy Lensing
We present measurements of the extended dark halo profiles of bright early
type galaxies at redshifts 0.1 to 0.9 obtained via galaxy-galaxy lensing
analysis of images taken at the CFHT using the UH8K CCD mosaic camera. Six half
degree fields were observed for a total of 2 hours each in I and V, resulting
in catalogs containing ~20 000 galaxies per field. We used V-I color and I
magnitude to select bright early type galaxies as the lens galaxies, yielding a
sample of massive lenses with fairly well determined redshifts and absolute
magnitudes M ~ M_* \pm 1. We paired these with faint galaxies lying at angular
distances 20" to 60", corresponding to physical radii of 26 to 77 kpc (z = 0.1)
and 105 to 315 kpc (z = 0.9), and computed the mean tangential shear of the
faint galaxies. The shear falls off with radius roughly as expected for flat
rotation curve halos. The shear values were weighted in proportion to the
square root of the luminosity of the lens galaxy. Our results give a value for
the average mean rotation velocity of an L_* galaxy halo at r~50-200 kpc of v_*
= 238^{+27}_{-30} km per sec for a flat lambda (Omega_m0 = 0.3, Omega_l0 = 0.7)
cosmology (v_* = 269^{+34}_{-39} km per sec for Einstein-de Sitter), and with
little evidence for evolution with redshift. We compare to halo masses measured
by other groups/techniques. We find a mass-to-light ratio of ~121\pm28h(r/100
kpc) and these halos constitute Omega ~0.04 \pm 0.01(r/100 kpc) of closure
density. (abridged)Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ (minor modifications) - 32 pages, 11
figs, 5 table
Deep Image Translation with an Affinity-Based Change Prior for Unsupervised Multimodal Change Detection
Image translation with convolutional neural networks has recently been used as an approach to multimodal change detection. Existing approaches train the networks by exploiting supervised information of the change areas, which, however, is not always available. A main challenge in the unsupervised problem setting is to avoid that change pixels affect the learning of the translation function. We propose two new network architectures trained with loss functions weighted by priors that reduce the impact of change pixels on the learning objective. The change prior is derived in an unsupervised fashion from relational pixel information captured by domain-specific affinity matrices. Specifically, we use the vertex degrees associated with an absolute affinity difference matrix and demonstrate their utility in combination with cycle consistency and adversarial training. The proposed neural networks are compared with the state-of-the-art algorithms. Experiments conducted on three real data sets show the effectiveness of our methodology
Measuring Distances Using Infrared Surface Brightness Fluctuations
Surface brightness fluctuations (SBFs) are much brighter in the IR than they
are at optical wavelengths, making it possible to measure greater distances
using IR SBFs. We report new K' (2.1 micron) SBF measurements of 9 galaxies in
the Fornax and Eridanus clusters using a 1024^2-pixel HgCdTe array. We used
improved analysis techniques to remove contributions from globular clusters and
background galaxies, and we assess the relative importance of other sources of
residual variance. We applied the improved methodology to Fornax and Eridanus
images and to previously published Virgo cluster data. Apparent fluctuation
magnitudes were used in conjunction with Cepheid distances to M31 and the Virgo
cluster to calibrate the K' SBF distance scale. We find the absolute
fluctuation magnitude MK'= -5.61+/-0.12, with an intrinsic scatter to the
calibration of 0.06 mag. No statistically significant change in MK' is detected
as a function of (V-I). Our calibration is consistent with constant age and
metallicity stellar population models. The lack of a correlation with (V-I) in
the context of the stellar population models implies that elliptical galaxies
bluer than (V-I)=1.2 have SBFs dominated by younger (5-8 Gyr) populations. K'
SBFs prove to be a reliable distance indicator as long as the residual variance
from globular clusters and background galaxies is properly removed. Also, it is
important that a sufficiently high S/N ratio be achieved to allow reliable sky
subtraction because residual spatial variance can bias the measurement of the
SBF power spectrum. (abridged)Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ, 44 pages, 10 Postscript figure
Science Objectives and Early Results of the DEEP2 Redshift Survey
The DEIMOS spectrograph has now been installed on the Keck-II telescope and
commissioning is nearly complete. The DEEP2 Redshift Survey, which will take
approximately 120 nights at the Keck Observatory over a three year period and
has been designed to utilize the power of DEIMOS, began in the summer of 2002.
The multiplexing power and high efficiency of DEIMOS enables us to target 1000
faint galaxies per clear night. Our goal is to gather high-quality spectra of
\~60,000 galaxies with z>0.75 in order to study the properties and large scale
clustering of galaxies at z ~ 1. The survey will be executed at high spectral
resolution, , allowing us to work
between the bright OH sky emission lines and to infer linewidths for many of
the target galaxies (for several thousand objects, we will obtain rotation
curves as well). The linewidth data will facilitate the execution of the
classical redshift-volume cosmological test, which can provide a precision
measurement of the equation of state of the Universe. This talk reviews the
project, summarizes our science goals and presents some early DEIMOS data.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, talk presented at SPIE conference, Aug. 200
A reanalysis of the luminosities of clusters of galaxies in the EMSS sample with 0.3 < z < 0.6
The X-ray luminosities of the Einstein Extended Medium Sensitivity Survey
(EMSS) clusters of galaxies with redshifts 0.3<z<0.6 are remeasured using ROSAT
PSPC data. It is found that the new luminosities are on average 1.18 +/- 0.08
times higher than previously measured but that this ratio depends strongly on
the X-ray core radii we measure. For the clusters with small core radii, in
general we confirm the EMSS luminosities, but for clusters with core radii >250
kpc (the constant value assumed in the EMSS), the new luminosities are 2.2 +/-
0.15 times the previous measurements. The X-ray luminosity function (XLF) at
0.3<z<0.6 is recalculated and is found to be consistent with the local XLF. The
constraints on the updated properties of the 0.3<z<0.6 EMSS sample, including a
comparison with the number of clusters predicted from local XLFs, indicate that
the space density of luminous, massive clusters has either not evolved or has
increased by a small factor ~2 since z=0.4. The implications of this result are
discussed in terms of constraints on the cosmological parameter Omega_0.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA
Probing dark energy with cluster counts and cosmic shear power spectra: including the full covariance
(Abridged) Combining cosmic shear power spectra and cluster counts is
powerful to improve cosmological parameter constraints and/or test inherent
systematics. However they probe the same cosmic mass density field, if the two
are drawn from the same survey region, and therefore the combination may be
less powerful than first thought. We investigate the cross-covariance between
the cosmic shear power spectra and the cluster counts based on the halo model
approach, where the cross-covariance arises from the three-point correlations
of the underlying mass density field. Fully taking into account the
cross-covariance as well as non-Gaussian errors on the lensing power spectrum
covariance, we find a significant cross-correlation between the lensing power
spectrum signals at multipoles l~10^3 and the cluster counts containing halos
with masses M>10^{14}Msun. Including the cross-covariance for the combined
measurement degrades and in some cases improves the total signal-to-noise
ratios up to plus or minus 20% relative to when the two are independent. For
cosmological parameter determination, the cross-covariance has a smaller effect
as a result of working in a multi-dimensional parameter space, implying that
the two observables can be considered independent to a good approximation. We
also discuss that cluster count experiments using lensing-selected mass peaks
could be more complementary to cosmic shear tomography than mass-selected
cluster counts of the corresponding mass threshold. Using lensing selected
clusters with a realistic usable detection threshold (S/N~6 for a ground-based
survey), the uncertainty on each dark energy parameter may be roughly halved by
the combined experiments, relative to using the power spectra alone.Comment: 32 pages, 15 figures. Revised version, invited original contribution
to gravitational lensing focus issue, New Journal of Physic
Cosmic Shear Statistics and Cosmology
We report a measurement of cosmic shear correlations using an effective area
of 6.5 sq. deg. of the VIRMOS deep imaging survey in progress at the
Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. We measured various shear correlation
functions, the aperture mass statistic and the top-hat smoothed variance of the
shear with a detection significance exceeding 12 sigma for each of them. We
present results on angular scales from 3 arc-seconds to half a degree. The
consistency of different statistical measures is demonstrated and confirms the
lensing origin of the signal through tests that rely on the scalar nature of
the gravitational potential. For Cold Dark Matter models we find at the 95% confidence level. The
measurement over almost three decades of scale allows to discuss the effect of
the shape of the power spectrum on the cosmological parameter estimation. The
degeneracy on sigma_8-Omega_0 can be broken if priors on the shape of the
linear power spectrum (that can be parameterized by Gamma) are assumed. For
instance, with Gamma=0.21 and at the 95% confidence level, we obtain
0.60.65 and
Omega_0<0.4 for flat (Lambda-CDM) models. From the tangential/radial modes
decomposition we can set an upper limit on the intrinsic shape alignment, which
was recently suggested as a possible contribution to the lensing signal. Within
the error bars, there is no detection of intrinsic shape alignment for scales
larger than 1'.Comment: 13 pages, submitted to A&
Weak lensing mass reconstructions of the ESO Distant Cluster Survey
We present weak lensing mass reconstructions for the 20 high-redshift
clusters i n the ESO Distant Cluster Survey. The weak lensing analysis was
performed on deep, 3-color optical images taken with VLT/FORS2, using a
composite galaxy catalog with separate shape estimators measured in each
passband. We find that the EDisCS sample is composed primarily of clusters that
are less massive than t hose in current X-ray selected samples at similar
redshifts, but that all of the fields are likely to contain massive clusters
rather than superpositions of low mass groups. We find that 7 of the 20 fields
have additional massive structures which are not associated with the clusters
and which can affect the weak lensing mass determination. We compare the mass
measurements of the remaining 13 clusters with luminosity measurements from
cluster galaxies selected using photometric redshifts and find evidence of a
dependence of the cluster mass-to-light ratio with redshift. Finally we
determine the noise level in the shear measurements for the fields as a
function of exposure time and seeing and demonstrate that future ground-based
surveys which plan to perform deep optical imaging for use in weak lensing
measurements must achieve point-spread functions smaller than a median of 0.6"
FWHM.Comment: 35 pages, 24 figures, accepted to A&A, a version with better figure
resolution can be found at http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/ediscs/papers.htm
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