1,787 research outputs found
Hands-On Universe: A Global Program for Education and Public Outreach in Astronomy
Hands-On Universe (HOU) is an educational program that enables students to
investigate the Universe while applying tools and concepts from science, math,
and technology. Using the Internet, HOU participants around the world request
observations from an automated telescope, download images from a large image
archive, and analyze them with the aid of user-friendly image processing
software. This program is developing now in many countries, including the USA,
France, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Australia, and others. A network of telescopes
has been established among these countries, many of them remotely operated, as
shown in the accompanying demo. Using this feature, students in the classroom
are able to make night observations during the day, using a telescope placed in
another country. An archive of images taken on large telescopes is also
accessible, as well as resources for teachers. Students are also dealing with
real research projects, e.g. the search for asteroids, which resulted in the
discovery of a Kuiper Belt object by high-school students. Not only Hands-On
Universe gives the general public an access to professional astronomy, but it
is also a more general tool to demonstrate the use of a complex automated
system, the techniques of data processing and automation. Last but not least,
through the use of telescopes located in many countries over the globe, a form
of powerful and genuine cooperation between teachers and children from various
countries is promoted, with a clear educational goal.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the proceedings of the ADASS X
conference, Boston, October 2000, ASP conf. pro
Hands-On TAROT: Intercontinental use of the TAROT for Education and Public Outreach
The TAROT telescope has for primary goal the search for the prompt optical
counterpart of Cosmic Gamma-Ray Bursts. It is a completely autonomous 25cm
telescope installed near Nice (France), able to point any location of the sky
within 1-2 seconds. The control, scheduling, and data processing activities are
completely automated, so the instrument is completely autonomous. In addition
to its un-manned modes, we added recently the possibility to remotely control
the telescope, as a request of the "Hands-On Universe" (HOU) program for
exchange of time within automatic telescopes for the education and public
outreach. To this purpose we developed a simple control interface. A webcam was
installed to visualize the telescope. Access to the data is possible through a
web interface. The images can be processed by the HOU software, a program
specially suited for use within the classroom. We experienced these feature
during the open days of the University of California Berkeley and the Astronomy
Festival of Fleurance (France). We plan a regular use for an astronomy course
of the Museum of Tokyo, as well as for French schools. Not only does Hands-On
TAROT gives the general public an access to professional astronomy, but it is
also a more general tool to demonstrate the use of a complex automated system,
the techniques of data processing and automation. Last but not least, through
the use of telescopes located in many countries over the globe, a form of
powerful and genuine cooperation between teachers and children from various
countries is promoted, with a clear educational goal.Comment: 4 pages, Based on a demonstration presented at the ADASS X
Conference, Boston, MA, USA, October 2000, to appear in ASP Conf. Serie
AGAPEROS: Searching for variable stars in the LMC Bar II. Temporal and near-IR analysis of Long-Period Variables
We analysed the light curves of a large sample of long period variables in
the LMC from the AGAPEROS catalogue. The (non)regularity of the light change is
discussed in detail showing that the majority of the light curves cannot be
described properly by a single period. We show that semiregular and small
amplitude variability do not necessarily correlate as has been assumed in
several previous studies. Using near-infrared data from the DENIS survey we
correlate the light change with colours and luminosities of the objects. These
results are used to compare long period variables in the LMC with LPVs in the
Galactic Bulge and in the solar neighborhood.Comment: 12 pages, 15 figures accepted for publication in A&
Individual scatterers as microscopic origin of equilibration between spin- polarized edge channels in the quantum Hall regime
The equilibration length between spin-polarized edge states in the Quantum
Hall regime is measured as a function of a gate voltage applied to an electrode
on top of the edge channels. Reproducible fluctuations in the coupling are
observed and interpreted as a mesoscopic fingerprint of single spin-flip
scatterers which are turned on and off. A model to analyze macroscopic edge
state coupling in terms of individual scatterers is developed, and
characteristic values for these scatterers in our samples are extracted. For
all samples investigated, the distance between spin-flip scatterers lies
between the Drude and the quantum scattering length.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
CLASH-VLT: A Highly Precise Strong Lensing Model of the Galaxy Cluster RXC J2248.7-4431 (Abell S1063) and Prospects for Cosmography
We perform a comprehensive study of the total mass distribution of the galaxy
cluster RXCJ2248 () with a set of high-precision strong lensing
models, which take advantage of extensive spectroscopic information on many
multiply lensed systems. In the effort to understand and quantify inherent
systematics in parametric strong lensing modelling, we explore a collection of
22 models where we use different samples of multiple image families,
parametrizations of the mass distribution and cosmological parameters. As input
information for the strong lensing models, we use the CLASH HST imaging data
and spectroscopic follow-up observations, carried out with the VIMOS and MUSE
spectrographs, to identify bona-fide multiple images. A total of 16 background
sources, over the redshift range , are multiply lensed into 47 images,
24 of which are spectroscopically confirmed and belong to 10 individual
sources. The cluster total mass distribution and underlying cosmology in the
models are optimized by matching the observed positions of the multiple images
on the lens plane. We show that with a careful selection of a sample of
spectroscopically confirmed multiple images, the best-fit model reproduces
their observed positions with a rms of in a fixed flat CDM
cosmology, whereas the lack of spectroscopic information lead to biases in the
values of the model parameters. Allowing cosmological parameters to vary
together with the cluster parameters, we find (at confidence level)
and for a flat
CDM model, and and
for a universe with and free
curvature. Using toy models mimicking the overall configuration of RXCJ2248, we
estimate the impact of the line of sight mass structure on the positional rms
to be .(ABRIDGED)Comment: 23 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in A&
Evidence for Ubiquitous, High-EW Nebular Emission in z~7 Galaxies: Towards a Clean Measurement of the Specific Star Formation Rate using a Sample of Bright, Magnified Galaxies
Growing observational evidence now indicates that nebular line emission has a
significant impact on the rest-frame optical fluxes of z~5-7 galaxies observed
with Spitzer. This line emission makes z~5-7 galaxies appear more massive, with
lower specific star formation rates. However, corrections for this line
emission have been very difficult to perform reliably due to huge uncertainties
on the overall strength of such emission at z>~5.5. Here, we present the most
direct observational evidence yet for ubiquitous high-EW [OIII]+Hbeta line
emission in Lyman-break galaxies at z~7, while also presenting a strategy for
an improved measurement of the sSFR at z~7. We accomplish this through the
selection of bright galaxies in the narrow redshift window z~6.6-7.0 where the
IRAC 4.5 micron flux provides a clean measurement of the stellar continuum
light. Observed 4.5 micron fluxes in this window contrast with the 3.6 micron
fluxes which are contaminated by the prominent [OIII]+Hbeta lines. To ensure a
high S/N for our IRAC flux measurements, we consider only the brightest
(H_{160}<26 mag) magnified galaxies we have identified in CLASH and other
programs targeting galaxy clusters. Remarkably, the mean rest-frame optical
color for our bright seven-source sample is very blue, [3.6]-[4.5]=-0.9+/-0.3.
Such blue colors cannot be explained by the stellar continuum light and require
that the rest-frame EW of [OIII]+Hbeta be greater than 637 Angstroms for the
average source. The bluest four sources from our seven-source sample require an
even more extreme EW of 1582 Angstroms. Our derived lower limit for the mean
[OIII]+Hbeta EW could underestimate the true EW by ~2x based on a simple
modeling of the redshift distribution of our sources. We can also set a robust
lower limit of >~4 Gyr^-1 on the specific star formation rates based on the
mean SED for our seven-source sample. (abridged)Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, submitted to the Astrophysical Journa
CLASH: z ~ 6 young galaxy candidate quintuply lensed by the frontier field cluster RXC J2248.7-4431
We present a quintuply lensed z ~ 6 candidate discovered in the field of the
galaxy cluster RXC J2248.7-4431 (z ~ 0.348) targeted within the Cluster Lensing
and Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH) and selected in the deep HST Frontier
Fields survey. Thanks to the CLASH 16-band HST imaging, we identify the
quintuply lensed z ~ 6 candidate as an optical dropout in the inner region of
the cluster, the brightest image having magAB=24.81+-0.02 in the f105w filter.
We perform a detailed photometric analysis to verify its high-z and lensed
nature. We get as photometric redshift z_phot ~ 5.9, and given the extended
nature and NIR colours of the lensed images, we rule out low-z early type and
galactic star contaminants. We perform a strong lensing analysis of the
cluster, using 13 families of multiple lensed images identified in the HST
images. Our final best model predicts the high-z quintuply lensed system with a
position accuracy of 0.8''. The magnifications of the five images are between
2.2 and 8.3, which leads to a delensed UV luminosity of L_1600 ~ 0.5L*_1600 at
z=6. We also estimate the UV slope from the observed NIR colours, finding a
steep beta=-2.89+-0.38. We use singular and composite stellar population SEDs
to fit the photometry of the hiz candidate, and we conclude that it is a young
(age <300 Myr) galaxy with mass of M ~ 10^8Msol, subsolar metallicity
(Z<0.2Zsol) and low dust content (AV ~ 0.2-0.4).Comment: 21 pages, 13 figures, 6 tables, submitted to MNRAS on 11 Aug 2013,
accepted on 23 Nov 201
A Census of Star-Forming Galaxies in the z~9-10 Universe based on HST+Spitzer Observations Over 19 CLASH clusters: Three Candidate z~9-10 Galaxies and Improved Constraints on the Star Formation Rate Density at z~9
We utilise a two-color Lyman-Break selection criterion to search for z~9-10
galaxies over the first 19 clusters in the CLASH program. A systematic search
yields three z~9-10 candidates. While we have already reported the most robust
of these candidates, MACS1149-JD, two additional z~9 candidates are also found
and have H_{160}-band magnitudes of ~26.2-26.9. A careful assessment of various
sources of contamination suggests <~1 contaminants for our z~9-10 selection. To
determine the implications of these search results for the LF and SFR density
at z~9, we introduce a new differential approach to deriving these quantities
in lensing fields. Our procedure is to derive the evolution by comparing the
number of z~9-10 galaxy candidates found in CLASH with the number of galaxies
in a slightly lower redshift sample (after correcting for the differences in
selection volumes), here taken to be z~8. This procedure takes advantage of the
fact that the relative volumes available for the z~8 and z~9-10 selections
behind lensing clusters are not greatly dependent on the details of the lensing
models. We find that the normalization of the UV LF at z~9 is just
0.28_{-0.20}^{+0.39}\times that at z~8, ~1.4_{-0.8}^{+3.0}x lower than
extrapolating z~4-8 LF results. While consistent with the evolution in the UV
LF seen at z~4-8, these results marginally favor a more rapid evolution at z>8.
Compared to similar evolutionary findings from the HUDF, our result is less
insensitive to large-scale structure uncertainties, given our many independent
sightlines on the high-redshift universe.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures, 5 tables, accepted for publication in the
Astrophysical Journal, updated to include the much deeper Spitzer/IRAC
observations over our three z~9-10 candidate
CLASH: Photometric redshifts with 16 HST bands in galaxy cluster fields
The Cluster Lensing And Supernovae survey with Hubble (CLASH) is an Hubble
Space Telescope (HST) Multi-Cycle Treasury program observing 25 massive galaxy
clusters. CLASH observations are carried out in 16 bands from UV to NIR to
derive accurate and reliable estimates of photometric redshifts. We present the
CLASH photometric redshifts and study the photometric redshift accuracy of the
arcs in more detail for the case of MACS1206.2-0847. We use the publicly
available Le Phare and BPZ photometric redshift codes on 17 CLASH galaxy
clusters. Using Le Phare code for objects with StoN>=10, we reach a precision
of 3%(1+z) for the strong lensing arcs, which is reduced to 2.4%(1+z) after
removing outliers. For galaxies in the cluster field the corresponding values
are 4%(1+z) and 3%(1+z). Using mock galaxy catalogues, we show that 3%(1+z)
precision is what one would expect from the CLASH photometry when taking into
account extinction from dust, emission lines and the finite range of SEDs
included in the photo-z template library. We study photo-z results for
different aperture photometry and find that the SExtractor isophotal photometry
works best. Le Phare and BPZ give similar photo-z results for the strong
lensing arcs as well as galaxies of the cluster field. Results are improved
when optimizing the photometric aperture shape showing an optimal aperture size
around 1" radius giving results which are equivalent to isophotal photometry.
Tailored photometry of the arcs improve the photo-z results.Comment: Accepted in A&A on nov 201
CLASH-VLT: The mass, velocity-anisotropy, and pseudo-phase-space density profiles of the z=0.44 galaxy cluster MACS 1206.2-0847
We use an unprecedented data-set of about 600 redshifts for cluster members,
obtained as part of a VLT/VIMOS large programme, to constrain the mass profile
of the z=0.44 cluster MACS J1206.2-0847 over the radial range 0-5 Mpc (0-2.5
virial radii) using the MAMPOSSt and Caustic methods. We then add external
constraints from our previous gravitational lensing analysis. We invert the
Jeans equation to obtain the velocity-anisotropy profiles of cluster members.
With the mass-density and velocity-anisotropy profiles we then obtain the first
determination of a cluster pseudo-phase-space density profile. The kinematics
and lensing determinations of the cluster mass profile are in excellent
agreement. This is very well fitted by a NFW model with mass M200=(1.4 +- 0.2)
10^15 Msun and concentration c200=6 +- 1, only slightly higher than theoretical
expectations. Other mass profile models also provide acceptable fits to our
data, of (slightly) lower (Burkert, Hernquist, and Softened Isothermal Sphere)
or comparable (Einasto) quality than NFW. The velocity anisotropy profiles of
the passive and star-forming cluster members are similar, close to isotropic
near the center and increasingly radial outside. Passive cluster members follow
extremely well the theoretical expectations for the pseudo-phase-space density
profile and the relation between the slope of the mass-density profile and the
velocity anisotropy. Star-forming cluster members show marginal deviations from
theoretical expectations. This is the most accurate determination of a cluster
mass profile out to a radius of 5 Mpc, and the only determination of the
velocity-anisotropy and pseudo-phase-space density profiles of both passive and
star-forming galaxies for an individual cluster [abridged]Comment: A&A in press; 22 pages, 19 figure
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