276 research outputs found
Exploring the Variable Sky with LINEAR. I. Photometric Recalibration with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
We describe photometric recalibration of data obtained by the asteroid survey LINEAR. Although LINEAR was designed for astrometric discovery of moving objects, the data set described here contains over 5 billion photometric measurements for about 25 million objects, mostly stars. We use Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data from the overlapping ~10,000 deg^2 of sky to recalibrate LINEAR photometry and achieve errors of 0.03 mag for sources not limited by photon statistics with errors of 0.2 mag at r ~ 18. With its 200 observations per object on average, LINEAR data provide time domain information for the brightest four magnitudes of the SDSS survey. At the same time, LINEAR extends the deepest similar wide-area variability survey, the Northern Sky Variability Survey, by 3 mag. We briefly discuss the properties of about 7000 visually confirmed periodic variables, dominated by roughly equal fractions of RR Lyrae stars and eclipsing binary stars, and analyze their distribution in optical and infrared color-color diagrams. The LINEAR data set is publicly available from the SkyDOT Web site
A re-interpretation of the Triangulum-Andromeda stellar clouds: a population of halo stars kicked out of the Galactic disk
The Triangulum-Andromeda stellar clouds (TriAnd1 and TriAnd2) are a pair of
concentric ring- or shell-like over-densities at large ( 30 kpc)
and ( -10 kpc) in the Galactic halo that are thought to have been
formed from the accretion and disruption of a satellite galaxy. This paper
critically re-examines this formation scenario by comparing the number ratio of
RR Lyrae to M giant stars associated with the TriAnd clouds with other
structures in the Galaxy. The current data suggest a stellar population for
these over-densities ( at 95% confidence) quite unlike
any of the known satellites of the Milky Way ( for
the very largest and for the smaller satellites) and more
like the population of stars born in the much deeper potential well inhabited
by the Galactic disk (). N-body simulations of a
Milky-Way-like galaxy perturbed by the impact of a dwarf galaxy demonstrate
that, in the right circumstances, concentric rings propagating outwards from
that Galactic disk can plausibly produce similar over-densities. These results
provide dramatic support for the recent proposal by Xu et al. (2015) that,
rather than stars accreted from other galaxies, the TriAnd clouds could
represent stars kicked-out from our own disk. If so, these would be the first
populations of disk stars to be found in the Galactic halo and a clear
signature of the importance of this second formation mechanism for stellar
halos more generally. Moreover, their existence at the very extremities of the
disk places strong constraints on the nature of the interaction that formed
them.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures; published in MNRA
Connecting the Milky Way potential profile to the orbital timescales and spatial structure of the Sagittarius Stream
Recent maps of the halo using RR Lyrae from Pan-STARRS1 have clearly depicted
the spatial structure of the Sagittarius stream. These maps show the leading
and trailing stream apocenters differ in galactocentric radius by a factor of
two, and also resolve substructure in the stream at these apocenters. Here we
present dynamical models that reproduce these features of the stream in simple
Galactic potentials. We find that debris at the apocenters must be dynamically
young, in the sense of being stripped off in the last two pericentric passages,
while the Sagittarius dwarf is currently experiencing a third passage. The
ratio of apocenters is sensitive to both dynamical friction and the outer slope
of the Galactic rotation curve. These dependences can be understood with simple
regularities connecting the apocentric radii, circular velocities, and orbital
period of the progenitor. The effect of dynamical friction on the stream can be
constrained using substructure within the leading apocenter. Our ensembles of
models are not intended as statistically proper fits to the stream.
Nevertheless, out of the range of models we consider, we consistently find the
mass within 100 kpc to be , with a nearly
flat rotation curve between 50 and 100 kpc. This points to a more extended
Galactic halo than assumed in some current models. As in previous work, we find
prolate or triaxial halos ease agreement with the track of the leading stream.
We display the behavior of our models in various observational spaces and
characterize the substructure expected within the stream. In particular, the
young trailing stream visible near trailing apocenter should exhibit a tight
trend of velocity with distance separate from the older debris, and we suggest
that this will serve as an especially useful probe of the outer Galactic
potential.Comment: Submitted to MNRA
Search for high-amplitude Delta Scuti and RR Lyrae stars in Sloan Digital Sky Survey Stripe 82 using principal component analysis
We propose a robust principal component analysis (PCA) framework for the
exploitation of multi-band photometric measurements in large surveys. Period
search results are improved using the time series of the first principal
component due to its optimized signal-to-noise ratio.The presence of correlated
excess variations in the multivariate time series enables the detection of
weaker variability. Furthermore, the direction of the largest variance differs
for certain types of variable stars. This can be used as an efficient attribute
for classification. The application of the method to a subsample of Sloan
Digital Sky Survey Stripe 82 data yielded 132 high-amplitude Delta Scuti
variables. We found also 129 new RR Lyrae variables, complementary to the
catalogue of Sesar et al., 2010, extending the halo area mapped by Stripe 82 RR
Lyrae stars towards the Galactic bulge. The sample comprises also 25
multiperiodic or Blazhko RR Lyrae stars.Comment: 23 pages, 17 figure
Statistical Searches for Microlensing Events in Large, Non-Uniformly Sampled Time-Domain Surveys: A Test Using Palomar Transient Factory Data
Many photometric time-domain surveys are driven by specific goals, such as
searches for supernovae or transiting exoplanets, which set the cadence with
which fields are re-imaged. In the case of the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF),
several sub-surveys are conducted in parallel, leading to non-uniform sampling
over its footprint. While the median PTF field has been imaged 40 times in \textit{R}-band,
have been observed 100 times. We use PTF data to
study the trade-off between searching for microlensing events in a survey whose
footprint is much larger than that of typical microlensing searches, but with
far-from-optimal time sampling. To examine the probability that microlensing
events can be recovered in these data, we test statistics used on uniformly
sampled data to identify variables and transients. We find that the von Neumann
ratio performs best for identifying simulated microlensing events in our data.
We develop a selection method using this statistic and apply it to data from
fields with 10 -band observations, light curves,
uncovering three candidate microlensing events. We lack simultaneous,
multi-color photometry to confirm these as microlensing events. However, their
number is consistent with predictions for the event rate in the PTF footprint
over the survey's three years of operations, as estimated from near-field
microlensing models. This work can help constrain all-sky event rate
predictions and tests microlensing signal recovery in large data sets, which
will be useful to future time-domain surveys, such as that planned with the
Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.Comment: 13 pages, 14 figures; accepted for publication in ApJ. fixed author
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The investigation of absolute proper motions of the XPM Catalogue
The XPM-1.0 is the regular version of the XPM catalogue. In comparison with
XPM the astrometric catalogue of about 280 millions stars covering entire sky
from -90 to +90 degrees in declination and in the magnitude range 10^m<B<22^m
is something improved. The general procedure steps were followed as for XPM,
but some of them are now performed on a more sophisticated level. The XPM-1.0
catalogue contains star positions, proper motions, 2MASS and USNO photometry of
about 280 millions of the sources. We present some investigations of the
absolute proper motions of XPM-1.0 catalogue and also the important information
for the users of the catalogue. Unlike previous version, the XPM-1.0 contains
the proper motions over the whole sky without gaps. In the fields, which cover
the zone of avoidance or which contain less than of 25 galaxies a quasi
absolute calibration was performed. The proper motion errors are varying from 3
to 10 mas/yr, depending on a specific field. The zero-point of the absolute
proper motion frame (the absolute calibration) was specified with more than 1
million galaxies from 2MASS and USNO-A2.0. The mean formal error of absolute
calibration is less than 1 mas/yr.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, accepte
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