499 research outputs found
Luminous Compact Blue Galaxies up to z~1 in the HST Ultra Deep Field: I. Small galaxies, or blue centers of massive disks?
We analyze 26 Luminous Compact Blue Galaxies (LCBGs) in the HST/ACS Ultra
Deep Field (UDF) at z ~ 0.2-1.3, to determine whether these are truly small
galaxies, or rather bright central starbursts within existing or forming large
disk galaxies. Surface brightness profiles from UDF images reach fainter than
rest-frame 26.5 B mag/arcsec^2 even for compact objects at z~1. Most LCBGs show
a smaller, brighter component that is likely star-forming, and an extended,
roughly exponential component with colors suggesting stellar ages >~ 100 Myr to
few Gyr. Scale lengths of the extended components are mostly >~ 2 kpc, >1.5-2
times smaller than those of nearby large disk galaxies like the Milky Way.
Larger, very low surface brightness disks can be excluded down to faint
rest-frame surface brightnesses (>~ 26 B mag/arcsec^2). However, 1 or 2 of the
LCBGs are large, disk-like galaxies that meet LCBG selection criteria due to a
bright central nucleus, possibly a forming bulge. These results indicate that
>~ 90% of high-z LCBGs are small galaxies that will evolve into small disk
galaxies, and low mass spheroidal or irregular galaxies in the local Universe,
assuming passive evolution and no significant disk growth. The data do not
reveal signs of disk formation around small, HII-galaxy-like LCBGs, and do not
suggest a simple inside-out growth scenario for larger LCBGs with a disk-like
morphology. Irregular blue emission in distant LCBGs is relatively extended,
suggesting that nebular emission lines from star-forming regions sample a major
fraction of an LCBG's velocity field.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, AASTeX; accepted for publication in
Astrophysical Journal Letter
Redshift-Distance Survey of Early-Type Galaxies. IV. Dipoles of the Velocity Field
We use the recently completed redshift-distance survey of nearby early-type
galaxies (ENEAR) to measure the dipole component of the peculiar velocity field
to a depth of cz ~ 6000 km/s. The sample consists of 1145 galaxies brighter
than m_B=14.5 and cz < 7000 km/s, uniformly distributed over the whole sky, and
129 fainter cluster galaxies within the same volume. Most of the Dn-sigma
distances were obtained from new spectroscopic and photometric observations
conducted by this project, ensuring the homogeneity of the data over the whole
sky. These 1274 galaxies are objectively assigned to 696 objects -- 282
groups/clusters and 414 isolated galaxies. We find that within a volume of
radius ~ 6000 km/s, the best-fitting bulk flow has an amplitude of |vbulk| =220
+/- 42 km/s in the CMB restframe, pointing towards l=304 +/- 16 degrees, b=25
+/- 11 degrees. The error in the amplitude includes statistical, sampling and
possible systematic errors. This solution is in excellent agreement with that
obtained by the SFI Tully-Fisher survey. Our results suggest that most of the
motion of the Local Group is due to fluctuations within 6000 km/s, in contrast
to recent claims of large amplitude bulk motions on larger scales.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, ApJL, accepted (updated results; matches
accepted version
Insights from measuring pollen deposition: quantifying the pre-eminence of bees as flower visitors and effective pollinators
Using our accumulated datasets from Kenyan savanna, Mediterranean garigue, UK gardens and heathland, involving 76 plants from 30 families, we present detailed data to quantify the superiority of bees as pollinators of most flowering plants when compared with other flower visitors. Bees provided the majority of visits to study species at all sites, and 33 of the 76 plants received more than 90% of their visits from bees. Furthermore, pollen deposition onto stigmas from single-visit events (SVD, a measure of pollination effectiveness) was significantly higher for bees than non-bees at all the four sites where a major proportion of the flora was sampled. Solitary bees, and also bumblebees in temperate habitats, were the best potential pollinators for most plants in this respect, and significantly out-performed honeybees. Only a few plants were well served by bombyliid flies, and fewer again by larger hoverflies, butterflies, or solitary wasps. Bees also achieved better matches of their visit timing to peak pollen availability (measured indirectly as peak SVD), and made much shorter visits to flowers than did non-bees, permitting a substantially greater visit frequency. Additionally, they deposited significantly lower levels of potentially deleterious heterospecific pollen on stigmas in heathland and Mediterranean garigue, though not in the UK garden with densely clustered high-diversity flowering, or in the Kenyan savanna site with particularly dispersed flowering patches and some specialist non-bee flowers. Our data provide a novel and quantified characterisation of the specific advantages of bees as flower visitors, and underline the need to conserve diverse bee communities
Constructing more informative plant–pollinator networks: visitation and pollen deposition networks in a heathland plant community
Interaction networks are widely used as tools to understand plant–pollinator communities, and to examine potential threats to plant diversity and food security if the ecosystem service provided by pollinating animals declines. However, most networks to date are based on recording visits to flowers, rather than recording clearly defined effective pollination events. Here we provide the first networks that explicitly incorporate measures of pollinator effectiveness (PE) from pollen deposition on stigmas per visit, and pollinator importance (PI) as the product of PE and visit frequency. These more informative networks, here produced for a low diversity heathland habitat, reveal that plant–pollinator interactions are more specialized than shown in most previous studies. At the studied site, the specialization index Embedded Image was lower for the visitation network than the PE network, which was in turn lower than Embedded Image for the PI network. Our study shows that collecting PE data is feasible for community-level studies in low diversity communities and that including information about PE can change the structure of interaction networks. This could have important consequences for our understanding of threats to pollination systems
Caltech Faint Galaxy Redshift Survey X: A Redshift Survey in the Region of the Hubble Deep Field North
A redshift survey has been carried out in the region of the Hubble Deep Field
North using the Low Resolution Imaging Spectrograph at the Keck Observatory.
The resulting redshift catalog, which contains 671 entries, is a compendium of
our own data together with published LRIS/Keck data. It is more than 92%
complete for objects, irrespective of morphology, to mag in the HDF
itself and to mag in the Flanking Fields within a diameter of 8 arcmin
centered on the HDF, an unusually high completion for a magnitude limited
survey performed with a large telescope. A median redshift is reached
at .
Strong peaks in the redshift distribution, which arise when a group or poor
cluster of galaxies intersect the area surveyed, can be identified to in this dataset. More than 68% of the galaxies are members of these
redshift peaks. In a few cases, closely spaced peaks in can be resolved
into separate groups of galaxies that can be distinguished in both velocity and
location on the sky.
The radial separation of these peaks in the pencil-beam survey is consistent
with a characteristic length scale for the their separation of 70 Mpc
in our adopted cosmology (, ). Strong
galaxy clustering is in evidence at all epochs back to . (abstract
abridged)Comment: Accepted to the ApJ. This version contains all the figures and
tables. 2 minor typos in table 2b correcte
Author Correction: Pollinator importance networks illustrate the crucial value of bees in a highly speciose plant community
Correction to: Scientific Reports https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-08798-x, published online 21 August 201
AEGIS: Infrared Spectroscopy of An Infrared Luminous Lyman Break Galaxy at z=3.01
We report the detection of rest--frame 6.2 and 7.7 \micron emission features
arising from Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) in the Spitzer/IRS spectrum
of an infrared-luminous Lyman break galaxy at z=3.01. This is currently the
highest redshift galaxy where these PAH emission features have been detected.
The total infrared luminosity inferred from the MIPS 24 \micron and radio flux
density is 2 L, which qualifies this object as a
so--called hyperluminous infrared galaxy (HyLIRG). However, unlike local
HyLIRGs which are generally associated with QSO/AGNs and have weak or absent
PAH emission features, this HyLIRG has very strong 6.2 and 7.7 \micron PAH
emission. We argue that intense star formation dominates the infrared emission
of this source, although we cannot rule out the presence of a deeply obscured
AGN. This LBG appears to be a distorted system in the HST ACS F606W and F814W
images, possibly indicating that a significant merger or interaction is driving
the large IR luminosity
Redshift-Distance Survey of Early-Type Galaxies: Circular Aperture Photometry
We present R-band CCD photometry for 1332 early-type galaxies, observed as part of the ENEAR survey of peculiar motions using early-type galaxies in the nearby Universe. Circular apertures are used to trace the surface brightness profiles, which are then fit by a two-component bulge-disk model. From the fits we obtain the structural parameters required to estimate galaxy distances using the D_n-sigma and Fundamental Plane relations. We find that about 12% of the galaxies are well represented by a pure r^{1/4} law while 87% are best fit by a two component model. There are 356 repeated observations of 257 galaxies obtained during different runs that are used to derive statistical corrections and bring the data to a common system. We also use these repeated observations to estimate our internal errors. The accuracy of our measurements are tested by the comparison of 354 galaxies in common with other authors. Typical errors in our measurements are 0.011 dex for log{D_n}, 0.064 dex for log{r_e}, 0.086 mag arcsec^{-2} for and 0.09 for m_{R_C}, comparable to those estimated by other authors. The photometric data reported here represent one of the largest high-quality and uniform all-sky samples currently available for early-type galaxies in the nearby universe, especially suitable for peculiar motion studies
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