50 research outputs found
Ex-nihilo II: Examination Syllabi and the Sequencing of Cosmology Education
Cosmology education has become an integral part of modern physics courses.
Directed by National Curricula, major UK examination boards have developed
syllabi that contain explicit statements about the model of the Big Bang and
the strong observational evidence that supports it. This work examines the
similarities and differences in these specifications, addresses when cosmology
could be taught within a physics course, what should be included in this
teaching and in what sequence it should be taught at different levels.Comment: 9 pages. Accepted for publication in a special issue of Physics
Educatio
Ex-nihilo: Obstacles Surrounding Teaching the Standard Model
The model of the Big Bang is an integral part of the national curriculum for
England. Previous work (e.g. Baxter 1989) has shown that pupils often come into
education with many and varied prior misconceptions emanating from both
internal and external sources. Whilst virtually all of these misconceptions can
be remedied, there will remain (by its very nature) the obstacle of ex-nihilo,
as characterised by the question `how do you get something from nothing?' There
are two origins of this obstacle: conceptual (i.e. knowledge-based) and
cultural (e.g. deeply held religious viewpoints). The article shows how the
citizenship section of the national curriculum, coming `online' in England from
September 2002, presents a new opportunity for exploiting these.Comment: 6 pages. Accepted for publication in Physics E
Dark energy constraints from cosmic shear power spectra: impact of intrinsic alignments on photometric redshift requirements
Cosmic shear constrains cosmology by exploiting the apparent alignments of
pairs of galaxies due to gravitational lensing by intervening mass clumps.
However galaxies may become (intrinsically) aligned with each other, and with
nearby mass clumps, during their formation. This effect needs to be
disentangled from the cosmic shear signal to place constraints on cosmology. We
use the linear intrinsic alignment model as a base and compare it to an
alternative model and data. If intrinsic alignments are ignored then the dark
energy equation of state is biased by ~50 per cent. We examine how the number
of tomographic redshift bins affects uncertainties on cosmological parameters
and find that when intrinsic alignments are included two or more times as many
bins are required to obtain 80 per cent of the available information. We
investigate how the degradation in the dark energy figure of merit depends on
the photometric redshift scatter. Previous studies have shown that lensing does
not place stringent requirements on the photometric redshift uncertainty, so
long as the uncertainty is well known. However, if intrinsic alignments are
included the requirements become a factor of three tighter. These results are
quite insensitive to the fraction of catastrophic outliers, assuming that this
fraction is well known. We show the effect of uncertainties in photometric
redshift bias and scatter. Finally we quantify how priors on the intrinsic
alignment model would improve dark energy constraints.Comment: 14 pages and 9 figures. Replaced with final version accepted in
"Gravitational Lensing" Focus Issue of the New Journal of Physics at
http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1367-2630/9/12/E0
An optical view of the filament region of Abell 85
We compare the distribution of optically and Halpha (Ha) selected galaxies in
the Southern half of the nearby Abell 85 (A85) cluster with the recently
discovered X-ray filament (XRF). We search for galaxies where star formation
(SF) may have been triggered by interactions with intracluster gas or tidal
pressure due to the cluster potential when entering the cluster. Our analysis
is based on images obtained with CFHT MegaPrime/MegaCam (1x1 deg2 field) in
four bands (ugri) and ESO 2.2mWFI (38'x36' field) in a narrow band filter
corresponding to the redshifted Halpha (Ha) line and in a broad R-band filter.
The LFs are estimated by statistically subtracting a reference field.
Background contamination is minimized by cutting out galaxies redder than the
observed red sequence in the g-i vs. i colour-magnitude diagram. The galaxy
distribution shows a significantly flattened cluster, whose principal axis is
slightly offset from the XRF. The analysis of the broad band LFs shows that the
filament region is well populated. The filament is also independently detected
as a gravitationally bound structure by the Serna & Gerbal hierarchical method.
101 galaxies are detected in Ha, among which 23 have spectroscopic redshifts in
the cluster, 2 have spectroscopic redshifts higher than the cluster and 58 have
photometric redshifts that tend to indicate that they are background
objects.The 23 galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts in the cluster are mostly
concentrated in the South part of the cluster and along the filament. We find a
number of galaxies showing evidence for SF in the XRF, and all our results are
consistent with the previous hypothesis that the XRF in A85 is a
gravitationally bound structure made of groups falling on to the main cluster.Comment: Accepted in A&A. 39 pages, 107 figures. Full resolution images
available at ftp://ftp.iap.fr/pub/from_users/gam/A85
Globular cluster formation within the Aquarius simulation
The Aquarius project is a very high-resolution simulation capable of resolving the full mass range of potential globular cluster (GC) formation sites. With a particle mass mp= 1.4 × 104 M¿, Aquarius yields more than 100 million particles within the virial radius of the central halo which has a mass of 1.8 × 1012 M¿, similar to that of the Milky Way. With this particle mass, dark matter concentrations (haloes) that give rise to GCs via our formation criteria contain a minimum of ~2000 particles. Here, we use this simulation to test a model of metal-poor GC formation based on collapse physics. In our model, GCs form when the virial temperatures of haloes first exceed 104 K as this is when electronic transitions allow the gas to cool efficiently. We calculate the ionizing flux from the stars in these first clusters and stop the formation of new clusters when all the baryonic gas of the Galaxy is ionized. This is achieved by adopting reasonable values for the star formation efficiencies and escape fraction of ionizing photons which result in similar numbers and masses of clusters to those found in the Milky Way. The model is successful in that it predicts ages (peak age ~13.3 Gyr) and a spatial distribution of metal-poor GCs which are consistent with the observed populations in the Milky Way. The model also predicts that less than 5 per cent of GCs within a radius of 100 kpc have a surviving dark matter halo, but the more distant clusters are all found in dark matter concentrations. We then test a scenario of metal-rich cluster formation by examining mergers that trigger star formation within central gas discs. This results in younger (~7¿13.3 Gyr), more centrally located clusters (40 metal-rich GCs within 18 kpc from the centre of the host) which are consistent with the Galactic metal-rich population. We test an alternate model in which metal-rich GCs form in dwarf galaxies that become stripped as they merge with the main halo. This process is inconsistent with observed metal-rich globulars in the Milky Way because it predicts spatial distributions that are far too extended
The intermediate-redshift galaxy cluster CL 0048-2942. Stellar populations
We present a detailed study of the cluster CL 0048-2942, located at z~0.64,
based on a photometric and spectroscopic catalogue of 54 galaxies in a 5 x 5
square arcmin region centred in that cluster. Of these, 23 galaxies were found
to belong to the cluster. Based on this sample, the line-of-sight velocity
dispersion of the cluster is approximately 680 +- 140 km/s. We have performed
stellar population synthesis in the cluster members as well as in the field
galaxies of the sample and found that there are population gradients in the
cluster with central galaxies hosting mainly intermediate/old populations
whereas galaxies in the cluster outskirts show clearly an increase of younger
populations, meaning that star formation is predominantly taking place in the
outer regions of the cluster. In a general way, field galaxies seem to host
less evolved stellar populations than cluster members. In fact, in terms of
ages, young supergiant stars dominate the spectra of field galaxies whereas
cluster galaxies display a dominant number of old and intermediate age stars.
Following the work of other authors (e.g. Dressler et al. 1999) we have
estimated the percentage of K+A galaxies in our sample and found around 13% in
the cluster and 10% in the field. These values were estimated through means of
a new method, based on stellar population synthesis results, that takes into
account all possible absorption features in the spectrum and thus makes optimal
use of the data.Comment: Accepted by Astronomy & Astrophysics. 24 pages, 10 figures, 10 tables
(figures 3, 4, 5 and tables 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 will be available in
electronic format only in the A&A published version
The Science Case for PILOT I: Summary and Overview
Original article can be found at: http://www.publish.csiro.au/?nid=139&aid=108 DOI: 10.1071/AS08048 [Open access article]PILOT (the Pathfinder for an International Large Optical Telescope) is a proposed 2.5-m optical/infrared telescope to be located at Dome C on the Antarctic plateau. Conditions at Dome C are known to be exceptional for astronomy. The seeing (above ∼30 m height), coherence time, and isoplanatic angle are all twice as good as at typical mid-latitude sites, while the water-vapour column, and the atmosphere and telescope thermal emission are all an order of magnitude better. These conditions enable a unique scientific capability for PILOT, which is addressed in this series of papers. The current paper presents an overview of the optical and instrumentation suite for PILOT and its expected performance, a summary of the key science goals and observational approach for the facility, a discussion of the synergies between the science goals for PILOT and other telescopes, and a discussion of the future of Antarctic astronomy. Paper II and Paper III present details of the science projects divided, respectively, between the distant Universe (i.e. studies of first light, and the assembly and evolution of structure) and the nearby Universe (i.e. studies of Local Group galaxies, the Milky Way, and the Solar System).Peer reviewe
Shapley Supercluster Survey: Mapping the filamentary network connecting the clusters
We have mapped the structure and connectivity of the Shapley supercluster core and its surroundings as traced by its member galaxies. To achieve this, we have carried out a new redshift survey of galaxies across a 21 square degree region (17×17 Mpc2) of the Shapley supercluster containing 11 rich clusters, all lying at z ~ 0.048. This survey aims to provide full spectroscopic coverage of galaxies for the Shapley Supercluster Survey (ShaSS), a multiwavelength survey based on high-quality optical ugri and near-infrared K-band imaging acquired with the 2.6-m VST and 4.1-m VISTA telescopes. Targets were selected from the VST images as having i < 18.0 and WISE/W1 < 15.5 mag, and the observations were carried out with the AAOmega spectrograph on the 3.9-m Anglo-Australian Telescope. We present here redshift measurements for 4027 galaxies, of which 957 belong to the Shapley Supercluster. Including existing measurements, there are now reliable redshifts for 95 per cent of galaxies within the survey's magnitude limits over the 21 deg2 region. This has enabled us to: (i) obtain a detailed map of the galaxy number density across the whole region; (ii) identify new groups and cluster substructures; (iii) establish the existence of a stream of galaxies connecting A3559 to the supercluster core.We provide updated central redshifts and velocity dispersions of the 11 clusters, confirming that they all lie within 1300 km s-1 of the central cluster Abell 3558. These 11 systems are all inter-connected and lie within a coherent sheet of galaxies that fills the entire survey region without gaps. Clear velocity caustics extend right to the survey boundary, indicating that the entire structure is gravitationally bound and in the process of collapse