2,829 research outputs found
IC 3599 did it again: A second outburst of the X-ray transient Seyfert 1.9 Galaxy
We report on the Swift discovery of a second high-amplitude (factor 100)
outburst of the Seyfert 1.9 galaxy IC 3599, and discuss implications for
outburst scenarios. Swift detected this active galactic nucleus (AGN) again in
February 2010 in X-rays at a level of (1.50\plm0.11) W (0.2-2.0
keV), which is nearly as luminous as the first outburst detected with ROSAT in
1990. Optical data from the Catalina sky survey show that the optical emission
was already bright two years before the Swift X-ray high-state. Our new Swift
observations performed between 2013 and 2015 show that IC 3599 is currently
again in a very low X-ray flux state. This repeat optical and X-ray outburst,
and the long optical duration, suggest that IC 3599 is likely not a tidal
disruption event (TDE). Instead, variants of AGN-related variability are
explored. The data are consistent with an accretion disk instability around a
black hole of mass on the order 10--10 M; a value estimated
using several different methods.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ Letter, 6 pages, 1 table, 3 figure
Seyfert galaxies with Swift: giant flares, rapid drops, and other surprises
Swift has initiated a new era of understanding the extremes of active
galactic nuclei (AGN) variability, their drivers and underlying physics. This
is based on its rapid response, high sensitivity, good spatial resolution, and
its ability to collect simultaneously X--ray-to-optical SEDs. Here, we present
results from our recent monitoring campaigns with Swift of highly variable AGN,
including outbursts, deep low states, and unusual long-term trends in several
Seyfert galaxies including Mrk 335, WPVS007, and RXJ2314.9+2243. We also report
detection of a new X-ray and optical outburst of IC 3599 and our Swift
follow-ups. IC 3599 was previously known as one of the AGN with the
highest-amplitude outbursts. We briefly discuss implications of this second
outburst of IC 3599 for emission scenarios including accretion-disk
variability, repeat tidal disruption events, and the presence of a binary
supermassive black hole.Comment: to appear in "Swift: 10 years of discovery", Proceedings of Scienc
The Centaurus A Northern Middle Lobe as a Buoyant Bubble
We model the northern middle radio lobe of Centaurus A (NGC 5128) as a
buoyant bubble of plasma deposited by an intermittently active jet. The extent
of the rise of the bubble and its morphology imply that the ratio of its
density to that of the surrounding ISM is less than 10^{-2}, consistent with
our knowledge of extragalactic jets and minimal entrainment into the precursor
radio lobe. Using the morphology of the lobe to date the beginning of its rise
through the atmosphere of Centaurus A, we conclude that the bubble has been
rising for approximately 140Myr. This time scale is consistent with that
proposed by Quillen et al. (1993) for the settling of post-merger gas into the
presently observed large scale disk in NGC 5128, suggesting a strong connection
between the delayed re-establishment of radio emission and the merger of NGC
5128 with a small gas-rich galaxy. This suggests a connection, for radio
galaxies in general, between mergers and the delayed onset of radio emission.
In our model, the elongated X-ray emission region discovered by Feigelson et
al. (1981), part of which coincides with the northern middle lobe, is thermal
gas that originates from the ISM below the bubble and that has been uplifted
and compressed. The "large-scale jet" appearing in the radio images of Morganti
et al. (1999) may be the result of the same pressure gradients that cause the
uplift of the thermal gas, acting on much lighter plasma, or may represent a
jet that did not turn off completely when the northern middle lobe started to
buoyantly rise. We propose that the adjacent emission line knots (the "outer
filaments") and star-forming regions result from the disturbance, in particular
the thermal trunk, caused by the bubble moving through the extended atmosphere
of NGC 5128.Comment: 38 pages, 13 figures, submitted to ApJ; a version with higher
resolution figures is available at
http://www.mso.anu.edu.au/~saxton/papers/cena.pd
The XMM-Newton slew survey in the 2-10 keV band
The XMM-Newton Slew Survey (XSS) covers a significant fraction of the sky in
a broad X-ray bandpass. Although shallow by contemporary standards, in the
`classical' 2-10 keV band of X-ray astronomy, the XSS provides significantly
better sensitivity than any currently available all-sky survey. We investigate
the source content of the XSS, focussing on detections in the 2-10 keV band
down to a very low threshold (> 4 counts net of background). At the faint end,
the survey reaches a flux sensitivity of roughly 3e-12 erg/cm2/s (2-10 keV).
Our starting point was a sample of 487 sources detected in the XMMSL1d2 XSS at
high galactic latitude in the hard band. Through cross-correlation with
published source catalogues from surveys spanning the electromagnetic spectrum
from radio to gamma-rays, we find that 45% of the sources have likely
identifications with normal/active galaxies, 18% are associated with other
classes of X-ray object (nearby coronally active stars, accreting binaries,
clusters of galaxies), leaving 37% of the XSS sources with no current
identification. We go on to define an XSS extragalactic hard band sample
comprised of 219 galaxies and active galaxies. We investigate the properties of
this extragalactic sample including its X-ray logN-logS distribution. We find
that in the low-count limit, the XSS is strongly affected by Eddington bias.
There is also a very strong bias in the XSS against the detection of extended
sources, most notably clusters of galaxies. A significant fraction of the
detections at and around the low-count limit may be spurious. Nevertheless, it
is possible to use the XSS to extract a reasonably robust sample of
extragalactic sources, excluding galaxy clusters. The differential logN-logS
relation of these extragalactic sources matches very well to the HEAO-1 A2
all-sky survey measurements at bright fluxes and to the 2XMM source counts at
the faint end.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, FITS table of XSS extragalactic sample
available from http://www.star.le.ac.uk/~amr30/Slew
Evidence that androstadienone, a putative human chemosignal, modulates women’s attributions of men’s attractiveness
Considerable research effort has focused on whether specific compounds found within human body odor influence the behavior or physiology of other individuals. The most intensively studied is 4,16-androstadien-3-one, a chemical which is known to modulate mood and have activational effects in the sympathetic nervous system in a context-dependent manner, but whose action in mate-choice contexts remains largely untested. Here we present evidence that this androgen steroid may modulate women’s judgments of men’sattractiveness in an ecologically valid context. We tested the effects of androstadienone at a speed-dating event in which men and women interacted in a series of brief dyadic encounters. Men were rated more attractive when assessed by women who had been exposed to androstadienone, an effect that was seen in two out of three studies. The results suggest that androstadienone can influence women’s attraction to men, and also that research into the modulatory effects of androstadienone should be made within ecologically valid contexts
Statistical evaluation of the flux cross-calibration of the XMM-Newton EPIC cameras
The second XMM-Newton serendipitous source catalogue, 2XMM, provides the
ideal data base for performing a statistical evaluation of the flux
cross-calibration of the XMM-Newton European Photon Imaging Cameras (EPIC). We
aim to evaluate the status of the relative flux calibration of the EPIC cameras
on board XMM-Newton (MOS1, MOS2, and pn) and investigate the dependence of the
calibration on energy, position in the field of view of the X-ray detectors,
and lifetime of the mission. We compiled the distribution of flux percentage
differences for large samples of 'good quality' objects detected with at least
two of the EPIC cameras. The mean offset of the fluxes and dispersion of the
distributions was then found by Gaussian fitting. Count rate to flux conversion
was performed with a fixed spectral model. The impact on the results of varying
this model was investigated. Excellent agreement was found between the two EPIC
MOS cameras to better than 4% from 0.2 keV to 12.0 keV. MOS cameras register
7-9% higher flux than pn below 4.5 keV and 10-13% flux excess above 4.5 keV. No
evolution of the flux ratios is seen with time, except at energies below 0.5
keV, where we found a strong decrease in the MOS to pn flux ratio with time.
This effect is known to be due to a gradually degrading MOS redistribution
function. The flux ratios show some dependence on distance from the optical
axis in the sense that the MOS to pn flux excess increases with off-axis angle.
Furthermore, in the 4.5-12.0 keV band there is a strong dependence of the MOS
to pn excess flux on the azimuthal-angle. These results strongly suggest that
the calibration of the Reflection Grating Array (RGA) blocking factors is
incorrect at high energies. Finally, we recommend ways to improve the
calculation of fluxes in future versions of XMM-Newton source catalogues.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables. Abridged Abstract. Accepted for
publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic
Face and voice attractiveness judgments change during adolescence
Attractivenessjudgments are thought to underpin adaptive mate choice decisions. We investigated how these judgmentschange during adolescence when mate choice is becoming relevant. Adolescents aged 11–15 evaluated faces and voices manipulated along dimensions that affect adults' judgments of attractiveness and that are thought to cue mate value. Facial stimuli consisted of pairs of faces that were more or less average, more or less feminine, or more or less symmetric. The adolescents selected the more average, symmetric, and feminine faces as more attractive more often than chance, but judgments of some facial traits differed significantly with rater age and sex, indicating a role of development in judgments of facial cues. Vocal stimuli consisted of pairs of voices manipulated to raise or lower perceived pitch. The older but not younger girls selected the lower-pitched male voices as more attractive at rates above chance, while the younger but not older boys selected the higher-pitched female voices as more attractive. Controlling for rater age, increased pubertal development was associated with increased selection of lower-pitched boys' voices by girls and decreased selection of feminized male faces by boys. Our results are the first to demonstrate that adolescents show somewhat similar attractivenessjudgments to adults in age-matched stimuli and that age, sex, and pubertal development have measurable effects on adolescents' attractivenessjudgments. They suggest that attractivenessjudgments in humans, at least for some traits, are facultatively calibrated to the individual's life stage, only reaching adult values upon sexual maturity when mate choice decisions become relevant
Interactions of Jets with Inhomogeneous Cloudy Media
We present two-dimensional slab-jet simulations of jets in inhomogeneous
media consisting of a tenuous hot medium populated with a small filling factor
by warm, dense clouds. The simulations are relevant to the structure and
dynamics of sources such as Gigahertz Peak Spectrum and Compact Steep Spectrum
radio galaxies, High Redshift Radio Galaxies and radio galaxies in cooling
flows. The jets are disrupted to a degree depending upon the filling factor of
the clouds. With a small filling factor, the jet retains some forward momentum
but also forms a halo or bubble around the source. At larger filling factors
channels are formed in the cloud distribution through which the jet plasma
flows and a hierarchical structure consisting of nested lobes and an outer
enclosing bubble results. We suggest that the CSS quasar 3C48 is an example of
a low filling factor jet - interstellar medium interaction whilst M87 may be an
example of the higher filling factor type of interaction. Jet disruption occurs
primarily as a result of Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities driven by turbulence in
the radio cocoon not through direct jet-cloud interactions, although there are
some examples of these. In all radio galaxies whose morphology may be the
result of jet interactions with an inhomogeneous interstellar medium we expect
that the dense clouds will be optically observable as a result of radiative
shocks driven by the pressure of the radio cocoon. We also expect that the
radio galaxies will possess faint haloes of radio emitting material well beyond
the observable jet structure.Comment: 21 pages, 16 figures, submitted to MNRAS. A version with full
resolution figures is available at:
http://www.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/~cjs2/pdf/cloudy_hue.pd
Voice pitch preferences of adolescents: Do changes across time indicate a shift towards potentially adaptive adult-like preferences?
An evolutionary approach to attractiveness judgments emphasises that many human trait preferences exist in order to assist adaptive mate choice. Here we test an adaptive development hypothesis, whereby voice pitch preferences indicating potential mate quality might arise or strengthen significantly during adolescence (when mate choice becomes adaptive). We used a longitudinal study of 250 adolescents to investigate changes in preference for voice pitch, a proposed marker of mate quality. We found significantly stronger preferences for lower-pitched opposite-sex voices in the older age group compared with the younger age group (using different sets of age-matched stimuli), and marginally increased preferences for lower-pitched opposite-sex voices comparing within-participant preferences for the same set of stimuli over the course of 1 year. We also found stability in individual differences in preferences across adolescence: controlling for age, the raters who had stronger preferences than their peers for lower pitched
voices when first tested, retained stronger preferences for lower-pitched voices relative to their peers about 1 year later. Adolescence provides a useful arena for evaluating adaptive hypotheses and testing the cues that might give rise to adaptive behaviour
The XMM-Newton Slew Survey: Towards The Whole X-ray Sky and the Rarest X-ray Events
The data collected by XMM-Newton as it slews between pointings currently
cover almost half the entire sky, and many familiar features and new sources
are visible. The soft-band sensitivity limit of the Slew is close to that of
the RASS, and a large-area Slew-RASS comparison now provides the best
opportunity for discovering extremely rare high-variability objects.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of "X-ray Astronomy 2009: Present Status,
Multi-Wavelength Approach and Future Perspectives", Bologna, Italy, September
7-11, 2009, AIP, eds. A. Comastri, M. Cappi, and L. Angelin
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