159 research outputs found
Faint M-dwarfs and the structure of the Galactic disk
We use broadband photometry and low-resolution spectra of a complete sample
of late-K and M dwarfs brighter than I=22 in three fields at high galactic
latitude to study issues relating to galactic structure and large scale
abundance gradients in the Galaxy. The observed starcounts in each field are a
good match to the predictions of models based on deep starcount data in other
intermediate-latitude fields, and these models identify the late-type stars as
members of the Galactic disk. Abundances for these late type stars are
estimated via narrowband indices that measure the strength of the TiO and CaH
bands in their spectra. Our results show that the average abundance in the
Galactic disk remains close to solar even at heights of more than 2 kpc above
the Plane.Comment: to appear in PASP; 17 pages, including 7 embedded, postscript figures
and 1 embedded table; uses AAS LaTeX style files (not included); also
available at http://astro.caltech.edu/~map/map.bibliography.htm
Dust during the Reionization
The possibility that population III stars have reionized the Universe at
redshifts greater than 6 has recently gained momentum with WMAP polarization
results. Here we analyse the role of early dust produced by these stars and
ejected into the intergalactic medium. We show that this dust, heated by the
radiation from the same population III stars, produces a submillimetre excess.
The electromagnetic spectrum of this excess could account for a significant
fraction of the FIRAS (Far Infrared Absolute Spectrophotometer) cosmic far
infrared background above 700 micron. This spectrum, a primary anisotropy
() spectrum times the dust emissivity law, peaking in the
submillimetre domain around 750 micron, is generic and does not depend on other
detailed dust properties. Arcminute--scale anisotropies, coming from
inhomogeneities in this early dust, could be detected by future submillimetre
experiments such as Planck HFI.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, accepted by A&A; clarifications made, typos
fixed, results more exactly calculate
HEROES: The Hawaii eROSITA Ecliptic Pole Survey Catalog
We present a seven band (g, r, i, z, y, NB816, NB921) catalog derived from a
Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) imaging survey of the North Ecliptic Pole (NEP).
The survey, known as HEROES, consists of 44 sq. deg of contiguous imaging
reaching median 5-sigma depths of g: 26.5, r: 26.2, i: 25.7, z: 25.1, y: 23.9,
NB816: 24.4, NB921: 24.4 mag. We reduced these data with the HSC pipeline
software hscPipe, and produced a resulting multiband catalog containing over 25
million objects. We provide the catalog in three formats: (1) a collection of
hscPipe format forced photometry catalogs, (2) a single combined catalog
containing every object in that dataset with selected useful columns, and (3) a
smaller variation of the combined catalog with only essential columns for basic
analysis or low memory machines. The catalog uses all the available HSC data on
the NEP and may serve as the primary optical catalog for current and future NEP
deep fields from instruments and observatories such as SCUBA-2, eROSITA,
Spitzer, Euclid, and JWST.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables. Submitted to ApJS. v2: 11 pages, 6
figures, 2 tables. Accepted to ApJ
Physical properties and small-scale structure of the Lyman-alpha forest: Inversion of the HE 1122-1628 UVES spectrum
We study the physical properties of the Lyman-alpha forest by applying the
inversion method described by Pichon et al. (2001) to the high resolution and
high S/N ratio spectrum of the z_em=2.40 quasar HE 1122-1628 obtained during
Science Verification of UVES at the VLT. We compare the column densities
obtained with the new fitting procedure with those derived using standard Voigt
profile methods. The agreement is good and gives confidence in the new
description of the Lyman-alpha forest as a continuous field as derived from our
method. We show that the observed number density of lines with logN>13 and 14
is, respectively, 50 and 250 per unit redshift at z~2. We study the physical
state of the gas, neglecting peculiar velocities, assuming a relation between
the overdensity and the temperature. T=Tbar * rho^(2beta). There is an
intrinsic degeneracy between the parameters beta and Tbar. We demonstrate that,
at a fixed beta, the temperature at mean density, Tbar, can be uniquely
extracted however. While applying the method to HE 1122-1628, we conclude that
for 0.2<beta<0.3, 6000<Tbar<15000 K at z~2. We investigate the small scale
structure of strong absorption lines using the information derived from the
Lyman-beta, Lyman-gamma and Civ profiles. Introducing the Lyman-beta line in
the fit allows us to reconstruct the density field up to rho~10 instead of 5
for the Lyman-alpha line only. There may be small velocity shifts ~10km.s^{-1}
between the peaks in the Civ and Hi density profiles. Although the statistics
is small, it seems that Civ/Hi and n_HI are anti-correlated. This could be a
consequence of the high sensitivity of the Civ/Hi ratio to temperature. The
presence of associated Ovi absorption, with similar profile, confirms that the
gas is photo-ionized and at a temperature of T~10^5 K.Comment: 15 pages, 21 figures, accepted for publication in A&A. Quoted results
from other papers in section 4.2 have been modifie
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