8 research outputs found
Studying the Imaging Characteristics of Ultra Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) through Numerical Simulations
Ultra-Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) is one of the five payloads aboard the
Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)'s ASTROSAT space mission. The science
objectives of UVIT are broad, extending from individual hot stars, star-forming
regions to active galactic nuclei. Imaging performance of UVIT would depend on
several factors in addition to the optics, e.g. resolution of the detectors,
Satellite Drift and Jitter, image frame acquisition rate, sky background,
source intensity etc. The use of intensified CMOS-imager based photon counting
detectors in UVIT put their own complexity over reconstruction of the images.
All these factors could lead to several systematic effects in the reconstructed
images. A study has been done through numerical simulations with artificial
point sources and archival image of a galaxy from GALEX data archive, to
explore the effects of all the above mentioned parameters on the reconstructed
images. In particular the issues of angular resolution, photometric accuracy
and photometric-nonlinearity associated with the intensified CMOS-imager based
photon counting detectors have been investigated. The photon events in image
frames are detected by three different centroid algorithms with some energy
thresholds. Our results show that in presence of bright sources, reconstructed
images from UVIT would suffer from photometric distortion in a complex way and
the presence of overlapping photon events could lead to complex patterns near
the bright sources. Further the angular resolution, photometric accuracy and
distortion would depend on the values of various thresholds chosen to detect
photon events.Comment: Submitted to PASP, 16 Pages, 9 figure
In-orbit Performance of UVIT on ASTROSAT
We present the in-orbit performance and the first results from the
ultra-violet Imaging telescope (UVIT) on ASTROSAT. UVIT consists of two
identical 38cm coaligned telescopes, one for the FUV channel (130-180nm) and
the other for the NUV (200-300nm) and VIS (320-550nm) channels, with a field of
view of 28 . The FUV and the NUV detectors are operated in the high
gain photon counting mode whereas the VIS detector is operated in the low gain
integration mode. The FUV and NUV channels have filters and gratings, whereas
the VIS channel has filters. The ASTROSAT was launched on 28th September 2015.
The performance verification of UVIT was carried out after the opening of the
UVIT doors on 30th November 2015, till the end of March 2016 within the
allotted time of 50 days for calibration. All the on-board systems were found
to be working satisfactorily. During the PV phase, the UVIT observed several
calibration sources to characterise the instrument and a few objects to
demonstrate the capability of the UVIT. The resolution of the UVIT was found to
be about 1.4 - 1.7 in the FUV and NUV. The sensitivity in various
filters were calibrated using standard stars (white dwarfs), to estimate the
zero-point magnitudes as well as the flux conversion factor. The gratings were
also calibrated to estimate their resolution as well as effective area. The
sensitivity of the filters were found to be reduced up to 15\% with respect to
the ground calibrations. The sensitivity variation is monitored on a monthly
basis. UVIT is all set to roll out science results with its imaging capability
with good resolution and large field of view, capability to sample the UV
spectral region using different filters and capability to perform variability
studies in the UV.Comment: 10 pages, To appear in SPIE conference proceedings, SPIE conference
paper, 201
Extended far-ultraviolet emission in distant dwarf galaxies
International audienceBlue compact dwarf (BCD) galaxies are low-luminosity (absolute K-band magnitude, MK > −21 mag)1, metal-poor (1/50 ≤ Z/Z⊙ ≤ 1/2, where Z is the metallicity in terms of the solar metallicity Z⊙)2, centrally concentrated3 galaxies with bright clumps of star formation4. Cosmological surface-brightness dimming5 and the small size of BCDs limit their detection at high redshifts, making their formation process difficult to observe. Observations of BCDs are needed at intermediate redshifts, where they are still young enough to show their formative stages, particularly in the outer regions where cosmic gas accretion should drive evolution. Here we report the observation of excess far-ultraviolet (FUV) emission in the outer regions of 11 BCDs in the GOODS South field at redshifts between 0.1 and 0.24, corresponding to look-back times of 1.3-2.8 billion years in standard cosmology. These observations were made by the Ultra-Violet Imaging Telescope6 on AstroSat7. For ten BCDs, the radial profiles of the intrinsic FUV emission, corrected for the instrument point spread function, have larger scale lengths than their optical counterparts observed with the Hubble Space Telescope. Such shallow FUV profiles suggest extended star formation in cosmically accreting disks. Clumpy structure in the FUV also suggests that the outer FUV disks are gravitationally unstable. Dynamical friction on the clumps drives them inwards at an average rate exceeding 106 solar masses per billion years