1,046 research outputs found
The Astro-WISE approach to quality control for astronomical data
We present a novel approach to quality control during the processing of
astronomical data. Quality control in the Astro-WISE Information System is
integral to all aspects of data handing and provides transparent access to
quality estimators for all stages of data reduction from the raw image to the
final catalog. The implementation of quality control mechanisms relies on the
core features in this Astro-WISE Environment (AWE): an object-oriented
framework, full data lineage, and both forward and backward chaining. Quality
control information can be accessed via the command-line awe-prompt and the
web-based Quality-WISE service. The quality control system is described and
qualified using archive data from the 8-CCD Wide Field Imager (WFI) instrument
(http://www.eso.org/lasilla/instruments/wfi/) on the 2.2-m MPG/ESO telescope at
La Silla and (pre-)survey data from the 32-CCD OmegaCAM instrument
(http://www.astro-wise.org/~omegacam/) on the VST telescope at Paranal.Comment: Accepted for publication in topical issue of Experimental Astronomy
on Astro-WISE information syste
Testing Verlinde's emergent gravity in early-type galaxies
Verlinde derived gravity as an emergent force from the information flow,
through two-dimensional surfaces and recently, by a priori postulating the
entanglement of information in 3D space, he derived the effect of the
gravitational potential from dark matter (DM) as the entropy displacement of
dark energy by baryonic matter. In Emergent Gravity (EG) this apparent DM
depends only on the baryonic mass distribution and the present-day value of the
Hubble parameter. In this paper we test the EG proposition, formalized by
Verlinde for a spherical and isolated mass distribution, using the central
velocity dispersion, and the light distribution in a sample of 4260
massive and local early-type galaxies (ETGs) from the SPIDER sample. Our
results remain unaltered if we consider the sample of 807 roundest field
galaxies. We derive the predictions by EG for the stellar mass-to-light ratio
(M/L) and the Initial Mass Function (IMF), and compare them with the same
inferences derived from a) DM-based models, b) MOND and c) stellar population
models. We demonstrate that, consistently with a classical Newtonian framework
with a DM halo component, or alternative theories of gravity as MOND, the
central dynamics can be fitted if the IMF is assumed non-universal. The results
can be interpreted with a IMF lighter than a standard Chabrier at low-,
and bottom-heavier IMFs at larger . We find lower, but still
acceptable, stellar M/L in EG theory, if compared with the DM-based NFW model
and with MOND. The results from EG are comparable to what is found if the DM
haloes are adiabatically contracted and with expectations from spectral
gravity-sensitive features. If the strain caused by the entropy displacement
would be not maximal, as adopted in the current formulation, then the dynamics
of ETGs could be reproduced with larger M/L. (abridged)Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, submitted to MNRAS. The updated manuscript
presents significantly altered conclusions, after discovering an internal bug
in an older version of the Mathematica package, leading to incorrect
numerical results when calculating the derivatives of Gamma function
Multiscale assimilation of Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-EOS snow water equivalent and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer snow cover fraction observations in northern Colorado
Eight years (2002â2010) of Advanced Microwave Scanning RadiometerâEOS (AMSR-E) snow water equivalent (SWE) retrievals and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) snow cover fraction (SCF) observations are assimilated separately or jointly into the Noah land surface model over a domain in Northern Colorado. A multiscale ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) is used, supplemented with a rule-based update. The satellite data are either left unscaled or are scaled for anomaly assimilation. The results are validated against in situ observations at 14 high-elevation Snowpack Telemetry (SNOTEL) sites with typically deep snow and at 4 lower-elevation Cooperative Observer Program (COOP) sites. Assimilation of coarse-scale AMSR-E SWE and fine-scale MODIS SCF observations both result in realistic spatial SWE patterns. At COOP sites with shallow snowpacks, AMSR-E SWE and MODIS SCF data assimilation are beneficial separately, and joint SWE and SCF assimilation yields significantly improved root-mean-square error and correlation values for scaled and unscaled data assimilation. In areas of deep snow where the SNOTEL sites are located, however, AMSR-E retrievals are typically biased low and assimilation without prior scaling leads to degraded SWE estimates. Anomaly SWE assimilation could not improve the interannual SWE variations in the assimilation results because the AMSR-E retrievals lack realistic interannual variability in deep snowpacks. SCF assimilation has only a marginal impact at the SNOTEL locations because these sites experience extended periods of near-complete snow cover. Across all sites, SCF assimilation improves the timing of the onset of the snow season but without a net improvement of SWE amounts
The extinction by dust in the outer parts of spiral galaxies
To investigate the distribution of dust in Sb and Sc galaxies we have
analyzed near-infrared and optical surface photometry for an unbiased sample of
37 galaxies. Since light in the -band is very little affected by extinction
by dust, the colour is a good indicator of the amount of extinction, and
using the colour-inclination relation we can statistically determine the
extinction for an average Sb/Sc galaxy. We find in general a considerable
amount of extinction in spiral galaxies in the central regions, all the way out
to their effective radii. In the outer parts, at D, or at 3 times the
typical exponential scale lengths of the stellar distribution , we find a
maximum optical depth of 0.5 in for a face-on galaxy. If we impose the
condition that the dust is distributed in the same way as the stars, this upper
limit would go down to 0.1.Comment: 4 pages, postscript, gzip-compressed, uuencoded, includes 2 figures.
Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics, Letter
The Opacity of Spiral Galaxy Disks VI: Extinction, stellar light and color
In this paper we explore the relation between dust extinction and stellar
light distribution in disks of spiral galaxies. Extinction influences our
dynamical and photometric perception of disks, since it can distort our
measurement of the contribution of the stellar component. To characterize the
total extinction by a foreground disk, Gonzalez et al. (1998) proposed the
``Synthetic Field Method'' (SFM), which uses the calibrated number of distant
galaxies seen through the foreground disk as a direct indication of extinction.
The method is described in Gonzalez et al. (1998) and Holwerda et al. (2005a).
To obtain good statistics, the method was applied to a set of HST/WFPC2 fields
Holwerda et al. (2005b) and radial extinction profiles were derived, based on
these counts. In the present paper, we explore the relation of opacity with
surface brightness or color from 2MASS images, as well as the relation between
the scalelengths for extinction and light in the I band. We find that there is
indeed a relation between the opacity (A_I) and the surface brightness,
particularly at the higher surface brightnesses. No strong relation between
near infrared (H-J, H-K) color and opacity is found. The scalelengths of the
extinction are uncertain for individual galaxies but seem to indicate that the
dust distribution is much more extended than the stellar light. The results
from the distant galaxy counts are also compared to the reddening derived from
the Cepheids light-curves Freedman et al. (2001). The extinction values are
consistent, provided the selection effect against Cepheids with higher values
of A_I is taken into account. The implications from these relations for disk
photometry, M/L conversion and galaxy dynamical modeling are briefly discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 2 tables, 10 figures, accepted by A&
Metallicity Gradients in the Intracluster Gas of Abell 496
Analysis of spatially resolved ASCA spectra of the intracluster gas in Abell
496 confirms there are mild metal abundance enhancements near the center, as
previously found by White et al. (1994) in a joint analysis of Ginga LAC and
Einstein SSS spectra. Simultaneous analysis of spectra from all ASCA
instruments (SIS + GIS) shows that the iron abundance is 0.36 +- 0.03 solar
3-12' from the center of the cluster and rises ~50% to 0.53 +- 0.04 solar
within the central 2'. The F-test shows that this abundance gradient is
significant at the >99.99% level. Nickel and sulfur abundances are also
centrally enhanced. We use a variety of elemental abundance ratios to assess
the relative contribution of SN Ia and SN II to the metal enrichment of the
intracluster gas. We find spatial gradients in several abundance ratios,
indicating that the fraction of iron from SN Ia increases toward the cluster
center, with SN Ia accounting for ~50% of the iron mass 3-12' from the center
and ~70% within 2'. The increased proportion of SN Ia ejecta at the center is
such that the central iron abundance enhancement can be attributed wholly to SN
Ia; we find no significant gradient in SN II ejecta. These spatial gradients in
the proportion of SN Ia/II ejecta imply that the dominant metal enrichment
mechanism near the center is different than in the outer parts of the cluster.
We show that the central abundance enhancement is unlikely to be due to ram
pressure stripping of gas from cluster galaxies, or to secularly accumulated
stellar mass loss within the central cD. We suggest that the additional SN Ia
ejecta near the center is the vestige of a secondary SN Ia-driven wind from the
cD (following a more energetic protogalactic SN II-driven wind phase), which
was partially smothered in the cD due to its location at the cluster center.Comment: 25 pages AASTeX; 6 encapsulated PostScript figures; accepted for
publication in ApJ. Replaced with revised versio
Astro-WISE: Chaining to the Universe
The recent explosion of recorded digital data and its processed derivatives
threatens to overwhelm researchers when analysing their experimental data or
when looking up data items in archives and file systems. While current hardware
developments allow to acquire, process and store 100s of terabytes of data at
the cost of a modern sports car, the software systems to handle these data are
lagging behind. This general problem is recognized and addressed by various
scientific communities, e.g., DATAGRID/EGEE federates compute and storage power
over the high-energy physical community, while the astronomical community is
building an Internet geared Virtual Observatory, connecting archival data.
These large projects either focus on a specific distribution aspect or aim to
connect many sub-communities and have a relatively long trajectory for setting
standards and a common layer. Here, we report "first light" of a very different
solution to the problem initiated by a smaller astronomical IT community. It
provides the abstract "scientific information layer" which integrates
distributed scientific analysis with distributed processing and federated
archiving and publishing. By designing new abstractions and mixing in old ones,
a Science Information System with fully scalable cornerstones has been
achieved, transforming data systems into knowledge systems. This break-through
is facilitated by the full end-to-end linking of all dependent data items,
which allows full backward chaining from the observer/researcher to the
experiment. Key is the notion that information is intrinsic in nature and thus
is the data acquired by a scientific experiment. The new abstraction is that
software systems guide the user to that intrinsic information by forcing full
backward and forward chaining in the data modelling.Comment: To be published in ADASS XVI ASP Conference Series, 2006, R. Shaw, F.
Hill and D. Bell, ed
Identifying Birds' Collision Risk with Wind Turbines Using a Multidimensional Utilization Distribution Method
Renewable energy plays a key role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, the expansion of wind farms has raised concerns about risks for bird collisions. We tested different methods used to understand whether birds' flight occurs over wind turbines and found kernel density estimators outperform other methods. Previous studies using kernel utilization distribution (KUD) have considered only the 2 horizontal dimensions (2D). However, if altitude is ignored, an unrealistic depiction of the situation may result because birds move in 3 dimensions (3D). We quantified the 3D space use of the Griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus) in El Estrecho natural park in Tarifa (southern Spain, on the northern shore of the Strait of Gibraltar) during 2012-2013, and, for the first time, their risk of collision with wind turbines in an area in the south of Spain. The 2D KUD showed a substantial overlap of the birds' flight paths with the wind turbines in the study area, whereas the 3D kernel estimate did not show such overlap. Our aim was to develop a new approach using 3D kernel estimation to understand the space use of soaring birds; these are killed by collision with wind turbines more often than any other bird types in southern Spain. We determined the probability of bird collision with an obstacle within its range. Other potential application areas include airfields, plane flight paths, and tall buildings. (c) 2020 The Authors. Wildlife Society Bulletin published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of The Wildlife Society.Peer reviewe
Target and (Astro-)WISE technologies - Data federations and its applications
After its first implementation in 2003 the Astro-WISE technology has been
rolled out in several European countries and is used for the production of the
KiDS survey data. In the multi-disciplinary Target initiative this technology,
nicknamed WISE technology, has been further applied to a large number of
projects. Here, we highlight the data handling of other astronomical
applications, such as VLT-MUSE and LOFAR, together with some non-astronomical
applications such as the medical projects Lifelines and GLIMPS, the MONK
handwritten text recognition system, and business applications, by amongst
others, the Target Holding. We describe some of the most important lessons
learned and describe the application of the data-centric WISE type of approach
to the Science Ground Segment of the Euclid satellite.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, Proceedngs IAU Symposium No 325 Astroinformatics
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