204 research outputs found
Correlation Function of Galaxy Groups
We use the Updated Zwicky Catalog of galaxies (Falco et al. 1999) to generate
a catalog of groups, by means of a friend-of-friend algorithm. The correlation
length of the total sample is well fitted with a power law with parameters and for values of . Three subsamples defined by
the range of group virial masses were used to have their clustering
properties examined throughout the autocorrelation function. We find an
increase of the amplitude of the correlation function according to the group
masses which extends the results of the relation for galaxy systems
at small . For completeness we have also analyzed a sample of groups
obtained from the Southern Sky Redshift Survey (da Costa et al.1998) in the
range of virial masses to compare the results with those obtained from
GUZC.Comment: 9 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
The Seyfert Population in the Local Universe
The magnitude-limited catalog of the Southern Sky Redshift Survey (SSRS2), is
used to characterize the properties of galaxies hosting Active Galactic Nuclei.
Using emission-line ratios, we identify a total of 162 (3%) Seyfert galaxies
out of the parent sample with 5399 galaxies. The sample contains 121 Seyfert 2
galaxies and 41 Seyfert 1. The SSRS2 Seyfert galaxies are predominantly in
spirals of types Sb and earlier, or in galaxies with perturbed appearance as
the result of strong interactions or mergers. Seyfert galaxies in this sample
are twice as common in barred hosts than the non-Seyferts. By assigning
galaxies to groups using a percolation algorithm we find that the Seyfert
galaxies in the SSRS2 are more likely to be found in binary systems, when
compared to galaxies in the SSRS2 parent sample. However, there is no
statistically significant difference between the Seyfert and SSRS2 parent
sample when systems with more than 2 galaxies are considered. The analysis of
the present sample suggests that there is a stronger correlation between the
presence of the AGN phenomenon with internal properties of galaxies
(morphology, presence of bar, luminosity) than with environmental effects
(local galaxy density, group velocity dispersion, nearest neighbor distance).Comment: 35 pages, 13 figures, Accepted to be publised in Astronomical Journa
Effects of the Environment on the Properties of Seyfert Galaxies
We identify 175 Seyfert galaxies from the Southern Sky Redshift Survey -
SSRS2. We use the entire SSRS2 catalog to investigate the correlation between
the presence of AGN with host environment. The AGN phenomenon is more strongly
correlated with the internal host properties, than with the external
environment. In particular, we find that Seyferts reside in more luminous
galaxies, and are twice as frequent in barred galaxies and systems showing sign
of advanced merger condition, when compared to a control sample.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figs, 1 tables, to appear in the proceedings of "The
Interplay among Black Holes, Stars and ISM in Galactic Nuclei", IAU 222, eds.
T. Storchi Bergmann, L.C. Ho, and H.R. Schmit
Large-scale analysis of the SDSS-III DR8 photometric luminous galaxies angular correlation function
We analyse the large-scale angular correlation function (ACF) of the CMASS
luminous galaxies (LGs), a photometric-redshift catalogue based on the Data
Release 8 (DR8) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III. This catalogue contains
over LGs in the range , which was split
into four redshift shells of constant width. First, we estimate the constraints
on the redshift-space distortion (RSD) parameters and ,
where is the galaxy bias, the growth rate and is the
normalization of the perturbations, finding that they vary appreciably among
different redshift shells, in agreement with previous results using DR7 data.
When assuming constant RSD parameters over the survey redshift range, we obtain
, which agrees at the level with Baryon
Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey DR9 spectroscopic results. Next, we performed
two cosmological analyses, where relevant parameters not fitted were kept fixed
at their fiducial values. In the first analysis, we extracted the baryon
acoustic oscillation peak position for the four redshift shells, and combined
with the sound horizon scale from 7-year \textit{Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy
Probe} to produce the constraints and
. In the second analysis, we used the ACF full shape
information to constrain cosmology using real data for the first time, finding
and .
These results are in good agreement with findings, showing that the ACF
can be efficiently applied to constrain cosmology in future photometric galaxy
surveys.Comment: MNRAS accepted. Minor corrections to match publish versio
A simple prescription for simulating and characterizing gravitational arcs
Simple models of gravitational arcs are crucial to simulate large samples of
these objects with full control of the input parameters. These models also
provide crude and automated estimates of the shape and structure of the arcs,
which are necessary when trying to detect and characterize these objects on
massive wide area imaging surveys. We here present and explore the ArcEllipse,
a simple prescription to create objects with shape similar to gravitational
arcs. We also present PaintArcs, which is a code that couples this geometrical
form with a brightness distribution and adds the resulting object to images.
Finally, we introduce ArcFitting, which is a tool that fits ArcEllipses to
images of real gravitational arcs. We validate this fitting technique using
simulated arcs and apply it to CFHTLS and HST images of tangential arcs around
clusters of galaxies. Our simple ArcEllipse model for the arc, associated to a
S\'ersic profile for the source, recovers the total signal in real images
typically within 10%-30%. The ArcEllipse+S\'ersic models also automatically
recover visual estimates of length-to-width ratios of real arcs. Residual maps
between data and model images reveal the incidence of arc substructure. They
may thus be used as a diagnostic for arcs formed by the merging of multiple
images. The incidence of these substructures is the main factor preventing
ArcEllipse models from accurately describing real lensed systems.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in A&
The first 62 AGN observed with SDSS-IV MaNGA - IV: gas excitation and star-formation rate distributions
We present maps of the ionized gas flux distributions, excitation,
star-formation rate SFR, surface mass density , and obtain total
values of SFR and ionized gas masses {\it M} for 62 Active Galactic Nuclei
(AGN) observed with SDSS-IV MaNGA and compare them with those of a control
sample of 112 non-active galaxies. The most luminous AGN -- with
L(\rm{[OIII]}\lambda 5007) \ge 3.8\times 10^{40}\,\mbox{erg}\,\mbox{s}^{-1},
and those hosted by earlier-type galaxies are dominated by Seyfert excitation
within 0.2 effective radius from the nucleus, surrounded by LINER
excitation or transition regions, while the less luminous and hosted by
later-type galaxies show equally frequent LINER and Seyfert excitation within
. The extent of the region ionized by the AGN follows the
relation -- as in the case of the Broad-Line
Region. The SFR distribution over the region ionized by hot stars is similar
for AGN and controls, while the integrated SFR -- in the range
\,M\,yr is also similar for the late-type
sub-sample, but higher in the AGN for 75\% of the early-type sub-sample. We
thus conclude that there is no signature of AGN quenching star formation in the
body of the galaxy in our sample. We also find that 66\% of the AGN have higher
ionized gas masses than the controls -- in the range
10\,M -- while 75\% of the AGN have higher
within than the control galaxies
StarHorse: A Bayesian tool for determining stellar masses, ages, distances, and extinctions for field stars
Understanding the formation and evolution of our Galaxy requires accurate
distances, ages and chemistry for large populations of field stars. Here we
present several updates to our spectro-photometric distance code, that can now
also be used to estimate ages, masses, and extinctions for individual stars.
Given a set of measured spectro-photometric parameters, we calculate the
posterior probability distribution over a given grid of stellar evolutionary
models, using flexible Galactic stellar-population priors. The code (called
{\tt StarHorse}) can acommodate different observational datasets, prior
options, partially missing data, and the inclusion of parallax information into
the estimated probabilities. We validate the code using a variety of simulated
stars as well as real stars with parameters determined from asteroseismology,
eclipsing binaries, and isochrone fits to star clusters. Our main goal in this
validation process is to test the applicability of the code to field stars with
known {\it Gaia}-like parallaxes. The typical internal precision (obtained from
realistic simulations of an APOGEE+Gaia-like sample) are in
distance, in age, in mass, and mag in
. The median external precision (derived from comparisons with earlier
work for real stars) varies with the sample used, but lies in the range of
for distances, for ages,
for masses, and mag for . We provide StarHorse distances and
extinctions for the APOGEE DR14, RAVE DR5, GES DR3 and GALAH DR1 catalogues.Comment: 21 pages, 12 figures, accepte
The SOAR Gravitational Arc Survey - I: Survey overview and photometric catalogs
We present the first results of the SOAR (Southern Astrophysical Research)
Gravitational Arc Survey (SOGRAS). The survey imaged 47 clusters in two
redshift intervals centered at and , targeting the richest
clusters in each interval. Images were obtained in the , and
bands using the SOAR Optical Imager (SOI), with a median seeing of 0.83, 0.76
and 0.71 arcsec, respectively, in these filters. Most of the survey clusters
are located within the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Stripe 82 region and all
of them are in the SDSS footprint. Photometric calibration was therefore
performed using SDSS stars located in our SOI fields. We reached for galaxies
in all fields the detection limits of , and for a signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) = 3. As a by-product of the image
processing, we generated a source catalogue with 19760 entries, the vast
majority of which are galaxies, where we list their positions, magnitudes and
shape parameters. We compared our galaxy shape measurements to those of local
galaxies and concluded that they were not strongly affected by seeing. From the
catalogue data, we are able to identify a red sequence of galaxies in most
clusters in the lower range. We found 16 gravitational arc candidates
around 8 clusters in our sample. They tend to be bluer than the central
galaxies in the lensing cluster. A preliminary analysis indicates that of the clusters have arcs around them, with a possible indication of a
larger efficiency associated to the high- systems when compared to the
low- ones. Deeper follow-up images with Gemini strengthen the case for the
strong lensing nature of the candidates found in this survey.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures (most of them multi-panel) MNRAS (2013
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