Hawaii quasar and T dwarf survey. I. Method and discovery of faint field ultracool dwarfs

The Hawaii Quasar and T dwarf survey (HQT Survey) is a wide-field, red optical survey carried out with the Suprime-Cam mosaic CCD camera on the 8.2 m Subaru telescope. The HQT survey is designed to search for low-luminosity (M_(AB1450) 5.7) as well as T dwarfs, both of which are selected by their very red I − z' colors. We use an optical narrowband filter NB816 to break a well-known I − z' color degeneracy between high-z quasars and foreground M and L dwarfs, which are more numerous than quasars. This paper is the first in a series of papers from the HQT survey and we report on the discovery of six faint (19 ≤ J ≤ 20) ultracool dwarfs found over a ~9.3 deg^2 area with a limiting magnitude of z'_(AB) ≤ 23.3. These dwarfs were confirmed by near-IR imaging and/or spectroscopy conducted at various facilities on Mauna Kea. With estimated distances of 60–170 pc, these are among the most distant spectroscopically confirmed field brown dwarfs to date. Limits on the proper motions of these ultracool dwarfs suggest that they are old members of the Galactic disk, though future follow-up observations are necessary to minimize errors. Our finding rate of ultracool dwarfs is within model predictions of Liu et al. However, the large brightening amplitude (~1 mag) previously reported for the L/T transition objects appears to overpredict the numbers. We also examine how the survey field latitude affects the survey sensitivity to the vertical scale height of ultracool dwarfs

Fragmentation Kinematics in Comet 332P/Ikeya-Murakami

We present initial time-resolved observations of the split comet 332P/Ikeya-Murakami taken using the Hubble Space Telescope. Our images reveal a dust-bathed cluster of fragments receding from their parent nucleus at projected speeds in the range 0.06 to 3.5 m s$^{-1}$ from which we estimate ejection times from October to December 2015. The number of fragments with effective radii $\gtrsim$20 m follows a differential power law with index $\gamma$ = -3.6$\pm$0.6, while smaller fragments are less abundant than expected from an extrapolation of this power-law. We argue that, in addition to losses due to observational selection, torques from anisotropic outgassing are capable of destroying the small fragments by driving them quickly to rotational instability. Specifically, the spin-up times of fragments $\lesssim$20 m in radius are shorter than the time elapsed since ejection from the parent nucleus. The effective radius of the parent nucleus is $r_e \le$ 275 m (geometric albedo 0.04 assumed). This is about seven times smaller than previous estimates and results in a nucleus mass at least 300 times smaller than previously thought. The mass in solid pieces, $2\times10^9$ kg, is about 4% of the mass of the parent nucleus. As a result of its small size, the parent nucleus also has a short spin-up time. Brightness variations in time-resolved nucleus photometry are consistent with rotational instability playing a role in the release of fragments.Comment: 19 pages, 1 table, 4 figures, To be published on ApJ

Detection of Earth-impacting asteroids with the next generation all-sky surveys

We have performed a simulation of a next generation sky survey's (Pan-STARRS 1) efficiency for detecting Earth-impacting asteroids. The steady-state sky-plane distribution of the impactors long before impact is concentrated towards small solar elongations (Chesley and Spahr, 2004) but we find that there is interesting and potentially exploitable behavior in the sky-plane distribution in the months leading up to impact. The next generation surveys will find most of the dangerous impactors (>140m diameter) during their decade-long survey missions though there is the potential to miss difficult objects with long synodic periods appearing in the direction of the Sun, as well as objects with long orbital periods that spend much of their time far from the Sun and Earth. A space-based platform that can observe close to the Sun may be needed to identify many of the potential impactors that spend much of their time interior to the Earth's orbit. The next generation surveys have a good chance of imaging a bolide like 2008TC3 before it enters the atmosphere but the difficulty will lie in obtaining enough images in advance of impact to allow an accurate pre-impact orbit to be computed.Comment: 47 pages, 16 figures, 2 table

The Ursa Major Cluster of Galaxies. I. Cluster Definition and Photometric Data

The Ursa Major Cluster has received remarkably little attention, although it is as near as the Virgo Cluster and contains a comparable number of HI-rich galaxies. In this paper, criteria for group membership are discussed and data are presented for 79 galaxies identified with the group. Of these, all 79 have been imaged at B,R,I bands with CCDs, 70 have been imaged at K' with a HgCdTe array detector, and 70 have been detected in the HI 21cm line. A complete sample of 62 galaxies brighter than M(B)=-16.5 is identified. Images and gradients in surface brightness and color are presented at a common linear scale. As has been seen previously, the galaxies with the reddest global colors are reddest at the centers and get bluer at large radii. However, curiously, among the galaxies with the bluest global colors there are systems with very blue cores that get redder at large radii.Comment: A LATEX file without figures. The postscript version (7.1Mb in gzipped format) including all the tables, figures and scanned versions of the plates can be retrieved as preprint no.208 from http://www.astro.rug.nl:80/~secr/ Accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journa

Discovery of a Methane Dwarf from the IfA-Deep Survey

We present the discovery of a distant methane dwarf, the first from the Institute for Astronomy (IfA) Deep Survey. The object ("IfA 0230-Z1") was identified from deep optical I and z'-band imaging, being conducted as an IfA-wide collaboration using the prime-focus imager Suprime-Cam on the Subaru 8.2-m Telescope. IfA 0230-Z1 is extremely red in the Iz'J (0.8--1.2 micron) bands but relatively blue in J-H; such colors are uniquely characteristic of T dwarfs. A near-IR spectrum taken with the Keck Telescope shows strong H2O absorption and a continuum break indicative of CH4, confirming the object has a very cool atmosphere. Comparison with nearby T dwarfs gives a spectral type of T3-T4 and a distance of ~45 pc. Simple estimates based on previous T dwarf discoveries suggest that the IfA survey will find a comparable number of T dwarfs as the 2MASS survey, albeit at a much larger average distance. We also discuss the survey's ability to probe the galactic scale height of ultracool (L and T) dwarfs.Comment: Astrophysical Journal Letters, in pres