516 research outputs found
Spitzer Warm Mission Workshop Introduction
The Spitzer Warm Mission Workshop was held June 4â5, 2007, to explore the science drivers for the warm Spitzer mission and help the Spitzer Science Center develop a new science operations philosophy. We must continue to maximize the science return with the reduced resources available, both using (a) the shortest two IRAC channels, and (b) archival research with the rich Spitzer archive. This paper summarizes the overview slides presented to the workshop participant
Downsizing a Great Observatory: Reinventing Spitzer in the Warm Mission
The Spitzer Space Telescope transitioned from the cryogen mission to the IRAC warm mission during 2009. This transition involved changing several areas of operations in order to cut the mission annual operating costs to 1/3 of the cryogen mission amount. In spite of this substantial cut back, Spitzer continues to have one of the highest science return per dollar ratio of any of NASA's extended missions. This paper will describe the major operational changes made for the warm mission and how they affect the science return. The paper will give several measures showing that warm Spitzer continues as one of the most scientifically productive mission in NASA's portfolio. This work was performed at the California Institute of Technology under contract to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Automated Classification of Stellar Spectra: Where Are We Now?
We briefly review the work of the past decade on automated classification of stellar spectra and discuss techniques which show parÂticular promise. Emphasis is placed on Artificial Neural Network and Principle Component Analysis based techniques, due both to our greater familiarity with these and to their rising popularity. As an example of the abilities of current techniques we report on our automated classification work based on the visual classifications of N. Houk (Michigan Spectral Catalogue, Vol. 1 - 4, 1975, 1978, 1982, 1988)
Photometric Redshifts and High-Redshift Galaxies
The Workshop "Photometric Redshifts and HighâRedshift Galaxies" was held at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, in Pasadena, California, on 1999 April 28â30. The 70 participants were greeted with atypically cool, overcast weather, but this did not cloud or dampen the discussions. The application of photometric redshift techniques and studies of highâredshift galaxies are evolving so rapidly that the time seemed right to gather together the active workers in these fields and determine what is the current state of the art. Ray Weymann posed several questions that were the motivating factors in convening the workshop. Although we did not expect all of them to be answered in this forum, they provide a framework in which to examine current work and focus our future efforts
Spitzer Space Telescope: Unprecedented Efficiency and Excellent Science on a Limited Budget
The Spitzer Space Telescope completed nearly six years of cryogenic
operations in 2009 and in August 2011 began the third year of âwarmâ science observations.
Over 50,000 hours of science have been executed in the first 8 years of the
mission. Nearly 40% of the cryogenic mission project budget was devoted to data analysis
funding provided directly to the astronomical community. For the warm mission,
the observatory was effectively reinvented as a new, scientifically productive mission
operating at a substantially lower cost. In this paper we discuss how the design of the
science operations, observing modes and observing program for the cryogenic mission
led to very high observing efficiencies and maximized the observatory time devoted
to science. The philosophy of maximizing science output per dollar has continued in
the warm mission. The transition to warm operations has maintained an outstanding
science program while reducing the project budget by nearly 70% from the cryogenic
mission level
Quasar absorption line studies of galaxies and the intergalactic medium at z > 1.5
The title of this article could of course encompass an entire meeting. I will focus my comments on reviewing of what we know about the most numerous absorption lines, the neutral hydrogen absorbers, and their evolution with redshift. This field of study has undergone a renaissance in last few years driven by observations with the Hubble Space Telescope of low redshift quasar absorption lines, observations of high redshift absorbers with the HIRES instrument on Keck, and cosmological modeling that allows us to make detailed comparisons of lines of sight through simulated universes
The evolution of Omega(HI) and the epoch of formation of damped Lyman-alpha absorbers
We present a study of the evolution of the column density distribution,
f(N,z), and total neutral hydrogen mass in high-column density quasar absorbers
using candidates from a recent high-redshift survey for damped Lyman-alpha
(DLA) and Lyman limit system (LLS) absorbers. The observed number of LLS
(N(HI)> 1.6 * 10^{17} atom/cm^2) is used to constrain f(N,z) below the
classical DLA Wolfe et al. (1986) definition of 2 * 10^{20} atom/cm^2. The
joint LLS-DLA analysis shows unambiguously that f(N,z) deviates significantly
from a single power law and that a Gamma-law distribution of the form
f(N,z)=(f_*/N_*)(N/N_*)^{-Beta} exp(-N/N_*) provides a better description of
the observations. These results are used to determine the amount of neutral gas
contained in DLAs and in systems with lower column density. Whilst in the
redshift range 2 to 3.5, ~90% of the neutral HI mass is in DLAs, we find that
at z>3.5 this fraction drops to only 55% and that the remaining 'missing' mass
fraction of the neutral gas lies in sub-DLAs with N(HI) 10^{19} - 2 * 10^{20}
atom/cm^2. The characteristic column density, N_*, changes from 1.6 * 10^{21}
atom/cm^2 at z3.5, supporting a picture
where at z>3.5, we are directly observing the formation of high column density
neutral hydrogen DLA systems from lower column density units. Moreover since
current metallicity studies of DLA systems focus on the higher column density
systems they may be giving a biased or incomplete view of global galactic
chemical evolution at z>3. After correcting the observed mass in HI for the
``missing'' neutral gas the comoving mass density now shows no evidence for a
decrease above z=2. (abridged)Comment: Replaced to match version published in MNRAS. One figure and appendix
added, analysis and conclusions unchange
Morphological Classification of galaxies by Artificial Neural Networks
We explore a method for automatic morphological classification of galaxies by an Artificial Neural Network algorithm. The method is illustrated using 13 galaxy parameters measured by machine (ESO-LV), and classified into five types (E, S0, Sa + Sb, Sc + Sd and Irr). A simple Backpropagation algorithm allows us to train a network on a subset of the catalogue according to human classification, and then to predict, using the measured parameters, the classification for the rest of the catalogue. We show that the neural network behaves in our problem as a Bayesian classifier, i.e. it assigns the a posteriori probability for each of the five classes considered. The network highest probability choice agrees with the catalogue classification for 64 percent of the galaxies. If either the first or the second highest probability choice of the network is considered, the success rate is 90 per cent. The technique allows uniform and more objective classification of very large extragalactic data sets
Microlens Parallax Measurements with a Warm Spitzer
Because Spitzer is an Earth-trailing orbit, losing about 0.1 AU/yr, it is
excellently located to perform microlens parallax observations toward the
Magellanic Clouds (LMC/SMC) and the Galactic bulge. These yield the so-called
``projected velocity'' of the lens, which can distinguish statistically among
different populations. A few such measurements toward the LMC/SMC would reveal
the nature of the lenses being detected in this direction (dark halo objects,
or ordinary LMC/SMC stars). Cool Spitzer has already made one such measurement
of a (rare) bright red-clump source, but warm (presumably less oversubscribed)
Spitzer could devote the extra time required to obtain microlens parallaxes for
the more common, but fainter, turnoff sources. Warm Spitzer could observe bulge
microlenses for 38 days per year, which would permit up to 24 microlens
parallaxes per year. This would yield interesting information on the disk mass
function, particularly old brown dwarfs, which at present are inaccessible by
other techniques. Target-of-Opportunity (TOO) observations should be divided
into RTOO/DTOO, i.e., ``regular'' and ``disruptive'' TOOs, as pioneered by the
Space Interferometry Mission (SIM). LMC/SMC parallax measurements would be
DTOO, but bulge measurements would be RTOO, i.e., they could be scheduled in
advance, without knowing exactly which star was to be observed.Comment: 6 pages + 1 Figure, To be presented at The Warm Spitzer Mission
Workshop, 4-5 June 2007, Pasaden
Automated classification of stellar spectra - I. Initial results with artificial neural networks
We have initiated a project to classify stellar spectra automatically from high-dispersion objective prism plates. The automated technique presented here is a simple backpropagation neural network, and is based on the visual classification work of Houk. The plate material (Houk's) is currently being digitized, and contains â 105 stars down to V â 11 at â 2-Ă
resolution from â 3850 to 5150 Ă
. For this first paper in the series we report on the results of 575 stars digitized from 6 plates. We find that even with the limited data set now in hand we can determine the temperature classification to better than 1.7 spectral subtypes from B3 to M4. Our current sample size provides insufficient training set material to generate luminosity and metallicity classifications. Our eventual aims in this project are (1) to create a large and homogeneous digital stellar spectral library; (2) to create a well-understood and robust automatic classification algorithm which can determine temperatures, luminosities and metallicities for a wide variety of spectral types; (3) to use these data, supplemented by deeper plate material, for the study of Galactic structure and chemical evolution; and (4) to find unusual or new classes of objects
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