219 research outputs found
Cooling Owing to High Thermal Conduction Non-metallic Material and Stability of Superconducting Coil
Distance of W3(OH) by VLBI annual parallax measurement
The most powerful tool for measuring distances within our Galaxy is the
annual parallax. We carried out phase-referencing VLBI observations of HO
masers in the star forming region W3(OH) with respect to the extragalactic
continuum source ICRF 0244+624 to measure their absolute proper motions. The
measured annual parallax is 0.484 0.004 milli-arcseconds which
corresponds to a distance of 2.07^{+0.01}_{-0.02}$ kpc from the sun. This
distance is consistent with photometric and kinematic distances from previous
observations.Comment: Proceedings of the 7th European VLBI Network Symposium (October 12-15
2004, Toledo, Spain), eds. Bachiller, R., Colomer, F., Desmurs, J. F., & de
Vicente, P., 4 pages, 4 figures, needs evn2004.cl
Regression-based {Monte Carlo} integration
© Corentin Salaun, Adrien Gruson, Binh-Son Hua, Toshiya Hachisuka & Gurprit Singh | ACM, (2022). This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in ACM Transactions on Graphics, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3528223.3530095.Monte Carlo integration is typically interpreted as an estimator of the expected value using stochastic samples. There exists an alternative interpretation in calculus where Monte Carlo integration can be seen as estimating a constant function—from the stochastic evaluations of the integrand—that integrates to the original integral. The integral mean value theorem states that this constant function should be the mean (or expectation) of the integrand. Since both interpretations result in the same estimator, little attention has been devoted to the calculus-oriented interpretation. We show that the calculus-oriented interpretation actually implies the possibility of using a more complex function than a constant one to construct a more efficient estimator for Monte Carlo integration. We build a new estimator based on this interpretation and relate our estimator to control variates with least-squares regression on the stochastic samples of the integrand. Unlike prior work, our resulting estimator is provably better than or equal to the conventional Monte Carlo estimator. To demonstrate the strength of our approach, we introduce a practical estimator that can act as a simple drop-in replacement for conventional Monte Carlo integration. We experimentally validate our framework on various light transport integrals. The code is available at https://github.com/iribis/regressionmc
Improved VLBI astrometry of OH maser stars
Aims: Accurate distances to evolved stars with high mass loss rates are
needed for studies of many of their fundamental properties. However, as these
stars are heavily obscured and variable, optical and infrared astrometry is
unable to provide enough accuracy.
Methods: Astrometry using masers in the circumstellar envelopes can be used
to overcome this problem. We have observed the OH masers of a number of
Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars for approximately 1 year with the Very Long
Baseline Array (VLBA). We have used the technique of phase referencing with
in-beam calibrators to test the improvements this technique can provide to Very
Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) OH maser astrometric observations.
Results: We have significantly improved the parallax and proper motion
measurements of the Mira variable stars U Her, S CrB and RR Aql.
Conclusions: It is shown that both in-beam phase-referencing and a decrease
in solar activity during the observations significantly improves the accuracy
of the astrometric observations. The improved distances to S CrB (418 +21 -18
pc) and RR Aql (633 +214 -128 pc) are fully consistent with published P-L
relations, but the distance to U Her (266 +32 -28 pc) is significantly smaller.
We conclude that for sources that are bright and have a nearby in-beam
calibrator, VLBI OH maser astrometry can be used to determine distances to OH
masing stars of up to ~2 kpc.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures; accepted for publication in A&A; for a version
with high-resolution figures see
http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~wouter/papers/astrom/astrom.shtm
Probing the Galactic Potential with Next-Generation Observations of Disk Stars
Near-future surveys promise a dramatic improvement in the number and
precision of astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic measurements of stars
in the Milky Way's disk. We examine the impact of such surveys on our
understanding of the Galaxy by "observing" particle realizations of
non-axisymmetric disk distributions orbiting in an axisymmetric halo with
appropriate errors and then attempting to recover the underlying potential
using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach. We demonstrate that the
azimuthally averaged gravitational force field in the Galactic plane--and
hence, to a lesser extent, the Galactic mass distribution--can be tightly
constrained over a large range of radii using a variety of types of surveys so
long as the error distribution of the measurements of the parallax, proper
motion and radial velocity are well-understood and the disk is surveyed
globally. One advantage of our method is that the target stars can be selected
non-randomly in real or apparent-magnitude space to ensure just such a global
sample without biasing the results. Assuming we can always measure the
line-of-sight velocity of a star with at least 1 km/s precision, we demonstrate
that the force field can be determined to better than ~1% for Galactocentric
radii in the range R=4-20 kpc We conclude that near-future surveys, like SIM
Lite, Gaia, and VERA, will provide the first precise mapping of the
gravitational force field in the region of the Galactic disk.Comment: 41 pages and 10 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
Parallaxes of Star Forming Regions in the Outer Spiral Arm of the Milky Way
We report parallaxes and proper motions of three water maser sources in
high-mass star-forming regions in the Outer Spiral Arm of the Milky Way. The
observations were conducted with the Very Long Baseline Array as part of Bar
and Spiral Structure Legacy Survey and double the number of such measurements
in the literature. The Outer Arm has a pitch angle of 14.9 +/- 2.7 deg and a
Galactocentric distance of 14.1 +/- 0.6 kpc toward the Galactic anticenter. The
average motion of these sources toward the Galactic center is 10.7 +/- 2.1 km/s
and we see no sign of a significant fall in the rotation curve out to 15 kpc
from the Galactic center. The three-dimensional locations of these star-forming
regions are consistent with a Galactic warp of several hundred parsecs from the
plane.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures, Accepted for publication in Ap
Trigonometric Parallaxes of High Mass Star Forming Regions: the Structure and Kinematics of the Milky Way
Over 100 trigonometric parallaxes and proper motions for masers associated
with young, high-mass stars have been measured with the BeSSeL Survey, a VLBA
key science project, the EVN, and the Japanese VERA project. These measurements
provide strong evidence for the existence of spiral arms in the Milky Way,
accurately locating many arm segments and yielding spiral pitch angles ranging
from 7 to 20 degrees. The widths of spiral arms increase with distance from the
Galactic center. Fitting axially symmetric models of the Milky Way with the 3-D
position and velocity information and conservative priors for the solar and
average source peculiar motions, we estimate the distance to the Galactic
center, Ro, to be 8.34 +/- 0.16 kpc, a circular rotation speed at the Sun, To,
to be 240 +/- 8 km/s, and a rotation curve that is nearly flat (a slope of -0.2
+/- 0.4 km/s/kpc) between Galactocentric radii of 5 and 16 kpc. Assuming a
"universal" spiral galaxy form for the rotation curve, we estimate the thin
disk scale length to be 2.44 +/- 0.16 kpc. The parameters Ro and To are not
highly correlated and are relatively insensitive to different forms of the
rotation curve. Adopting a theoretically motivated prior that high-mass star
forming regions are in nearly circular Galactic orbits, we estimate a global
solar motion component in the direction of Galactic rotation, Vsun = 14.6 +/-
5.0 km/s. While To and Vsun are significantly correlated, the sum of these
parameters is well constrained, To + Vsun = 255.2 +/- 5.1 km/s, as is the
angular speed of the Sun in its orbit about the Galactic center, (To + Vsun)/Ro
= 30.57 +/- 0.43 km/s/kpc. These parameters improve the accuracy of estimates
of the accelerations of the Sun and the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar in their
Galactic orbits, significantly reducing the uncertainty in tests of
gravitational radiation predicted by general relativity.Comment: 38 pages, 6 tables, 6 figures; v2 fixed typos and updated pulsar
section; v3 replaced fig 2 (wrong file
Trigonometric Parallaxes of Massive Star-Forming Regions. IX. The Outer Arm in the First Quadrant
We report a trigonometric parallax measurement with the Very Long Baseline
Array for the water maser in the distant high-mass star-forming region
G75.30+1.32. This source has a heliocentric distance of 9.25+-0.45 kpc, which
places it in the Outer arm in the first Galactic quadrant. It lies 200 pc above
the Galactic plane and is associated with a substantial HI enhancement at the
border of a large molecular cloud. At a Galactocentric radius of 10.7 kpc,
G75.30+1.32 is in a region of the Galaxy where the disk is significantly warped
toward the North Galactic Pole. While the star-forming region has an
instantaneous Galactic orbit that is nearly circular, it displays a significant
motion of 18 km/s toward the Galactic plane. The present results, when combined
with two previous maser studies in the Outer arm, yield a pitch angle of about
12 degrees for a large section of the arm extending from the first quadrant to
the third.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables, accepted by The Astrophysical Journa
- …