37 research outputs found
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field
This paper presents the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), a one million second
exposure of an 11 square minute-of-arc region in the southern sky with the
Hubble Space Telescope. The exposure time was divided among four filters, F435W
(B435), F606W (V606), F775W (i775), and F850LP (z850), to give approximately
uniform limiting magnitudes mAB~29 for point sources. The image contains at
least 10,000 objects presented here as a catalog. Few if any galaxies at
redshifts greater than ~4 resemble present day spiral or elliptical galaxies.
Using the Lyman break dropout method, we find 504 B-dropouts, 204 V-dropouts,
and 54 i-dropouts. Using these samples that are at different redshifts but
derived from the same data, we find no evidence for a change in the
characteristic luminosity of galaxies but some evidence for a decrease in their
number densities between redshifts of 4 and 7. The ultraviolet luminosity
density of these samples is dominated by galaxies fainter than the
characteristic luminosity, and the HUDF reveals considerably more luminosity
than shallower surveys. The apparent ultraviolet luminosity density of galaxies
appears to decrease from redshifts of a few to redshifts greater than 6. The
highest redshift samples show that star formation was already vigorous at the
earliest epochs that galaxies have been observed, less than one billion years
after the Big Bang.Comment: 44 pages, 18 figures, to appear in the Astronomical Journal October
200
The Calibration of Mid-Infrared Star Formation Rate Indicators
With the goal of investigating the degree to which the mid-infrared emission
traces the star formation rate (SFR), we analyze Spitzer 8 um and 24 um data of
star-forming regions in a sample of 33 nearby galaxies with available
HST/NICMOS images in the Paschen-alpha (1.8756 um) emission line. The galaxies
are drawn from the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey (SINGS) sample, and
cover a range of morphologies and a factor ~10 in oxygen abundance. Published
data on local low-metallicity starburst galaxies and Luminous Infrared Galaxies
are also included in the analysis. Both the stellar-continuum-subtracted 8 um
emission and the 24 um emission correlate with the extinction-corrected
Pa-alpha line emission, although neither relationship is linear. Simple models
of stellar populations and dust extinction and emission are able to reproduce
the observed non-linear trend of the 24 um emission versus number of ionizing
photons, including the modest deficiency of 24 um emission in the low
metallicity regions, which results from a combination of decreasing dust
opacity and dust temperature at low luminosities. Conversely, the trend of the
8 um emission as a function of the number of ionizing photons is not well
reproduced by the same models. The 8 um emission is contributed, in larger
measure than the 24 um emission, by dust heated by non-ionizing stellar
populations, in agreement with previous findings. Two SFR calibrations, one
using the 24 um emission and the other using a combination of the 24 um and
H-alpha luminosities (Kennicutt et al. 2007), are presented. No calibration is
presented for the 8 um emission, because of its significant dependence on both
metallicity and environment. The calibrations presented here should be directly
applicable to systems dominated by on-going star formation.Comment: 67 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication on the Astrophysical
Journal; replacement contains: correction to equation 8; important tweaks to
equation 9; various typos correcte
The NICMOS Snapshot Survey of nearby Galaxies
We present ``snapshot'' observations with the NearInfrared Camera and
MultiObject Spectrometer (NICMOS) on board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) of
94 nearby galaxies from the Revised Shapley Ames Catalog. Images with 0.2 as
resolution were obtained in two filters, a broad-band continuum filter (F160W,
roughly equivalent to the H-band) and a narrow band filter centered on the
Paschen alpha line (F187N or F190N, depending on the galaxy redshift) with the
51x51 as field of view of the NICMOS camera 3. A first-order continuum
subtraction is performed, and the resulting line maps and integrated Paschen
alpha line fluxes are presented. A statistical analysis indicates that the
average Paschen alpha surface brightness {\bf in the central regions} is
highest in early-type (Sa-Sb) spirals.Comment: Original contained error in flux calibration. Table 1 now has correct
Paschen Alpha fluxes. 14 pages LaTeX with JPEG and PS figures. Also available
at http://icarus.stsci.edu/~boeker/publications.htm
NICMOS Observations of the Transiting Hot Jupiter XO-1b
We refine the physical parameters of the transiting hot Jupiter planet XO-1b
and its stellar host XO-1 using HST NICMOS observations. XO-1b has a radius
Rp=1.21+/-0.03 RJup, and XO-1 has a radius Rs=0.94+/-0.02 RSun, where the
uncertainty in the mass of XO-1 dominates the uncertainty of Rp and Rs. There
are no significant differences in the XO-1 system properties between these
broad-band NIR observations and previous determinations based upon ground-based
optical observations. We measure two transit timings from these observations
with 9 s and 15 s precision. As a residual to a linear ephemeris model, there
is a 2.0 sigma timing difference between the two HST visits that are separated
by 3 transit events (11.8 days). These two transit timings and additional
timings from the literature are sufficient to rule out the presence of an Earth
mass planet orbiting in 2:1 mean motion resonance coplanar with XO-1b. We
identify and correct for poorly understood gain-like variations present in
NICMOS time series data. This correction reduces the effective noise in time
series photometry by a factor of two, for the case of XO-1.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Ap
An Ultraviolet-to-Radio Broadband Spectral Atlas of Nearby Galaxies
The ultraviolet-to-radio continuum spectral energy distributions are
presented for all 75 galaxies in the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey
(SINGS). A principal component analysis of the sample shows that most of the
sample's spectral variations stem from two underlying components, one
representative of a galaxy with a low infrared-to-ultraviolet ratio and one
representative of a galaxy with a high infrared-to-ultraviolet ratio. The
influence of several parameters on the infrared-to-ultraviolet ratio is studied
(e.g., optical morphology, disk inclination, far-infrared color, ultraviolet
spectral slope, and star formation history). Consistent with our understanding
of normal star-forming galaxies, the SINGS sample of galaxies in comparison to
more actively star-forming galaxies exhibits a larger dispersion in the
infrared-to-ultraviolet versus ultraviolet spectral slope correlation. Early
type galaxies, exhibiting low star formation rates and high optical surface
brightnesses, have the most discrepant infrared-to-ultraviolet correlation.
These results suggest that the star formation history may be the dominant
regulator of the broadband spectral variations between galaxies. Finally, a new
discovery shows that the 24 micron morphology can be a useful tool for
parametrizing the global dust temperature and ultraviolet extinction in nearby
galaxies. The dust emission in dwarf/irregular galaxies is clumpy and warm
accompanied by low ultraviolet extinction, while in spiral galaxies there is
typically a much larger diffuse component of cooler dust and average
ultraviolet extinction. For galaxies with nuclear 24 micron emission, the dust
temperature and ultraviolet extinction are relatively high compared to disk
galaxies.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal; Fixed radio
flux density units (mJy
The Incidence of Highly-Obscured Star-Forming Regions in SINGS Galaxies
Using the new capabilities of the Spitzer Space Telescope and extensive
multiwavelength data from the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey (SINGS),
it is now possible to study the infrared properties of star formation in nearby
galaxies down to scales equivalent to large HII regions. We are therefore able
to determine what fraction of large, infrared-selected star-forming regions in
normal galaxies are highly obscured and address how much of the star formation
we miss by relying solely on the optical portion of the spectrum. Employing a
new empirical method for deriving attenuations of infrared-selected
star-forming regions we investigate the statistics of obscured star formation
on 500pc scales in a sample of 38 nearby galaxies. We find that the median
attenuation is 1.4 magnitudes in H-alpha and that there is no evidence for a
substantial sub-population of uniformly highly-obscured star-forming regions.
The regions in the highly-obscured tail of the attenuation distribution
(A_H-alpha > 3) make up only ~4% of the sample of nearly 1800 regions, though
very embedded infrared sources on the much smaller scales and lower
luminosities of compact and ultracompact HII regions are almost certainly
present in greater numbers. The highly-obscured cases in our sample are
generally the bright, central regions of galaxies with high overall attenuation
but are not otherwise remarkable. We also find that a majority of the galaxies
show decreasing radial trends in H-alpha attenuation. The small fraction of
highly-obscured regions seen in this sample of normal, star-forming galaxies
suggests that on 500pc scales the timescale for significant dispersal or break
up of nearby, optically-thick dust clouds is short relative to the lifetime of
a typical star-forming region.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ; emulateapj style, 30 pages, 18
figures (compressed versions), 3 table
Evidence for a Massive Post-Starburst Galaxy at z ~ 6.5
We present results from a search for high-redshift J--band ``dropout''
galaxies in the portion of the GOODS southern field that is covered by
extremely deep imaging from the Hubble Ultradeep Field (HUDF).Using
observations at optical, near-infrared and mid-infrared wavelengths from the
Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes and the ESO-VLT, we search for very massive
galaxies at high redshifts and find one particularly remarkable candidate. Its
spectral energy distribution is consistent with a galaxy at z ~ 6.5 and a
stellar mass of 6x10e11 M(sun) (for a Salpeter IMF). We interpret a prominent
photometric break between the near-infrared and Spitzer bandpasses as the 3646A
Balmer discontinuity. The best-fitting models have low reddening and ages of
several hundred Myr, placing the formation of the bulk of the stars at z > 9.
Alternative models of dusty galaxies at z ~ 2.5 are possible but provide
significantly poorer fits. The object is detected with Spitzer at 24 micron.
This emission originats from an obscured active nucleus or star formation. We
present optical and near-infrared spectroscopy which has, thus far, failed to
detect any spectral features. This helps limit the solution in which the galaxy
is a starburst or active galaxy at z ~ 2.5. If the high-redshift interpretation
is correct, this object would be an example of a galaxy that formed by a
process strongly resembling traditional models of monolithic collapse, in a way
which a very large mass of stars formed within a remarkably short period of
time, at very high redshift.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap.J. 31 pages, 6 diagram
Star Formation in NGC5194 (M51a): The Panchromatic View from GALEX to Spitzer
(Abridged) Far ultraviolet to far infrared images of the nearby galaxy
NGC5194, from Spitzer, GALEX, Hubble Space Telescope and ground--based data,
are used to investigate local and global star formation, and the impact of dust
extinction in HII-emitting knots. In the IR/UV-UV color plane, the NGC5194 HII
knots show the same trend observed for normal star-forming galaxies, having a
much larger dispersion than starburst galaxies. We identify the dispersion as
due to the UV emission predominantly tracing the evolved, non-ionizing stellar
population, up to ages 50-100 Myr. While in starbursts the UV light traces the
current SFR, in NGC5194 it traces a combination of current and recent-past SFR.
Unlike the UV emission, the monochromatic 24 micron luminosity is an accurate
local SFR tracer for the HII knots in NGC5194; this suggests that the 24 micron
emission carriers are mainly heated by the young, ionizing stars. However,
preliminary results show that the ratio of the 24 micron emission to the SFR
varies by a factor of a few from galaxy to galaxy. While also correlated with
star formation, the 8 micron emission is not directly proportional to the
number of ionizing photons. This confirms earlier suggestions that the carriers
of the 8 micron emission are heated by more than one mechanism.Comment: 66 pages, 20 figures (Figures 1-4 are in JPEG format, figures 5-20
are embedded postscript files). Accepted for publication on the Astrophysical
Journa
The Astropy Project: Building an inclusive, open-science project and status of the v2.0 core package
The Astropy project supports and fosters the development of open-source and openly-developed Python packages that provide commonly-needed functionality to the astronomical community. A key element of the Astropy project is the core package Astropy, which serves as the foundation for more specialized projects and packages. In this article, we provide an overview of the organization of the Astropy project and summarize key features in the core package as of the recent major release, version 2.0. We then describe the project infrastructure designed to facilitate and support development for a broader ecosystem of inter-operable packages. We conclude with a future outlook of planned new features and directions for the broader Astropy project