Day 1788

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

2012.10377

Progress in understanding the enigmatic fast radio bursts

Chatterjee

In less than a decade, fast radio bursts have gone from a single debated curiosity to a diverse extragalactic population with established host galaxies and energy scales. While a wide range of models remain viable, the central engines of FRBs are likely to involve energetic young magnetars, as confirmed by the recent discovery of a Galactic analog to these extragalactic bursts. Here we provide a brief introductory review of fast radio bursts, focusing on the rapid recent progress in observations of these enigmatic events, our understanding of their central engines, and their use as probes of the intergalactic medium. We caution against a rush to judgement on the mechanisms and classification of all FRBs: at this point, it remains plausible that there could be one dominant central engine, as well as the possibility that radio bursts are a generic feature produced by many different mechanisms. We also emphasize the importance of improved modeling of our Galaxy and Galactic halo, which otherwise impose systematic errors on every FRB line of sight. The future of science with fast radio bursts appears bright.

2012.10329

Development of techniques enabling suborbital small object capture around low gravity asteroids

Vance, Thangavelautham

The exploration of small body asteroids provides direct access to the primitive building blocks of our solar system. Sample and return missions enable chemical and radioisotope studies which not only provide evidence for the formation of the solar system, but also a basic understanding of where resources might be found for future exploitation. The touch-down and sample techniques established by Hayabusa-2 and OSIRIS-REx accomplish this mission by physically touching down on the asteroid and collecting samples into a basket extended via a probe from the bottom of the spacecraft. This technique has been demonstrated to work, but contains a high cost in both mission operations as well as the size and complexity of the collection mechanism itself. This paper explores an alternative sample and return technique by exploiting the recent discovery of regolith particle ejections from Bennu. Particles ejected from the surface of Bennu are typically 1 cm in size and spend several hours in flight, suggesting the possibility that nanospacecraft deployed from the mother-spacecraft could chase down, collect and return with the sample with minimal sensor and delta-V capability. Key aspects of this mission are developed to reduce risk, and an overall mission concept is developed to establish plausibility.

2012.10051

Gaia GraL: Gaia DR2 gravitational lens systems. VI. Spectroscopic confirmation and modeling of quadruply-imaged lensed quasars

Stern, et al

Combining the exquisite angular resolution of Gaia with optical light curves and WISE photometry, the Gaia Gravitational Lenses group (GraL) uses machine learning techniques to identify candidate strongly lensed quasars, and has confirmed over two dozen new strongly lensed quasars from the Gaia Data Release 2. This paper reports on the 12 quadruply-imaged quasars identified by this effort to date, which is approximately a 20% increase in the total number of confirmed quadruply-imaged quasars. We discuss the candidate selection, spectroscopic follow-up, and lens modeling. We also report our spectroscopic failures as an aid for future investigations.

2012.09862

Spectroscopic flat-fields can be used for precision CCD gain and noise tests

Robertson

One of the basic parameters of a CCD camera is its gain, i.e. the number of detected electrons per output Analogue to Digital Unit (ADU). This is normally determined by finding the statistical variances from a series of flat-field exposures with nearly constant levels over substantial areas, and making use of the fact that photon (Poisson) noise has variance equal to the mean. However, when a CCD has been installed in a spectroscopic instrument fed by numerous optical fibres, or with an echelle format, it is no longer possible to obtain illumination that is constant over large areas. Instead of making do with selected small areas, it is shown here that the wide variation of signal level in a spectroscopic `flat-field' can be used to obtain accurate values of the CCD gain, needing only a matched pair of exposures (that differ in their realisation of the noise). Once the gain is known, the CCD readout noise (in electrons) is easily found from a pair of bias frames. Spatial stability of the image in the two flat-fields is important, although correction of minor shifts is shown to be possible, at the expense of further analysis.

2012.10463

Untangling the Galaxy III: Photometric search for pre-main sequence stars with deep learning

McBride, et al

A reliable census of of pre-main sequence stars with known ages is critical to our understanding of early stellar evolution, but historically there has been difficulty in separating such stars from the field. We present a trained neural network model, Sagitta, that relies on Gaia DR2 and 2MASS photometry to identify pre-main sequence stars and to derive their age estimates. Our model successfully recovers populations and stellar properties associated with known star forming regions up to five kpc. Furthermore, it allows for a detailed look at the star-forming history of the solar neighborhood, particularly at age ranges to which we were not previously sensitive. In particular, we observe several bubbles in the distribution of stars, the most notable of which is a ring of stars associated with the Local Bubble, which may have common origins with the Gould's Belt.

2012.11322

Avoiding the geometric boundary effect in shear measurement

Wang, Zhang, Li, Shen

In image processing, source detections are inevitably affected by the presence of the geometric boundaries in the images, including the physical boundaries of the CCD, and the boundaries of masked regions due to column defects, bright diffraction spikes, etc.. These boundary conditions make the source detection process not statistically isotropic. It can lead to additive shear bias near the boundaries. We build a phenomenological model to understand the bias, and propose a simple method to effectively eliminate the influence of geometric boundaries on shear measurement. We demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of this method using both simulations and the z-band imaging data from the third data release of the DECam Legacy Survey.

2012.11477

Dark matter local density determination: recent observations and future prospects

de Salas, Widmark

This report summarises progress made in estimating the local density of dark matter (ρDM,⊙), a quantity that is especially important for dark matter direct detection experiments. We outline and compare the most common methods to estimate ρDM,⊙ and the results from recent studies, including those that have benefited from the observations of the ESA/Gaia satellite. The result of most local analyses coincide within a range of ρDM,⊙≃0.4--0.6GeV/cm3=0.011--0.016M⊙/pc3, while a slightly lower range of ρDM,⊙≃0.3--0.5GeV/cm3=0.008--0.013M⊙/pc3 is preferred by most global studies. In light of recent discoveries, we discuss the importance of going beyond the approximations of what we define as the Ideal Galaxy (a steady-state Galaxy with axisymmetric shape and a mirror symmetry across the mid-plane) in order to improve the precision of ρDM,⊙measurements. In particular, we review the growing evidence for local disequilibrium and broken symmetries in the present configuration of the Milky Way, as well as uncertainties associated with the Galactic distribution of baryons. Finally, we comment on new ideas that have been proposed to further constrain the value of ρDM,⊙, most of which would benefit from Gaia's final data release.

2012.11494

Socio-demographic study of the exoplanet direct imaging community

Leboulleux, et al

Astronomy and science are fields in which specific groups remain under-represented despite multiple studies that investigate this issue and propose solutions. In this article, we analyze the demographics and social behavior of the exoplanet direct imaging community. Our focus is on identifying possible under-representation among this group, and quantifying inappropriate social behaviors. During the Spirit of Lyot conference 2019 (Tokyo, Japan), we conducted a survey that gathered a participation rate of 53\%. We analyzed the data collected under the prisms of gender balance and seniority representation. The proportions of women and of non-binary persons reveal a more diverse community in comparison to the other scientific groups (e.g. the IAU members), but still far from a balanced representation of all genders. Early-career scientists appear to have a lower visibility in the field than permanent researchers, with PhD students being under-represented at international conferences, and postdocs being excluded from conference Science Organizing Committees. Regarding social relations, the results are alarming, in particular when it comes to self-censoring of women or to unprofessional behavior, which was experienced by 54\% of this community (gender-biased behavior: 29\%; oral interruption: 33\%; inappropriate behavior: 33\%), and in particular by women. We recommend the community to become pro-active to build a safe environment and to continue its inclusion efforts. One aspect could be to systematically include socio-demographic surveys in conference registration forms to monitor the evolution of the community, in particular at larger scales. To do so, the survey questions available on GitHub.

2012.11667

CHARA Array adaptive topics: complex operational software and performance

Anugu, et al

The CHARA Array is the longest baseline optical interferometer in the world. Operated with natural seeing, it has delivered landmark sub-milliarcsecond results in the areas of stellar imaging, binaries, and stellar diameters. However, to achieve ambitious observations of faint targets such as young stellar objects and active galactic nuclei, higher sensitivity is required. For that purpose, adaptive optics are developed to correct atmospheric turbulence and non-common path aberrations between each telescope and the beam combiner lab. This paper describes the AO software and its integration into the CHARA system. We also report initial on-sky tests that demonstrate an increase of scientific throughput by sensitivity gain and by extending useful observing time in worse seeing conditions. Our 6 telescopes and 12 AO systems with tens of critical alignments and control loops pose challenges in operation. We describe our methods enabling a single scientist to operate the entire system.

2012.11930

The Gaia grid of spectra-photometric standard stars

Sanna, et al

We describe the preliminary results of a ground-based observing campaign aimed at building a grid of approximately 200 spectro-photometric standard stars (SPSS), with an internal ≃1\% accuracy (and sub-percent precision), tied to CALSPEC Vega and Sirius systems within ≃1\%, for the absolute flux calibration of data gathered by {\it Gaia}, the European Space Agency (ESA) astrometric mission. The criteria for the selection and a list of candidates are presented, together with a description of the survey's strategy and the adopted data analysis methods. All candidates were also monitored for constancy (within ±5 mmag, approximately). The present version of the grid contains about half of the final sample, it has already reached the target accuracy but the precision will substantially improve with future releases. It will be used to calibrate the {\it Gaia} (E)DR3 release of spectra and photometry.

2012.12299

CFHTLenS: Galaxy bias as function of scale, stellar mass, and color.  Conflicts with predictions by semi-analytic models

Simon, Hilbert

Galaxy models predict a tight relation between the clustering of galaxies and dark matter on cosmological scales, but predictions differ notably in the details. We used this opportunity and tested two semi-analytic models by the Munich and Durham groups with data from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS). For the test we measured the scale-dependent galaxy bias factor b(k) and correlation factor r(k) from linear to non-linear scales of k≈10hMpc−1 at two redshifts z¯=0.35,0.51 for galaxies with stellar mass between 5×109 and 3×1011h−270M⊙. Our improved gravitational lensing technique accounts for the intrinsic alignment of sources and the magnification of lens galaxies for better constraints for the galaxy-matter correlation r(k). Galaxy bias in CFHTLenS increases with k and stellar mass, it is colour-dependent, revealing the individual footprints of galaxy types. Despite a reasonable model agreement for the relative change with both scale and galaxy properties, there is a clear conflict for b(k) with no model preference: the model galaxies are too weakly clustered. This may flag a model problem at z≳0.3 for all stellar masses. As in the models, however, there is a high correlation r(k) between matter and galaxy density on all scales, and galaxy bias is typically consistent with a deterministic bias on linear scales. Only our blue and low-mass galaxies of about 7×109h−270M⊙ at z¯=0.51 show, contrary to the models, a weak tendency towards a stochastic bias on linear scales where rls=0.75±0.14(stat.)±0.06(sys.). This result is of interest for cosmological probes, such as EG, that rely on a deterministic galaxy bias.

2012.12312

Predictions of astrometric jitter for Sun-like stars.  I.  The model and its application to the Sun as seen from the ecliptic

Shapiro, et al

The advent of Gaia, capable of measuring stellar wobbles caused by orbiting planets, raised an interest to the astrometric detection of exoplanets. Another source of such wobbles (often also called jitter) is stellar magnetic activity. A quantitative assessment of the stellar astrometric jitter is important for a more reliable astrometric detection and characterisation of exoplanets. We calculate the displacement of the solar photocentre due to the magnetic activity for an almost 16-year period (February 2, 1999 - August 1, 2014). We also investigate how the displacement depends on the spectral passband chosen for observations, including the wavelength range to be covered by the upcoming Small-JASMINE mission of JAXA. This is done by extending the SATIRE-S model for solar irradiance variability to calculating the displacement of the solar photocentre caused by the magnetic features on the surface of the Sun. We found that the peak to peak amplitude of the solar photocentre displacement would reach 0.5 mas if the Sun were located 10 pc away from the observer and observed in the Gaia G filter. This is by far too small to be detected by the Gaia mission. However, the Sun is a relatively inactive star so that one can expect significantly larger signals for younger, and, consequently, more active stars. The model developed in this study can be combined with the simulations of emergence and surface transport of magnetic flux which have recently became available to model the astrometric jitter over the broad range of magnetic activities.

2012.12417

Focal plane wavefront sensing on SUBAR/SCExAO

Vievard, et al

Focal plane wavefront sensing is an elegant solution for wavefront sensing since near-focal images of any source taken by a detector show distortions in the presence of aberrations. Non-Common Path Aberrations and the Low Wind Effect both have the ability to limit the achievable contrast of the finest coronagraphs coupled with the best extreme adaptive optics systems. To correct for these aberrations, the Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics instrument hosts many focal plane wavefront sensors using detectors as close to the science detector as possible. We present seven of them and compare their implementation and efficiency on SCExAO. This work will be critical for wavefront sensing on next generation of extremely large telescopes that might present similar limitations.

2012.12526

Making organizational software easier to find in ASCL and ADS

Allen, et al

Software is the most used instrument in astronomy, and organizations such as NASA and the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Physics (HITS) fund, develop, and release research software. NASA, for example, has created sites such as code.nasa.gov to share its software with the world, but how easy is it to see what NASA has? Until recently, searching NASA's Astrophysics Data System (ADS) for NASA astronomy research software has not been fruitful. Through its ADAP program, NASA funded the Astrophysics Source Code Library to improve the discoverability of these codes. Adding institutional tags to ASCL entries makes it easy to find this software not only in the ASCL but also in ADS and other services that index the ASCL. This presentation covered the changes the ASCL made as a result of this funding and how you can use the results of this work to better find organizational software in ASCL and ADS.

2012.12549

Space debris -- optical measurements

Silha

Space debris is a major threat to the satellite infrastructure. A collision with even small particle, e.g. 1 cm of size, can cause a catastrophic event when the parent body, spacecraft or upper stage, will break up into hundreds of trackable fragments. Space debris research helps to discover, monitor and characterize these objects, identify their origin and support their active removal. Surveys with optical telescopes aim to discover new objects for cataloguing and to increase the accuracy of space debris population models. The follow-up observations are performed to improve their orbits or to investigate their physical characteristics. We will present the space debris population, its orbital and physical characteristics and we will discuss the role which the optical telescopes play in space debris research. We will also discuss the adopted astronomical techniques like astrometry, photometry and spectroscopy used in the space debris domain.

2012.12635

Validation of coronal mass ejection arrival-time forecasts by magnetohydrodynamic simulations based on interplanetary scintillation observations

Iwai, et al

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) cause various disturbances of the space environment; therefore, forecasting their arrival time is very important. However, forecasting accuracy is hindered by limited CME observations in interplanetary space. This study investigates the accuracy of CME arrival times at the Earth forecasted by three-dimensional (3D) magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations based on interplanetary scintillation (IPS) observations. In this system, CMEs are approximated as spheromaks with various initial speeds. Ten MHD simulations with different CME initial speed are tested, and the density distributions derived from each simulation run are compared with IPS data observed by the Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research (ISEE), Nagoya University. The CME arrival time of the simulation run that most closely agrees with the IPS data is selected as the forecasted time. We then validate the accuracy of this forecast using 12 halo CME events. The average absolute arrival-time error of the IPS-based MHD forecast is approximately 5.0 h, which is one of the most accurate predictions that ever been validated, whereas that of MHD simulations without IPS data, in which the initial CME speed is derived from white-light coronagraph images, is approximately 6.7 h. This suggests that the assimilation of IPS data into MHD simulations can improve the accuracy of CME arrival-time forecasts. The average predicted arrival times are earlier than the actual arrival times. These early predictions may be due to overestimation of the magnetic field included in the spheromak and/or underestimation of the drag force from the background solar wind, the latter of which could be related to underestimation of CME size or background solar wind density.

2012.12824

Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: Deep Field Optical + Near-Infrared images and catalogue

Hartley, Choi, et al

We describe the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Deep Fields, a set of images and associated multi-wavelength catalogue (ugrizJHKs) built from Dark Energy Camera (DECam) and Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) data. The DES Deep Fields comprise 11 fields (10 DES supernova fields plus COSMOS), with a total area of ∼30  square degrees in ugriz bands and reaching a maximum i-band depth of 26.75 (AB, 10σ, 2"). We present a catalogue for the DES 3-year cosmology analysis of those four fields with full 8-band coverage, totalling 5.88  sq. deg. after masking. The catalogue is constructed in order to provide a sample of effectively noiseless galaxies (S/N >10‾‾‾√× their equivalents in the main DES survey), to be used as a prior on the population of objects observed in the DES and their moments in light distribution, a source of high-quality redshift information in constructing source galaxy redshift distributions for weak lensing analyses, and a host of deep extragalactic science. Numbering 2.8 million objects (1.6 million post masking), our catalogue is drawn from images coadded to consistent depths of r=25.7,i=25,z=24.3 mag. We use a new model-fitting code, built upon established methods, to deblend sources and ensure consistent colours across the u-band to Ks-band wavelength range. We further detail the tight control we maintain over the point-spread function modelling required for the model fitting, astrometry and consistency of photometry between the four fields. The catalogue allows us to perform a careful star-galaxy separation and produces excellent photometric redshift performance (NMAD=0.023 at i<23). The Deep-Fields catalogue will be made available as part of the cosmology data products release, following the completion of the DES 3-year weak lensing and galaxy clustering cosmology work.

2012.12825

Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: measuring the survey transfer function with Balrog

Everett, et al

We describe an updated calibration and diagnostic framework, Balrog, used to directly sample the selection and photometric biases of Dark Energy Survey's (DES) Year 3 (Y3) dataset. We systematically inject onto the single-epoch images of a random 20% subset of the DES footprint an ensemble of nearly 30 million realistic galaxy models derived from DES Deep Field observations. These augmented images are analyzed in parallel with the original data to automatically inherit measurement systematics that are often too difficult to capture with traditional generative models. The resulting object catalog is a Monte Carlo sampling of the DES transfer function and is used as a powerful diagnostic and calibration tool for a variety of DES Y3 science, particularly for the calibration of the photometric redshifts of distant "source" galaxies and magnification biases of nearer "lens" galaxies. The recovered Balrog injections are shown to closely match the photometric property distributions of the Y3 GOLD catalog, particularly in color, and capture the number density fluctuations from observing conditions of the real data within 1% for a typical galaxy sample. We find that Y3 colors are extremely well calibrated, typically within ~1-8 millimagnitudes, but for a small subset of objects we detect significant magnitude biases correlated with large overestimates of the injected object size due to proximity effects and blending. We discuss approaches to extend the current methodology to capture more aspects of the transfer function and reach full coverage of the survey footprint for future analyses.

2012.12826

Dark Energy Survey Year 3 results: calibration of lens sample redshift distributions using clustering redshifts with BOSS/eBOSS

Cawthon, et al

We present clustering redshift measurements for Dark Energy Survey (DES) lens sample galaxies to be used in weak gravitational lensing and galaxy clustering studies. To perform this measurement, we cross-correlate with spectroscopic galaxies from the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation Survey (BOSS) and its extension, eBOSS. We validate our methodology in simulations, including a new technique to calibrate systematic errors due to the galaxy clustering bias, finding our method to be generally unbiased in calibrating the mean redshift. We apply our method to the data, and estimate the redshift distribution for eleven different photometrically-selected bins. We find general agreement between clustering redshift and photometric redshift estimates, with differences on the inferred mean redshift to be below |Δz|=0.01 in most of the bins. We also test a method to calibrate a width parameter for redshift distributions, which we found necessary to use for some of our samples. Our typical uncertainties on the mean redshift ranged from 0.003 to 0.008, while our uncertainties on the width ranged from 4 to 9\%. We discuss how these results calibrate the photometric redshift distributions used in companion DES Year 3 Results papers.