Abstract
We describe a multicomponent matched filter (MCMF) cluster confirmation tool designed for the study of large X-ray source catalogues produced by the upcoming X-ray all-sky survey mission ...eROSITA. We apply the method to confirm a sample of 88 clusters with redshifts 0.05 < z < 0.8 in the recently published 2RXS catalogue from the ROSAT All-Sky Survey (RASS) over the 208 deg2 region overlapped by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Science Verification (DES-SV) data set. In our pilot study, we examine all X-ray sources, regardless of their extent. Our method employs a multicolour red sequence (RS) algorithm that incorporates the X-ray count rate and peak position in determining the region of interest for follow-up and extracts the positionally and colour-weighted optical richness λMCMF as a function of redshift for each source. Peaks in the λMCMF–redshift distribution are identified and used to extract photometric redshifts, richness and uncertainties. The significances of all optical counterparts are characterized using the distribution of richnesses defined along random lines of sight. These significances are used to extract cluster catalogues and to estimate the contamination by random superpositions of unassociated optical systems. The delivered photometric redshift accuracy is δz/(1 + z) = 0.010. We find a well-defined X-ray luminosity–λMCMF relation with an intrinsic scatter of δln (λMCMF|Lx) = 0.21. Matching our catalogue with the DES-SV redMaPPer catalogue yields good agreement in redshift and richness estimates; comparing our catalogue with the South Pole Telescope (SPT) selected clusters shows no inconsistencies. SPT clusters in our data set are consistent with the high-mass extension of the RASS-based λMCMF–mass relation.
A recent XMM–Newton observation has revealed diffuse X-ray emission inside the nebula NGC 2359 around the Wolf–Rayet star WR 7. Taking advantage of an improved point-source rejection and background ...subtraction, and a detailed comparison of optical and X-ray morphology, we have reanalysed these X-ray observations. Our analysis reveals diffuse X-ray emission from a blowout and the presence of emission at energies from 1.0 to 2.0 keV. The X-ray emission from NGC 2359 can be described by an optically thin plasma emission model, but contrary to previous analysis, we find that the chemical abundances of this plasma are similar to those of the optical nebula, with no magnesium enhancement, and that two components at temperatures T
1 = 2 × 106 K and T
2 = 5.7 × 107 K are required. The estimated X-ray luminosity in the 0.3–2.0 keV energy range is L
X = 2 × 1033 erg s−1. The averaged rms electron density of the X-ray-emitting gas (n
e ≲ 0.6 cm−3) reinforces the idea of mixing of material from the outer nebula into the hot bubble.
Strong-gravitational lens systems with quadruply imaged quasars (quads) are unique probes to address several fundamental problems in cosmology and astrophysics. Although they are intrinsically very ...rare, ongoing and planned wide-field deep-sky surveys are set to discover thousands of such systems in the next decade. It is thus paramount to devise a general framework to model strong-lens systems to cope with this large influx without being limited by expert investigator time. We propose such a general modelling framework (implemented with the publicly available software lenstronomy) and apply it to uniformly model three-band Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3 images of 13 quads. This is the largest uniformly modelled sample of quads to date and paves the way for a variety of studies. To illustrate the scientific content of the sample, we investigate the alignment between the mass and light distribution in the deflectors. The position angles of these distributions are well-aligned, except when there is strong external shear. However, we find no correlation between the ellipticity of the light and mass distributions. We also show that the observed flux-ratios between the images depart significantly from the predictions of simple smooth models. The departures are strongest in the bluest band, consistent with microlensing being the dominant cause in addition to millilensing. Future papers will exploit this rich data set in combination with ground-based spectroscopy and time delays to determine quantities such as the Hubble constant, the free streaming length of dark matter, and the normalization of the initial stellar mass function.
It is well known that the probability distribution function (PDF) of galaxy density contrast is approximately lognormal; whether the PDF of mass fluctuations derived from weak lensing convergence ...(...WL) is lognormal is less well established. We derive PDFs of the galaxy and projected matter density distributions via the counts-in-cells (CiC) method. We use maps of galaxies and weak lensing convergence produced from the Dark Energy Survey Science Verification data over 139 deg2. We test whether the underlying density contrast is well described by a lognormal distribution for the galaxies, the convergence and their joint PDF. We confirm that the galaxy density contrast distribution is well modelled by a lognormal PDF convolved with Poisson noise at angular scales from 10 to 40 arcmin (corresponding to physical scales of 3-10 Mpc). We note that as ...WL is a weighted sum of the mass fluctuations along the line of sight, its PDF is expected to be only approximately lognormal. We find that the ...WL distribution is well modelled by a lognormal PDF convolved with Gaussian shape noise at scales between 10 and 20 arcmin, with a best-fitting X2/dof of 1.11 compared to 1.84 for a Gaussian model, corresponding to p-values 0.35 and 0.07, respectively, at a scale of 10 arcmin. Above 20 arcmin a simple Gaussian model is sufficient. The joint PDF is also reasonably fitted by a bivariate lognormal. As a consistency check, we compare the variances derived from the lognormal modelling with those directly measured via CiC. Our methods are validated against maps from the MICE Grand Challenge N-body simulation. (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae/symbols omitted.)
Hot Gas in the Wolf-Rayet Nebula NGC 3199 Toalá, J. A.; Marston, A. P.; Guerrero, M. A. ...
The Astrophysical journal,
09/2017, Volume:
846, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The Wolf-Rayet (WR) nebula NGC 3199 has been suggested to be a bow shock around its central star, WR 18, which is presumably a runaway star, because optical images of the nebula show a dominating arc ...of emission southwest of the star. We present the XMM-Newton detection of extended X-ray emission from NGC 3199, unveiling the powerful effect of the fast wind from WR 18. The X-ray emission is brighter in the region southeast of the star and an analysis of the spectral properties of the X-ray emission reveals abundance variations: (i) regions close to the optical arc present nitrogen-rich gas enhanced by the stellar wind from WR 18 and (ii) gas at the eastern region exhibits abundances close to those reported for the nebular abundances derived from optical studies, which is a signature of an efficient mixing of the nebular material with the stellar wind. The dominant plasma temperature and electron density are estimated to be T 1.2 × 106 K and ne = 0.3 cm−3 with an X-ray luminosity in the 0.3-3.0 keV energy range of LX = 2.6 × 1034 erg s−1. Combined with information derived from Herschel and the recent Gaia first data release, we conclude that WR 18 is not a runaway star and that the formation, chemical variations, and the shape of NGC 3199 depend on the initial configuration of the interstellar medium.
Abstract
We present Magellan/IMACS spectroscopy of three recently discovered ultra-faint Milky Way satellites, Grus II, Tucana IV, and Tucana V. We measure systemic velocities of
,
, and
for the ...three objects, respectively. Their large relative velocities demonstrate that the satellites are unrelated despite their close physical proximity. We determine a velocity dispersion for Tuc IV of
, but we cannot resolve the velocity dispersions of the other two systems. For Gru II, we place an upper limit (90% confidence) on the dispersion of
σ
< 1.9
, and for Tuc V, we do not obtain any useful limits. All three satellites have metallicities below
, but none has a detectable metallicity spread. We determine proper motions for each satellite based on Gaia astrometry and compute their orbits around the Milky Way. Gru II is on a tightly bound orbit with a pericenter of
kpc and orbital eccentricity of
. Tuc V likely has an apocenter beyond 100 kpc and could be approaching the Milky Way for the first time. The current orbit of Tuc IV is similar to that of Gru II, with a pericenter of
kpc and an eccentricity of
. However, a backward integration of the position of Tuc IV demonstrates that it collided with the Large Magellanic Cloud at an impact parameter of 4 kpc ∼120 Myr ago, deflecting its trajectory and possibly altering its internal kinematics. Based on their sizes, masses, and metallicities, we classify Gru II and Tuc IV as likely dwarf galaxies, but the nature of Tuc V remains uncertain.
We describe the model for mapping from sky brightness to the digital output of the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) and the algorithms adopted by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) for inverting this model to ...obtain photometric measures of celestial objects from the raw camera output. This calibration aims for fluxes that are uniform across the camera field of view and across the full angular and temporal span of the DES observations, approaching the accuracy limits set by shot noise for the full dynamic range of DES observations. The DES pipeline incorporates several substantive advances over standard detrending techniques, including principal-components-based sky and fringe subtraction; correction of the "brighter-fatter" nonlinearity; use of internal consistency in on-sky observations to disentangle the influences of quantum efficiency, pixel-size variations, and scattered light in the dome flats; and pixel-by-pixel characterization of instrument spectral response, through combination of internal-consistency constraints with auxiliary calibration data. This article provides conceptual derivations of the detrending/calibration steps, and the procedures for obtaining the necessary calibration data. Other publications will describe the implementation of these concepts for the DES operational pipeline, the detailed methods, and the validation that the techniques can bring DECam photometry and astrometry within 2 mmag and 3 mas, respectively, of fundamental atmospheric and statistical limits. The DES techniques should be broadly applicable to wide-field imagers.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, NMLJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM, UPUK
Accurate statistical measurement with large imaging surveys has traditionally required throwing away a sizable fraction of the data. This is because most measurements have relied on selecting nearly ...complete samples, where variations in the composition of the galaxy population with seeing, depth, or other survey characteristics are small. We introduce a new measurement method that aims to minimize this wastage, allowing precision measurement for any class of detectable stars or galaxies. We have implemented our proposal in balrog, software which embeds fake objects in real imaging to accurately characterize measurement biases. We demonstrate this technique with an angular clustering measurement using Dark Energy Survey (DES) data. We first show that recovery of our injected galaxies depends on a variety of survey characteristics in the same way as the real data. We then construct a flux-limited sample of the faintest galaxies in DES, chosen specifically for their sensitivity to depth and seeing variations. Using the synthetic galaxies as randoms in the Landy–Szalay estimator suppresses the effects of variable survey selection by at least two orders of magnitude. With this correction, our measured angular clustering is found to be in excellent agreement with that of a matched sample from much deeper, higher resolution space-based Cosmological Evolution Survey (COSMOS) imaging; over angular scales of 0
$_{.}^{\circ}$
004 < θ < 0
$_{.}^{\circ}$
2, we find a best-fitting scaling amplitude between the DES and COSMOS measurements of 1.00 ± 0.09. We expect this methodology to be broadly useful for extending measurements’ statistical reach in a variety of upcoming imaging surveys.
Abstract
Measurements of the galaxy stellar mass function are crucial to understand the formation of galaxies in the Universe. In a hierarchical clustering paradigm, it is plausible that there is a ...connection between the properties of galaxies and their environments. Evidence for environmental trends has been established in the local Universe. The Dark Energy Survey (DES) provides large photometric data sets that enable further investigation of the assembly of mass. In this study, we use ∼3.2 million galaxies from the (South Pole Telescope) SPT-East field in the DES science verification (SV) data set. From grizY photometry, we derive galaxy stellar masses and absolute magnitudes, and determine the errors on these properties using Monte Carlo simulations using the full photometric redshift probability distributions. We compute galaxy environments using a fixed conical aperture for a range of scales. We construct galaxy environment probability distribution functions and investigate the dependence of the environment errors on the aperture parameters. We compute the environment components of the galaxy stellar mass function for the redshift range 0.15 < z < 1.05. For z < 0.75, we find that the fraction of massive galaxies is larger in high-density environment than in low-density environments. We show that the low-density and high-density components converge with increasing redshift up to z ∼ 1.0 where the shapes of the mass function components are indistinguishable. Our study shows how high-density structures build up around massive galaxies through cosmic time.
Cosmic voids are usually identified in spectroscopic galaxy surveys, where 3D information about the large-scale structure of the Universe is available. Although an increasing amount of photometric ...data is being produced, its potential for void studies is limited since photometric redshifts induce line-of-sight position errors of greater than or equal to 50 Mpc h super( -1) which can render many voids undetectable. We present a new void finder designed for photometric surveys, validate it using simulations, and apply it to the high-quality photo-z redMaGiC galaxy sample of the DES Science Verification data. The algorithm works by projecting galaxies into 2D slices and finding voids in the smoothed 2D galaxy density field of the slice. Fixing the line-of-sight size of the slices to be at least twice the photo-z scatter, the number of voids found in simulated spectroscopic and photometric galaxy catalogues is within 20 per cent for all transverse void sizes, and indistinguishable for the largest voids (Rv = 70 Mpc h super( -1)). The positions, radii, and projected galaxy profiles of photometric voids also accurately match the spectroscopic void sample. Applying the algorithm to the DES-SV data in the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.8, we identify 87 voids with comoving radii spanning the range 18-120 Mpc h super( -1), and carry out a stacked weak lensing measurement. With a significance of 4.4s, the lensing measurement confirms that the voids are truly underdense in the matter field and hence not a product of Poisson noise, tracer density effects or systematics in the data. It also demonstrates, for the first time in real data, the viability of void lensing studies in photometric surveys.
PDF
