We have conducted an archival Spitzer study of 38 early-type galaxies in order to determine the origin of the dust in approximately half of this population. Our sample galaxies generally have good ...wavelength coverage from 3.6 mu m to 160 mu m, as well as visible-wavelength Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images. We use the Spitzer data to estimate dust masses, or establish upper limits, and find that all of the early-type galaxies with dust lanes in the HST data are detected in all of the Spitzer bands and have dust masses of ~105-106.5 M, while galaxies without dust lanes are not detected at 70 mu m and 160 mu m and typically have <105 M of dust. We propose that dust in early-type galaxies is seeded by external accretion, yet the accreted dust is maintained by continued growth in externally accreted cold gas beyond the nominal lifetime of individual grains. As the majority of dusty early-type galaxies are also low-luminosity active galactic nuclei and likely fueled by this cold gas, their lifetime should similarly be several Gyr.
Radio emission from radio-quiet quasars may be due to star formation in the quasar host galaxy, to a jet launched by the supermassive black hole, or to relativistic particles accelerated in a ...wide-angle radiatively driven outflow. In this paper, we examine whether radio emission from radio-quiet quasars is a byproduct of star formation in their hosts. To this end, we use infrared spectroscopy and photometry from Spitzer and Herschel to estimate or place upper limits on star formation rates in hosts of ∼300 obscured and unobscured quasars at z < 1. We find that low-ionization forbidden emission lines such as Ne ii and Ne iii are likely dominated by quasar ionization and do not provide reliable star formation diagnostics in quasar hosts, while polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emission features may be suppressed due to the destruction of PAH molecules by the quasar radiation field. While the bolometric luminosities of our sources are dominated by the quasars, the 160 μm fluxes are likely dominated by star formation, but they too should be used with caution. We estimate median star formation rates to be 6–29 M⊙ yr−1, with obscured quasars at the high end of this range. This star formation rate is insufficient to explain the observed radio emission from quasars by an order of magnitude, with log (L
radio, obs/L
radio, SF) = 0.6–1.3 depending on quasar type and star formation estimator. Although radio-quiet quasars in our sample lie close to the 8–1000 μm infrared/radio correlation characteristic of the star-forming galaxies, both their infrared emission and their radio emission are dominated by the quasar activity, not by the host galaxy.
Abstract
The Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) extends the reach of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to 28.5
μ
m. It provides subarcsecond-resolution imaging, high sensitivity coronagraphy, and ...spectroscopy at resolutions of
λ
/Δ
λ
∼ 100–3500, with the high-resolution mode employing an integral field unit to provide spatial data cubes. The resulting broad suite of capabilities will enable huge advances in studies over this wavelength range. This overview describes the history of acquiring this capability for JWST. It discusses the basic attributes of the instrument optics, the detector arrays, and the cryocooler that keeps everything at approximately 7 K. It gives a short description of the data pipeline and of the instrument performance demonstrated during JWST commissioning. The bottom line is that the telescope and MIRI are both operating to the standards set by pre-launch predictions, and all of the MIRI capabilities are operating at, or even a bit better than, the level that had been expected. The paper is also designed to act as a roadmap to more detailed papers on different aspects of MIRI.
The James Webb Space Telescope Mission Acton, Scott; Adams, Cynthia K.; Aguilar, Jonathan Albert ...
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific,
06/2023, Letnik:
135, Številka:
1048
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Abstract
Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space ...telescope with an aperture of at least 4 m. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the 6.5 m James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 yr, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.
Context
. The Medium-Resolution Spectrometer (MRS) provides one of the four operating modes of the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on board the
James Webb
Space Telescope (JWST). The MRS is an ...integral field spectrometer, measuring the spatial and spectral distributions of light across the 5–28 µm wavelength range with a spectral resolving power between 3700 and 1300.
Aims
. We present the MRS’s optical, spectral, and spectro-photometric performance, as achieved in flight, and we report on the effects that limit the instrument’s ultimate sensitivity.
Methods
. The MRS flight performance has been quantified using observations of stars, planetary nebulae, and planets in our Solar System. The precision and accuracy of this calibration was checked against celestial calibrators with well-known flux levels and spectral features.
Results
. We find that the MRS geometric calibration has a distortion solution accuracy relative to the commanded position of 8 mas at 5 µm and 23 mas at 28 µm. The wavelength calibration is accurate to within 9 km s
−1
at 5 µm and 27 km s
−1
at 28 µm. The uncertainty in the absolute spectro-photometric calibration accuracy was estimated at 5.6 ± 0.7%. The MIRI calibration pipeline is able to suppress the amplitude of spectral fringes to below 1.5% for both extended and point sources across the entire wavelength range. The MRS point spread function (PSF) is 60% broader than the diffraction limit along its long axis at 5 µm and is 15% broader at 28 µm.
Conclusions
. The MRS flight performance is found to be better than prelaunch expectations. The MRS is one of the most subscribed observing modes of JWST and is yielding many high-profile publications. It is currently humanity’s most powerful instrument for measuring the mid-infrared spectra of celestial sources and is expected to continue as such for many years to come.
Context.
The Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on board the
James Webb
Space Telescope (JWST) uses three Si:As impurity band conduction (IBC) detector arrays. The output voltage level of each MIRI ...detector pixel is digitally recorded by sampling up the ramp. For uniform or low-contrast illumination, the pixel ramps become nonlinear in a predictable way, but in areas of high contrast, the nonlinearity curve becomes much more complex. The origin of the effect is poorly understood and currently not calibrated out of the data.
Aims.
We provide observational evidence of the brighter-fatter effect (BFE) in MIRI conventional and high-contrast coronagraphic imaging, low-resolution spectroscopy, and medium-resolution spectroscopy data, and we investigate the physical mechanism that gives rise to the effect on the MIRI detector pixel raw voltage integration ramps.
Methods.
We used public data from the JWST/MIRI commissioning and Cycle 1 phase. We also developed a numerical electrostatic model of the MIRI detectors using a modified version of the public
Poisson_CCD
code.
Results.
We find that the physical mechanism behind the BFE manifesting in MIRI data is fundamentally different to that of charge-coupled devices and photodiode arrays such as the Hawaii-XRG near-infrared detectors used by the NIRISS, NIRCam, and NIRSpec instruments on board JWST. Observationally, the BFE makes the JWST MIRI data yield 10–25% larger point sources and spectral line profiles as a function of the relative level of de-biasing of neighboring detector pixels. This broadening impacts the MIRI absolute flux calibration, time-series observations of faint companions, and point spread function modeling and subtraction. We also find that the intra-pixel 2D profile of the shrinking Si:As IBC detector depletion region directly impacts the accuracy of the pixel ramp nonlinearity calibration model.
Abstract
Massive stars disrupt their natal molecular cloud material through radiative and mechanical feedback processes. These processes have profound effects on the evolution of interstellar matter ...in our Galaxy and throughout the universe, from the era of vigorous star formation at redshifts of 1–3 to the present day. The dominant feedback processes can be probed by observations of the Photo-Dissociation Regions (PDRs) where the far-ultraviolet photons of massive stars create warm regions of gas and dust in the neutral atomic and molecular gas. PDR emission provides a unique tool to study in detail the physical and chemical processes that are relevant for most of the mass in inter- and circumstellar media including diffuse clouds, proto-planetary disks, and molecular cloud surfaces, globules, planetary nebulae, and star-forming regions. PDR emission dominates the infrared (IR) spectra of star-forming galaxies. Most of the Galactic and extragalactic observations obtained with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will therefore arise in PDR emission. In this paper we present an Early Release Science program using the MIRI, NIRSpec, and NIRCam instruments dedicated to the observations of an emblematic and nearby PDR: the Orion Bar. These early JWST observations will provide template data sets designed to identify key PDR characteristics in JWST observations. These data will serve to benchmark PDR models and extend them into the JWST era. We also present the Science-Enabling products that we will provide to the community. These template data sets and Science-Enabling products will guide the preparation of future proposals on star-forming regions in our Galaxy and beyond and will facilitate data analysis and interpretation of forthcoming JWST observations.
Arsenic doped back illuminated blocked impurity band (BIBIB) silicon detectors have advanced near and mid-IR astronomy for over thirty years; they have high quantum efficiency (QE), especially at ...wavelengths longer than 10 μm, and a large spectral range. Their radiation hardness is also an asset for space based instruments. Three examples of Si:As BIBIB arrays are used in the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), observing between 5 and 28 μm. In this paper, we analyze the parameters leading to high quantum efficiency (up to ∼60%) for the MIRI devices between 5 and 10 μm. We also model the cross-shaped artifact that was first noticed in the 5.7 and 7.8 μm Spitzer/IRAC images and has since also been imaged at shorter wavelength (≤10 μm) laboratory tests of the MIRI detectors. The artifact is a result of internal reflective diffraction off the pixel-defining metallic contacts to the readout detector circuit. The low absorption in the arrays at the shorter wavelengths enables photons diffracted to wide angles to cross the detectors and substrates multiple times. This is related to similar behavior in other back illuminated solid-state detectors with poor absorption, such as conventional CCDs operating near 1 μm. We investigate the properties of the artifact and its dependence on the detector architecture with a quantum-electrodynamic (QED) model of the probabilities of various photon paths. Knowledge of the artifact properties will be especially important for observations with the MIRI LRS and MRS spectroscopic modes.
Jet‐triggered star formation in young radio galaxies Duggal, Chetna; O'Dea, Christopher; Baum, Stefi ...
Astronomische Nachrichten,
November-December 2021, 2021-11-00, 20211101, Letnik:
342, Številka:
9-10
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Emission in the ultraviolet continuum is a salient signature of the hot, massive, and consequently short‐lived, stellar population that traces recent or ongoing star formation. With the aim of ...mapping star forming regions and morphologically separating the generic star formation from that associated with the galaxy‐scale jet activity, we obtained high‐resolution ultraviolet (UV) imaging from the Hubble Space Telescope for a sample of nine compact radio sources. Out of these, seven are known Compact Steep Spectrum (CSS) galaxies that host young, kiloparsec‐scale radio sources and hence are the best candidates for studying radio‐mode feedback on galaxy scales, while the other two form a control sample of larger sources. Extended UV emission regions are observed in six of the seven CSS sources showing close spatial alignment with the radio‐jet orientation. If other mechanisms possibly contributing to the observed UV emission are ruled out, this could be evidence in support of jet‐triggered star formation in the CSS phase of radio galaxy evolution and in turn of the “positive feedback” paradigm of host–active galactic nuclei interaction.
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