ABSTRACT The FU Orionis class of young stellar objects is enigmatic and rare. The members are interpreted to be "outbursting," that is, they are currently in a state of enhanced accretion by several ...orders of magnitude relative to the more modest disk-to-star accretion rates measured in typical T Tauri stars. They are key to our understanding of the history of stellar mass assembly and pre-main-sequence evolution, and are also critical when considering the chemical and physical evolution of the circumstellar environment-where planets form. A common supposition is that all T Tauri stars repeatedly undergo such outbursts, more frequently in their earlier evolutionary stages when the disks are more massive, so as to build up the requisite amount of stellar mass on the required timescale. However, the actual data supporting this traditional picture of episodically enhanced disk accretion are limited, and the observational properties of the known sample of FU Ori objects are quite diverse. To improve our understanding of these rare objects, we outline the logic used to meaningfully constrain the rate of FU Ori outbursts and present numbers to guide parameter choices in the analysis of time domain surveys.
An enigmatic and rare type of young stellar object is the FU Orionis class. The members are interpreted as "outbursting," that is, currently in a state of enhanced accretion by several orders of ...magnitude relative to the more modest disk-to-star accretion rates measured in typical T Tauri stars. They are key to our understanding of the history of stellar mass assembly and pre-main sequence evolution, as well as critical to consider in the chemical and physical evolution of the circumstellar environment -- where planets form. A common supposition is that *all* T Tauri stars undergo repeated such outbursts, more frequently in their earlier evolutionary stages when the disks are more massive, so as to build up the requisite amount of stellar mass on the required time scale. However, the actual data supporting this traditional picture of episodically enhanced disk accretion are limited, and the observational properties of the known sample of FU Ori objects quite diverse. To improve our understanding of these rare objects, we outline the logic for meaningfully constraining the rate of FU Ori outbursts and present numbers to guide parameter choices in the analysis of time domain surveys.
We present the Coordinated Synoptic Investigation of NGC 2264, a continuous 30 day multi-wavelength photometric monitoring campaign on more than 1000 young cluster members using 16 telescopes. The ...unprecedented combination of multi-wavelength, high-precision, high-cadence, and long-duration data opens a new window into the time domain behavior of young stellar objects. Here we provide an overview of the observations, focusing on results from Spitzer and CoRoT. The highlight of this work is detailed analysis of 162 classical T Tauri stars for which we can probe optical and mid-infrared flux variations to 1% amplitudes and sub-hour timescales. We present a morphological variability census and then use metrics of periodicity, stochasticity, and symmetry to statistically separate the light curves into seven distinct classes, which we suggest represent different physical processes and geometric effects. We provide distributions of the characteristic timescales and amplitudes and assess the fractional representation within each class. The largest category (>20%) are optical "dippers" with discrete fading events lasting ~1-5 days. The degree of correlation between the optical and infrared light curves is positive but weak; notably, the independently assigned optical and infrared morphology classes tend to be different for the same object. Assessment of flux variation behavior with respect to (circum)stellar properties reveals correlations of variability parameters with H alpha emission and with effective temperature. Overall, our results point to multiple origins of young star variability, including circumstellar obscuration events, hot spots on the star and/or disk, accretion bursts, and rapid structural changes in the inner disk.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will advance many areas of astronomy over the next decade with its unique wide-fast-deep multi-color imaging survey, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). The LSST ...will produce approximately 20TB of raw data per night, which will be automatically processed by the LSST Science Pipelines to generate science-ready data products -- processed images, catalogs and alerts. To ensure that these data products enable transformative science with LSST, stringent requirements have been placed on their quality and scientific fidelity, for example on image quality and depth, astrometric and photometric performance, and object recovery completeness. In this paper we introduce faro, a framework for automatically and efficiently computing scientific performance metrics on the LSST data products for units of data of varying granularity, ranging from single-detector to full-survey summary statistics. By measuring and monitoring metrics, we are able to evaluate trends in algorithmic performance and conduct regression testing during development, compare the performance of one algorithm against another, and verify that the LSST data products will meet performance requirements by comparing to specifications. We present initial results using faro to characterize the performance of the data products produced on simulated and precursor data sets, and discuss plans to use faro to verify the performance of the LSST commissioning data products.
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is an ambitious astronomical survey with a similarly ambitious Data Management component. Data Management for LSST includes processing on both nightly and ...yearly cadences to generate transient alerts, deep catalogs of the static sky, and forced photometry light-curves for billions of objects at hundreds of epochs, spanning at least a decade. The algorithms running in these pipelines are individually sophisticated and interact in subtle ways. This paper provides an overview of those pipelines, focusing more on those interactions than the details of any individual algorithm.
Based on more than four weeks of continuous high cadence photometric monitoring of several hundred members of the young cluster NGC 2264 with two space telescopes, NASA's Spitzer and the CNES CoRoT ...(Convection, Rotation, and planetary Transits), we provide high quality, multi-wavelength light curves for young stellar objects (YSOs) whose optical variability is dominated by short duration flux bursts, which we infer are due to enhanced mass accretion rates. These light curves show many brief -- several hour to one day -- brightenings at optical and near-infrared (IR) wavelengths with amplitudes generally in the range 5-50% of the quiescent value. Typically, a dozen or more of these bursts occur in a thirty day period. We demonstrate that stars exhibiting this type of variability have large ultraviolet (UV) excesses and dominate the portion of the u-g vs. g-r color-color diagram with the largest UV excesses. These stars also have large Halpha equivalent widths, and either centrally peaked, lumpy Halpha emission profiles or profiles with blue-shifted absorption dips associated with disk or stellar winds. Light curves of this type have been predicted for stars whose accretion is dominated by Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities at the boundary between their magnetosphere and inner circumstellar disk, or where magneto-rotational instabilities modulate the accretion rate from the inner disk. Amongst the stars with the largest UV excesses or largest Halpha equivalent widths, light curves with this type of variability greatly outnumber light curves with relatively smooth sinusoidal variations associated with long-lived hot spots. We provide quantitative statistics for the average duration and strength of the accretion bursts and for the fraction of the accretion luminosity associated with these bursts.
We present the Coordinated Synoptic Investigation of NGC 2264, a continuous 30-day multi-wavelength photometric monitoring campaign on more than 1000 young cluster members using 16 telescopes. The ...unprecedented combination of multi-wavelength, high-precision, high-cadence, and long-duration data opens a new window into the time domain behavior of young stellar objects. Here we provide an overview of the observations, focusing on results from Spitzer and CoRoT. The highlight of this work is detailed analysis of 162 classical T Tauri stars for which we can probe optical and mid-infrared flux variations to 1% amplitudes and sub-hour timescales. We present a morphological variability census and then use metrics of periodicity, stochasticity, and symmetry to statistically separate the light curves into seven distinct classes, which we suggest represent different physical processes and geometric effects. We provide distributions of the characteristic timescales and amplitudes, and assess the fractional representation within each class. The largest category (>20%) are optical "dippers" having discrete fading events lasting ~1-5 days. The degree of correlation between the optical and infrared light curves is positive but weak; notably, the independently assigned optical and infrared morphology classes tend to be different for the same object. Assessment of flux variation behavior with respect to (circum)stellar properties reveals correlations of variability parameters with H\(\alpha\) emission and with effective temperature. Overall, our results point to multiple origins of young star variability, including circumstellar obscuration events, hot spots on the star and/or disk, accretion bursts, and rapid structural changes in the inner disk.
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