Gaia Data Release 1 Carrasco, J M; Evans, D W; Montegriffo, P ...
Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin),
11/2016, Letnik:
595
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Context. Gaia is an ESA cornerstone mission launched on 19 December 2013 aiming to obtain the most complete and precise 3D map of our Galaxy by observing more than one billion sources. This paper is ...part of a series of documents explaining the data processing and its results for Gaia Data Release 1, focussing on the G band photometry. Aims. This paper describes the calibration model of the Gaia photometric passband for Gaia Data Release 1. Methods. The overall principle of splitting the process into internal and external calibrations is outlined. In the internal calibration, a self-consistent photometric system is generated. Then, the external calibration provides the link to the absolute photometric flux scales. Results. The Gaia photometric calibration pipeline explained here was applied to the first data release with good results. Details are given of the various calibration elements including the mathematical formulation of the models used and of the extraction and preparation of the required input parameters (e.g. colour terms). The external calibration in this first release provides the absolute zero point and photometric transformations from the GaiaG passband to other common photometric systems. Conclusions. This paper describes the photometric calibration implemented for the first Gaia data release and the instrumental effects taken into account. For this first release no aperture losses, radiation damage, and other second-order effects have not yet been implemented in the calibration.
Gaia Data Release 1 van Leeuwen, F; Evans, D W; De Angeli, F ...
Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin),
03/2017, Letnik:
599
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Context. This paper presents an overview of the photometric data that are part of the first Gaia data release. Aims. The principles of the processing and the main characteristics of the Gaia ...photometric data are presented. Methods. The calibration strategy is outlined briefly and the main properties of the resulting photometry are presented. Results. Relations with other broadband photometric systems are provided. The overall precision for the Gaia photometry is shown to be at the milli-magnitude level and has a clear potential to improve further in future releases.
Gaia Data Release 1 Evans, D W; Riello, M; De Angeli, F ...
Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin),
4/2017, Letnik:
600
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Aims. The photometric validation of the Gaia DR1 release of the ESA Gaia mission is described and the quality of the data shown. Methods. This is carried out via an internal analysis of the ...photometry using the most constant sources. Comparisons with external photometric catalogues are also made, but are limited by the accuracies and systematics present in these catalogues. An analysis of the quoted errors is also described. Investigations of the calibration coefficients reveal some of the systematic effects that affect the fluxes. Results. The analysis of the constant sources shows that the early-stage photometric calibrations can reach an accuracy as low as 3 mmag.
Context.In this paper we present multiband optical and UV Hubble Space Telescope photometry of the two Galactic globular clusters NGC 6388 and NGC 6441. Aims.We investigate the properties of their ...anomalous horizontal branches in different photometric planes in order to shed light on the nature of the physical mechanism(s) responsible for the existence of an extended blue tail and of a slope in the horizontal branch, visible in all the color-magnitude diagrams. Methods.New photometric data have been collected and carefully reduced. Empirical data have been compared with updated stellar models of low-mass, metal-rich, He-burning structures, transformed to the observational plane with appropriate model atmospheres. Results.We have obtained the first UV color-magnitude diagrams for NGC 6388 and NGC 6441. These diagrams confirm previous results, obtained in optical bands, about the presence of a sizeable stellar population of extremely hot horizontal branch stars. At least in NGC 6388, we find a clear indication that at the hot end of the horizontal branch the distribution of stars forms a hook-like feature, closely resembling those observed in NGC 2808 and Omega Cen. We briefly review the theoretical scenarios that have been suggested for interpreting this observational feature. We also investigate the tilted horizontal branch morphology and provide further evidence that supports early suggestions that this feature cannot be interpreted as an effect of differential reddening. We show that a possible solution of the puzzle is to assume that a small fraction – ranging between 10-20% – of the stellar population in the two clusters is strongly helium-enriched ($Y\sim$ 0.40 in NGC 6388 and $Y\sim$ 0.35 in NGC 6441). The occurrence of a spread in the He abundance between the canonical value ($Y\sim$ 0.26) and the quoted upper limits can significantly help in explaining the “whole” morphology of the horizontal branch and the pulsational properties of the variable stars in the target clusters.
Gaia Data Release 2 Riello, M.; De Angeli, F.; Evans, D. W. ...
Astronomy & astrophysics,
08/2018, Letnik:
616
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Context. The second Gaia data release is based on 22 months of mission data with an average of 0.9 billion individual CCD observations per day. A data volume of this size and granularity requires a ...robust and reliable but still flexible system to achieve the demanding accuracy and precision constraints that Gaia is capable of delivering. Aims. We aim to describe the input data, the treatment of blue photometer/red photometer (BP/RP) low-resolution spectra required to produce the integrated GBP and GRP fluxes, the process used to establish the internal Gaia photometric system, and finally, the generation of the mean source photometry from the calibrated epoch data for Gaia DR2. Methods. The internal Gaia photometric system was initialised using an iterative process that is solely based on Gaia data. A set of calibrations was derived for the entire Gaia DR2 baseline and then used to produce the final mean source photometry. The photometric catalogue contains 2.5 billion sources comprised of three different grades depending on the availability of colour information and the procedure used to calibrate them: 1.5 billion gold, 144 million silver, and 0.9 billion bronze. These figures reflect the results of the photometric processing; the content of the data release will be different due to the validation and data quality filters applied during the catalogue preparation. The photometric processing pipeline, PhotPipe, implements all the processing and calibration workflows in terms of Map/Reduce jobs based on the Hadoop platform. This is the first example of a processing system for a large astrophysical survey project to make use of these technologies. Results. The improvements in the generation of the integrated G–band fluxes, in the attitude modelling, in the cross-matching, and and in the identification of spurious detections led to a much cleaner input stream for the photometric processing. This, combined with the improvements in the definition of the internal photometric system and calibration flow, produced high-quality photometry. Hadoop proved to be an excellent platform choice for the implementation of PhotPipe in terms of overall performance, scalability, downtime, and manpower required for operations and maintenance.
We present accurate relative ages for a sample of 55 Galactic globular clusters. The ages have been obtained by measuring the difference between the horizontal branch and the turnoff in two ...internally photometrically homogeneous databases. The mutual consistency of the two data sets has been assessed by comparing the ages of 16 globular clusters in common between the two databases. We have also investigated the consistency of our relative age determination within the recent stellar model framework. All clusters with Fe/H < -1.7 are found to be old and coeval, with the possible exception of two objects, which are marginally younger. The age dispersion for the metal-poor clusters is 0.6 Gyr (rms), consistent with a null age dispersion. Intermediate-metallicity clusters (-1.7 < Fe/H < -0.8) are on average 1.5 Gyr younger than the metal-poor ones, with an age dispersion of 1.0 Gyr (rms) and a total age range of ~3 Gyr. About 15% of the intermediate-metallicity clusters are coeval with the oldest clusters. All the clusters with Fe/H > -0.8 are ~1 Gyr younger than the most metal-poor ones, with a relatively small age dispersion, although the metal-rich sample is still too small to allow firmer conclusions. There is no correlation of the cluster age with the galactocentric distance. We briefly discuss the implication of these observational results for the formation history of the Galaxy.
Gaia Data Release 2 Evans, D. W.; Riello, M.; De Angeli, F. ...
Astronomy & astrophysics,
08/2018, Letnik:
616
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Aims. We describe the photometric content of the second data release of the Gaia project (Gaia DR2) and its validation along with the quality of the data. Methods. The validation was mainly carried ...out using an internal analysis of the photometry. External comparisons were also made, but were limited by the precision and systematics that may be present in the external catalogues used. Results. In addition to the photometric quality assessment, we present the best estimates of the three photometric passbands. Various colour-colour transformations are also derived to enable the users to convert between the Gaia and commonly used passbands. Conclusions. The internal analysis of the data shows that the photometric calibrations can reach a precision as low as 2 mmag on individual CCD measurements. Other tests show that systematic effects are present in the data at the 10 mmag level.
•Composite stellar populations (CSP) are foliated by simple stellar populations.•Evolution of CSPs follows to the Liouville equation for non-Hamiltonian systems.•Collisionless CSPs obey a ...multiple-stellar population consistency theorem.
We aim to investigate the connections existing between the density profiles of the stellar populations used to define a gravitationally bound stellar system and their star formation history: we do this by developing a general framework accounting for both classical stellar population theory and classical stellar dynamics. We extend the work of Pasetto et al. (2012) on a single composite-stellar population (CSP) to multiple CSPs, including also a phase-space description of the CSP concept. In this framework, we use the concept of distribution function to define the CSP in terms of mass, metallicity, and phase-space in a suitable space of existence E of the CSP.
We introduce the concept of foliation of E to describe formally any CSP as sum of disjointed Simple Stellar Populations (SSP), with the aim to offer a more general formal setting to cast the equations of stellar populations theory and stellar dynamics theory. In doing so, we allow the CSP to be object of dissipation processes thus developing its dynamics in a general non-Hamiltonian framework.
Furthermore, we investigate the necessary and sufficient condition to realize a multiple CSP consistent with its mass-metallicity and phase-space distribution function over its temporal evolution, for a collisionless CSP. Finally, analytical and numerical examples show the potential of the result obtained.
Gaia Data Release 2 Hambly, N. C.; Cropper, M.; Boudreault, S. ...
Astronomy & astrophysics,
08/2018, Letnik:
616
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Context. The European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite was launched into orbit around L2 in December 2013. This ambitious mission has strict requirements on residual systematic errors resulting from ...instrumental corrections in order to meet a design goal of sub-10 microarcsecond astrometry. During the design and build phase of the science instruments, various critical calibrations were studied in detail to ensure that this goal could be met in orbit. In particular, it was determined that the video-chain offsets on the analogue side of the analogue-to-digital conversion electronics exhibited instabilities that could not be mitigated fully by modifications to the flight hardware. Aims. We provide a detailed description of the behaviour of the electronic offset levels on short (<1 ms) timescales, identifying various systematic effects that are known collectively as “offset non-uniformities”. The effects manifest themselves as transient perturbations on the gross zero-point electronic offset level that is routinely monitored as part of the overall calibration process. Methods. Using in-orbit special calibration sequences along with simple parametric models, we show how the effects can be calibrated, and how these calibrations are applied to the science data. While the calibration part of the process is relatively straightforward, the application of the calibrations during science data processing requires a detailed on-ground reconstruction of the readout timing of each charge-coupled device (CCD) sample on each device in order to predict correctly the highly time-dependent nature of the corrections. Results. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our offset non-uniformity models in mitigating the effects in Gaia data. Conclusions. We demonstrate for all CCDs and operating instrument/modes on board Gaia that the video-chain noise-limited performance is recovered in the vast majority of science samples.
Direct electroreduction of Cr(VI) to Cr(III) has been widely proposed as an alternative for the treatment of effluents polluted with hexavalent chromium, however, no analysis is available on the cost ...of a global process, that considers both, the energy required to carry out the reduction reaction, and that associated with the operation of the process, to remove Cr(VI) via precipitation of Cr(OH)
3. This paper presents a study of the operation cost, considering raw material and electric power required by the electrochemical process, to remove Cr(VI) from real samples. A comparison between chemical reduction is presented, where both processes are followed by a step of alkaline chemical precipitation. The differences in pH required for each step are determinant in the overall cost of the process. Operating under optimal conditions the cost is almost 7 times higher for direct electroreduction process compared with the chemical method, and power consumption being secondary. The ratio decreases to 1.3 times when the electrochemical method is carried out at pH 2, but operating time is increased threefold, thereby increasing the cost of pumping the solution to be treated.
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