We provide AAVSO Photometric All-Sky Survey (APASS) photometry in the Landolt BV and Sloan g r i bands for all 425, 743 stars included in the fourth RAVE Data Release. The internal accuracy of the ...APASS photometry of RAVE stars, expressed as the error of the mean of data obtained and separately calibrated over a median of four distinct observing epochs and distributed between 2009 and 2013, is 0.013, 0.012, 0.012, 0.014, and 0.021 mag for the B, V, g, r, and i bands, respectively. In the process, we find that the reddening caused by a homogeneous slab of dust, extending for 140 pc on either side of the Galactic plane and responsible for E poles B-V = 0.036 + or - 0.002 at the Galactic poles, is a suitable approximation of the actual reddening encountered at Galactic latitudes b 25degrees.
Aims: We examine radial and vertical metallicity gradients using a suite of disk galaxy hydrodynamical simulations, supplemented with two classic chemical evolution approaches. We determine the rate ...of change of gradient slope and reconcile the differences existing between extant models and observations within the canonical "inside-out" disk growth paradigm. Methods: A suite of 25 cosmological disks is used to examine the evolution of metallicity gradients; this consists of 19 galaxies selected from the RaDES (Ramses Disk Environment Study) sample, realised with the adaptive mesh refinement code ramses, including eight drawn from the "field" and six from "loose group" environments. Four disks are selected from the MUGS (McMaster Unbiased Galaxy Simulations) sample, generated with the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code gasoline. Two chemical evolution models of inside-out disk growth were employed to contrast the temporal evolution of their radial gradients with those of the simulations. Results: We first show that generically flatter gradients are observed at redshift zero when comparing older stars with those forming today, consistent with expectations of kinematically hot simulations, but counter to that observed in the Milky Way. The vertical abundance gradients at ~1-3 disk scalelengths are comparable to those observed in the thick disk of the Milky Way, but significantly shallower than those seen in the thin disk. Most importantly, we find that systematic differences exist between the predicted evolution of radial abundance gradients in the RaDES and chemical evolution models, compared with the MUGS sample; specifically, the MUGS simulations are systematically steeper at high-redshift, and present much more rapid evolution in their gradients. Conclusions: We find that the majority of the models predict radial gradients today which are consistent with those observed in late-type disks, but they evolve to this self-similarity in different fashions, despite each adhering to classical "inside-out" growth. We find that radial dependence of the efficiency with which stars form as a function of time drives the differences seen in the gradients; systematic differences in the sub-grid physics between the various codes are responsible for setting these gradients. Recent, albeit limited, data at redshift z ~ 1.5 are consistent with the steeper gradients seen in our SPH sample, suggesting a modest revision of the classical chemical evolution models may be required.
We report the identification of extended tidal debris potentially associated with the globular cluster NGC 3201, using the RAdial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) catalogue. We find the debris stars are ...located at a distance range of 1–7 kpc based on the forthcoming RAVE distance estimates. The derived space velocities and integrals of motion show interesting connections to NGC 3201, modulo uncertainties in the proper motions. Three stars, which are among the four most likely candidates for NGC 3201 tidal debris, are separated by 80° on the sky yet are well matched by the 12 Gyr, Fe/H = −1.5 isochrone appropriate for the cluster. This is the first time tidal debris around this cluster has been reported over such a large spatial extent, with implications for the cluster's origin and dynamical evolution.
We present the third data release of the RAdial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) which is the first milestone of the RAVE project, releasing the full pilot survey. The catalog contains 83,072 radial ...velocity measurements for 77,461 stars in the southern celestial hemisphere, as well as stellar parameters for 39,833 stars. This paper describes the content of the new release, the new processing pipeline, as well as an updated calibration for the metallicity based upon the observation of additional standard stars. Spectra will be made available in a future release. The data release can be accessed via the RAVE Web site.
Non-axisymmetries in the Galactic potential (spiral arms and bar) induce kinematic groups such as the Hercules stream. Assuming that Hercules is caused by the effects of the outer Lindblad resonance ...of the Galactic bar, we model analytically its properties as a function of position in the Galaxy and its dependence on the bar’s pattern speed and orientation. Using data from the RAVE survey we find that the azimuthal velocity of the Hercules structure decreases as a function of Galactocentric radius, in a manner consistent with our analytical model. This allows us to obtain new estimates of the parameters of the Milky Way’s bar. The combined likelihood function of the bar’s pattern speed and angle has its maximum for a pattern speed of Ωb = (1.89 ± 0.08) × Ω0, where Ω0 is the local circular frequency. Assuming a solar radius of 8.05 kpc and a local circular velocity of 238 km s-1, this corresponds to Ωb = 56 ± 2 km s-1 kpc-1. On the other hand, the bar’s orientation φb cannot be constrained with the available data. In fact, the likelihood function shows that a tight correlation exists between the pattern speed and the orientation, implying that a better description of our best fit results is given by the linear relation Ωb/Ω0 = 1.91 + 0.0044(φb(deg) − 48), with standard deviation of 0.02. For example, for an angle of φb = 30 deg the pattern speed is 54.0 ± 0.5 km s-1 kpc-1. These results are not very sensitive to the other Galactic parameters such as the circular velocity curve or the peculiar motion of the Sun, and are robust to biases in distance.
ABSTRACT A large sample of over 38,000 chromospherically active candidate solar-like stars and cooler dwarfs from the RAVE survey is addressed in this paper. An improved activity identification with ...respect to the previous study was introduced to build a catalog of field stars in the solar neighborhood with an excess emission flux in the calcium infrared triplet wavelength region. The central result of this work is the calibration of the age-activity relation for main-sequence dwarfs in a range from a few up to a few Gyr. It enabled an order of magnitude age estimation of the entire active sample. Almost 15,000 stars are shown to be younger than and ∼2000 younger than . The young age of the most active stars is confirmed by their position off the main sequence in the J − K versus diagram showing strong ultraviolet excess, mid-infrared excess in the J − K versus diagram, and very cool temperatures ( ). They overlap with the reference pre-main-sequence RAVE stars often displaying X-ray emission. The activity level increasing with the color reveals their different nature from the solar-like stars and probably represents an underlying dynamo-generating magnetic fields in cool stars. Of the RAVE objects from DR5, 50% are found in the TGAS catalog and supplemented with accurate parallaxes and proper motions by Gaia. This makes the database of a large number of young stars in a combination with RAVE's radial velocities directly useful as a tracer of the very recent large-scale star formation history in the solar neighborhood. The data are available online in the Vizier database.
We modeled the evolution of the Milky Way Galaxy to trace the distribution in space and time of four prerequisites for complex life: the presence of a host star, enough heavy elements to form ...terrestrial planets, sufficient time for biological evolution, and an environment free of life-extinguishing supernovae. We identified the Galactic habitable zone (GHZ) as an annular region between 7 and 9 kiloparsecs from the Galactic center that widens with time and is composed of stars that formed between 8 and 4 billion years ago. This GHZ yields an age distribution for the complex life that may inhabit our Galaxy. We found that 75% of the stars in the GHZ are older than the Sun.
The existing reservoirs of neutral atomic hydrogen gas (H I ) in galaxies are insufficient to have maintained the observed levels of star formation without some kind of replenishment. This ...refuelling of the H I reservoirs is likely to occur at column densities an order of magnitude lower than previous observational limits ( N H I , limit ∼ 10 19 cm −2 at a 30″ resolution over a linewidth of 20 km s −1 ). In this paper, we present recent deep H I observations of NGC 5068, a nearby isolated star-forming galaxy observed by MeerKAT as part of the MHONGOOSE survey. With these new data, we were able to detect low column density H I around NGC 5068 with a 3 σ detection limit of N H I = 6.4 × 10 17 cm −2 at a 90″ resolution over a 20 km s −1 linewidth. The high sensitivity and resolution of the MeerKAT data reveal a complex morphology of the H I in this galaxy – a regularly rotating inner disk coincident with the main star-forming disk of the galaxy, a warped outer disk of low column density gas ( N H I < 9 × 10 19 cm −2 ), in addition to clumps of gas on the north-western side of the galaxy. We employed a simple two disk model that described the inner and outer disks, which enabled us to identify anomalous gas that deviates from the rotation of the main galaxy. The morphology and the kinematics of the anomalous gas suggest a possible extra-galactic origin. We explore a number of possible origin scenarios that may explain the anomalous gas, and conclude that fresh accretion is the most likely scenario.
New images of M31 at 24, 70, and 160 km taken with the Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer (MIPS) reveal the morphology of the dust in this galaxy. This morphology is well represented by a ...composite of two logarithmic spiral arms and a circular ring (radius 610 kpc) of star formation offset from the nucleus. The two spiral arms appear to start at the ends of a bar in the nuclear region and extend beyond the star-forming ring. As has been found in previous work, the spiral arms are not continuous, but composed of spiral segments. The star-forming ring is very circular except for a region near M32 where it splits. The lack of well-defined spiral arms and the prominence of the nearly circular ring suggest that M31 has been distorted by interactions with its satellite galaxies. Using new dynamical simulations of M31 interacting with M32 and NGC 205, we find that, qualitatively, such interactions can produce an offset, split ring like that seen in the MIPS images.
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