We present a 3D map of extinction in the northern Galactic plane derived using photometry from the INT/WFC Photometric Hα Survey of the northern Galactic plane. The map has fine angular ( ∼ 10 ...arcmin) and distance (100 pc) sampling allied to a significant depth (≳5 kpc). We construct the map using a method based on a hierarchical Bayesian model described in a previous article by Sale. In addition to mean extinction, we also measure differential extinction, which arises from the fractal nature of the interstellar medium, and show that it will be the dominant source of uncertainty in estimates of extinction to some arbitrary position. The method applied also furnishes us with photometric estimates of the distance, extinction, effective temperature, surface gravity, and mass for ∼38 million stars. Both the extinction map and the catalogue of stellar parameters are made publicly available via http://www.iphas.org/extinction.
The UKIDSS Galactic Plane Survey Lucas, P. W.; Hoare, M. G.; Longmore, A. ...
Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,
11/2008, Letnik:
391, Številka:
1
Journal Article
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The UKIDSS Galactic Plane Survey (GPS) is one of the five near-infrared Public Legacy Surveys that are being undertaken by the UKIDSS consortium, using the Wide Field Camera on the United Kingdom ...Infrared Telescope. It is surveying 1868 deg2 of the northern and equatorial Galactic plane at Galactic latitudes −5° < b < 5° in the J, H and K filters and a ∼200-deg2 area of the Taurus–Auriga–Perseus molecular cloud complex in these three filters and the 2.12 μm (1–0) H2 filter. It will provide data on ∼2 × 109 sources. Here we describe the properties of the data set and provide a user's guide for its exploitation. We also present brief Demonstration Science results from DR2 and from the Science Verification programme. These results illustrate how GPS data will frequently be combined with data taken in other wavebands to produce scientific results. The Demonstration Science comprises six studies. (1) A GPS-Spitzer-GLIMPSE cross-match for the star formation region G28.983−0.603 to identify YSOs. This increases the number of YSOs identified by a factor of 10 compared to GLIMPSE alone. (2) A wide-field study of the M17 nebula, in which an extinction map of the field is presented and the effect of source confusion on luminosity functions in different subregions is noted. (3) H2 emission in the ρ Ophiuchi dark cloud. All the molecular jets are traced back to a single active clump containing only a few protostars, which suggests that the duration of strong jet activity and associated rapid accretion in low-mass protostars is brief. (4) X-ray sources in the nuclear bulge. The GPS data distinguishes local main-sequence counterparts with soft X-ray spectra from nuclear bulge giant counterparts with hard X-ray spectra. (5) External galaxies in the zone of avoidance. The galaxies are clearly distinguished from stars in fields at longitudes l > 90°. (6) IPHAS-GPS optical–infrared spectrophotometric typing. The (i′−J) versus (J−H) diagram is used to distinguish A–F type dwarfs, G dwarfs, K dwarfs and red clump giants in a field with high reddening.
VIRAC: the VVV Infrared Astrometric Catalogue Smith, L. C; Lucas, P. W; Kurtev, R ...
Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,
02/2018, Letnik:
474, Številka:
2
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Abstract
We present VIRAC version 1, a near-infrared proper motion and parallax catalogue of the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) survey for 312 587 642 unique sources averaged across all ...overlapping pawprint and tile images covering 560 deg2 of the bulge of the Milky Way and southern disc. The catalogue includes 119 million high-quality proper motion measurements, of which 47 million have statistical uncertainties below 1 mas yr−1. In the 11 < Ks < 14 magnitude range, the high-quality motions have a median uncertainty of 0.67 mas yr−1. The catalogue also includes 6935 sources with quality-controlled 5σ parallaxes with a median uncertainty of 1.1 mas. The parallaxes show reasonable agreement with the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution, though caution is advised for data with modest significance. The SQL data base housing the data is made available via the web. We give example applications for studies of Galactic structure, nearby objects (low-mass stars and brown dwarfs, subdwarfs, white dwarfs) and kinematic distance measurements of young stellar objects. Nearby objects discovered include LTT 7251 B, an L7 benchmark companion to a G dwarf with over 20 published elemental abundances, a bright L subdwarf, VVV 1256−6202, with extremely blue colours and nine new members of the 25 pc sample. We also demonstrate why this catalogue remains useful in the era of Gaia. Future versions will be based on profile fitting photometry, use the Gaia absolute reference frame and incorporate the longer time baseline of the VVV extended survey.
The INT/WFC Photometric Hα Survey of the Northern Galactic Plane (IPHAS) is a 1800 deg2 imaging survey covering Galactic latitudes |b| < 5° and longitudes ℓ = 30°–215° in the r, i, and Hα filters ...using the Wide Field Camera (WFC) on the 2.5-m Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) in La Palma. We present the first quality-controlled and globally calibrated source catalogue derived from the survey, providing single-epoch photometry for 219 million unique sources across 92 per cent of the footprint. The observations were carried out between 2003 and 2012 at a median seeing of 1.1 arcsec (sampled at 0.33 arcsec pixel−1) and to a mean 5σ depth of 21.2 (r), 20.0 (i), and 20.3 (Hα) in the Vega magnitude system. We explain the data reduction and quality control procedures, describe and test the global re-calibration, and detail the construction of the new catalogue. We show that the new calibration is accurate to 0.03 mag (root mean square) and recommend a series of quality criteria to select accurate data from the catalogue. Finally, we demonstrate the ability of the catalogue's unique (r − Hα, r − i) diagram to (i) characterize stellar populations and extinction regimes towards different Galactic sightlines and (ii) select and quantify Hα emission-line objects. IPHAS is the first survey to offer comprehensive CCD photometry of point sources across the Galactic plane at visible wavelengths, providing the much-needed counterpart to recent infrared surveys.
Aims
While vascular pathology is a common feature of a range of neurodegenerative diseases, we hypothesized that vascular changes occur in association with normal ageing. Therefore, we aimed to ...characterize age‐associated changes in the blood–brain barrier (BBB) in human and mouse cohorts.
Methods
Immunohistochemistry and Evans blue assays were used to characterize BBB dysfunction (tight junction protein expression and serum plasma protein accumulation), vascular pathology (pericyte loss and vascular density) and glial pathology (astrocyte and microglial density) in ageing neurological control human prefrontal cortex (a total of 23 cases from 5 age groups representing the spectrum of young adult to old age: 20–30 years, 31–45 years, 46–60 years, 61–75 years and 75+) and C57BL/6 mice (3 months, 12 months, 18 months and 24 months, n = 5/6 per group).
Results
Quantification of the tight junction protein ZO‐1 within the cortex and cerebellum of the mouse cohort showed a significant trend to both increased number (cortex P < 0.001, cerebellum P < 0.001) and length (cortex P < 0.001, cerebellum P < 0.001) of junctional breaks associated with increasing age. GFAP expression significantly correlated with ageing in the mice (P = 0.037). In the human cohort, assessment of human protein accumulation (albumin, fibrinogen and human IgG) demonstrated cells morphologically resembling clasmatodendritic astrocytes, indicative of BBB dysfunction. Semiquantitative assessment of astrogliosis in the cortex expression revealed an association with age (P = 0.003), while no age‐associated changes in microglial pathology, microvascular density or pericyte coverage were detected.
Conclusions
This study demonstrates BBB dysfunction in normal brain ageing, both in human and mouse cohorts.
Abstract
We present a large-scale study of diffuse X-ray emission in the nearby massive stellar association Cygnus OB2 as part of the Chandra Cygnus OB2 Legacy Program. We used 40 Chandra X-ray ...ACIS-I observations covering ∼1.0 deg
2
. After removing 7924 point sources detected in our survey and applying adaptive smoothing to the background-corrected X-ray emission, the adaptive smoothing reveals large-scale diffuse X-ray emission. Diffuse emission was detected in the subbands soft (0.5−1.2 keV) and medium (1.2−2.5 keV) and marginally in the hard (2.5−7.0 keV) band. From X-ray spectral analysis of stacked spectra we compute a total (0.5–7.0 keV) diffuse X-ray luminosity of
L
X
diff
≈
4.2 × 10
34
erg s
−1
, characterized by plasma temperature components at
kT
≈ 0.11, 0.40, and 1.18 keV, respectively. The H
i
absorption column density corresponding to these temperatures has a distribution consistent with
N
H
= (0.43, 0.80, 1.39) × 10
22
cm
−2
. The extended medium-band energy emission likely arises from O-type stellar winds thermalized by wind−wind collisions in the most populated regions of the association, while the soft-band emission probably arises from less energetic termination shocks against the surrounding interstellar medium. Supersoft and soft diffuse emission appears more widely dispersed and intense than the medium-band emission. The diffuse X-ray emission is generally spatially coincident with low-extinction regions that we attribute to the ubiquitous influence of powerful stellar winds from massive stars and their interaction with the local interstellar medium. Diffuse X-ray emission is volume filling, rather than edge brightened, oppositely to other star-forming regions. We reveal the first observational evidence of X-ray halos around some evolved massive stars.
Context.
The
Gaia
-ESO Survey (GES) is a public, high-resolution spectroscopic survey, conducted with the multi-object spectrograph Fibre Large Array Multi Element Spectrograph (FLAMES) on the Very ...Large Telescope (European Southern Observatory, ESO, Cerro Paranal, Chile) from December 2011 to January 2018.
Gaia
-ESO has targeted all the main stellar components of the Milky Way, including thin and thick disc, bulge, and halo. In particular, a large sample of open clusters has been observed, from very young ones, just out of the embedded phase, to very old ones.
Aims.
The different kinds of clusters and stars targeted in them are useful to reach the main science goals of the open cluster part of GES, which are the study of the open cluster structure and dynamics, the use of open clusters to constrain and improve stellar evolution models, and the definition of Galactic disc properties (e.g., metallicity distribution).
Methods.
The
Gaia
-ESO Survey is organised in 19 working groups (WGs), each one being responsible for a task. We describe here the work of three of them, one in charge of the selection of the targets within each cluster or association (WG4), one responsible for defining the most probable candidate member stars (WG1), and another one in charge of the preparation of the observations (WG6). As the entire GES has been conducted before the second
Gaia
data release, we could not make use of the
Gaia
astrometry to define cluster member candidates. We made use of public and private photometry to select the stars to be observed with FLAMES, once brought on a common astrometric system (the one defined by 2MASS). Candidate target selection was based on ground-based proper motions, radial velocities, and X-ray properties when appropriate, for example, and it was mostly used to define the position of the clusters’ evolutionary sequences in the colour-magnitude diagrams. Targets for GIRAFFE were then selected near the sequences in an unbiased way. We used known information on membership, when available, only for the few stars to be observed with UVES.
Results.
We collected spectra for 62 confirmed clusters in the main observing campaign (and a few more clusters were taken from the ESO archive). Among them are very young clusters, where the main targets are pre-main sequence stars, clusters with very hot and massive stars currently on the main sequence, intermediate-age and old clusters where evolved stars are the main targets. Our strategy of making the selection of targets as inclusive and unbiased as possible and of observing a significant and representative fraction of all possible targets permitted us to collect the largest, most accurate, and most homogeneous spectroscopic data set on open star clusters ever achieved.
ABSTRACT The Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) Photometric H-Alpha Survey (IPHAS) is a 1800deg2 survey of the Northern Galactic Plane, reaching down to r' 21. We demonstrate how the survey can be used to ...(1) reliably select classical T Tauri star candidates and (2) constrain the mass accretion rates with an estimated relative uncertainty of 0.6 dex. IPHAS is a necessary addition to spectroscopic surveys because it allows large and uniform samples of accretion rates to be obtained with a precise handle on the selection effects. We apply the method on a region of 7deg2 towards the Hii region IC1396 in Cepheus OB2 and identify 158 pre-main-sequence candidates with masses between 0.2 and 2.0M and accretion rates between 10-9.2 and 10-7.0Myr-1. We find a power-law dependency between the stellar mass and the accretion rates with a slope of α= 1.1 ± 0.2, which is less steep than indicated by previous studies. We discuss the influence of method-dependent systematic effects on the determination of this relationship. The majority of our sample consists of faint, previously unknown, low-mass T Tauri candidates (56per cent between 0.2 and 0.5M). Many candidates are clustered in front of three bright-rimmed molecular clouds, which are being ionized by the massive star HD206267 (O6.5V). We discover a spatio-temporal gradient of increasing accretion rates, increasing Spitzer infrared excess, and younger ages away from the ionizing star, providing a strong indication that the formation of these clusters has been sequentially triggered by HD206267 during the last 1Myr. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
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