Search Publications
ATLAS: A High-cadence All-sky Survey System
Rest, A.; Smartt, S. J.; Stalder, B. +6 more
Technology has advanced to the point that it is possible to image the entire sky every night and process the data in real time. The sky is hardly static: many interesting phenomena occur, including variable stationary objects such as stars or QSOs, transient stationary objects such as supernovae or M dwarf flares, and moving objects such as astero…
A Morphological Classification Model to Identify Unresolved PanSTARRS1 Sources: Application in the ZTF Real-time Pipeline
Miller, A. A.; Tachibana, Yutaro
In the era of large photometric surveys, the importance of automated and accurate classification is rapidly increasing. Specifically, the separation of resolved and unresolved sources in astronomical imaging is a critical initial step for a wide array of studies, ranging from Galactic science to large scale structure and cosmology. Here, we presen…
Fast Estimation of Orbital Parameters in Milky Way-like Potentials
Bovy, Jo; Mackereth, J. Ted
Orbital parameters, such as eccentricity and maximum vertical excursion, of stars in the Milky Way are an important tool for understanding its dynamics and evolution, but calculation of such parameters usually relies on computationally expensive numerical orbit integration. We present and test a fast method for estimating these parameters using an…
A Gaia DR2 Mock Stellar Catalog
Rix, Hans-Walter; Fouesneau, Morgan; Andrae, René +3 more
We present a mock catalog of Milky Way stars, matching in volume and depth the content of the Gaia data release 2 (GDR2). We generated our catalog using Galaxia, a tool to sample stars from a Besançon Galactic model, together with a realistic 3D dust extinction map. The catalog mimics the complete GDR2 data model and contains most of the entries i…
catsHTM: A Tool for Fast Accessing and Cross-matching Large Astronomical Catalogs
Soumagnac, Maayane T.; Ofek, Eran O.
Fast access to large catalogs is required for some astronomical applications. Here we introduce the catsHTM tool, consisting of several large catalogs reformatted into HDF5-based file format, which can be downloaded and used locally. To allow fast access, the catalogs are partitioned into hierarchical triangular meshes and stored in HDF5 files. Se…
Memberships, Distances, and Proper Motions of the Open Clusters NGC 2112, NGC 2477, NGC 7789, and Collinder 261 from Gaia-DR2
Gao, Xin-hua
Membership determination of open clusters in high-noise environments is still an open question. This paper aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the Gaussian mixture model (GMM) in segregating likely cluster members of open clusters in high-noise environments. We use the GMM method to segregate likely cluster members of four low Galactic latitude …
TESS in the Solar System
Pál, András; Molnár, László; Kiss, Csaba
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), launched successfully on 2018 April 18 will observe nearly the full sky, and will provide timeseries imaging data in ∼27-day-long campaigns. TESS is equipped with four cameras, each of which has a field of view of 24 × 24°. During the first two years of the primary mission, one of these cameras, Ca…
Physical Nature and Orbital Behavior of the Eclipsing System UZ Leonis
Lee, Jae Woo; Park, Jang-Ho
New CCD photometric observations of UZ Leo were obtained between 2012 February and 2013 April, and on 2017 February. Its physical properties were derived from detailed analyses of our light curves and existing radial velocities. The results indicate that this system is a totally eclipsing A-subtype overcontact binary with both a high fill-out fact…
ProtoDESI: First On-Sky Technology Demonstration for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument
Serrano, Santiago; Weaver, Benjamin A.; Dey, Arjun +38 more
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is under construction to measure the expansion history of the universe using the baryon acoustic oscillations technique. The spectra of 35 million galaxies and quasars over 14,000 square degrees will be measured during a 5-year survey. A new prime focus corrector for the Mayall telescope at Kitt Peak…
Spectroastrometric Study of Ro-vibrational CO Emission from the Herbig Ae Star HD 179218 with ISHELL on the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility
Najita, Joan R.; Brittain, Sean D.; Carr, John S.
We present analysis of commissioning M-band data acquired with the infrared echelle spectrograph (iSHELL) on NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility. In this paper we describe the delivered performance of the instrument for these M-band observations and the data reduction process. The feasibility of using iSHELL for spectro-astrometry is tested on the …