Search Publications

The White Dwarf Opportunity: Robust Detections of Molecules in Earth-like Exoplanet Atmospheres with the James Webb Space Telescope
DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aba9d3 Bibcode: 2020ApJ...901L...1K

Vanderburg, Andrew; MacDonald, Ryan J.; McDowell, Jonathan C. +4 more

The near-term search for life beyond the solar system currently focuses on transiting planets orbiting small M dwarfs, and the challenges of detecting signs of life in their atmospheres. However, planets orbiting white dwarfs (WDs) would provide a unique opportunity to characterize rocky worlds. The discovery of the first transiting giant planet o…

2020 The Astrophysical Journal
Gaia 42
Trojans in the Solar Neighborhood
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab6bd6 Bibcode: 2020ApJ...890..117D

D'Onghia, Elena; L. Aguerri, J. Alfonso

About 20% of stars in the solar vicinity are in the Hercules stream, a bundle of stars that move together with a velocity distinct from the Sun. Its origin is still uncertain. Here, we explore the possibility that Hercules is made of trojans, stars captured at L4, one of the Lagrangian points of the stellar bar. Using GALAKOS-a high-resolution N-b…

2020 The Astrophysical Journal
Gaia 42
Scattering-induced Intensity Reduction: Large Mass Content with Small Grains in the Inner Region of the TW Hya disk
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab8223 Bibcode: 2020ApJ...893..125U

Kataoka, Akimasa; Tsukagoshi, Takashi; Ueda, Takahiro

Dust continuum observation is one of the best methods to constrain the properties of protoplanetary disks. Recent theoretical studies have suggested that dust scattering at the millimeter wavelength potentially reduces the observed intensity, which results in an underestimate in the dust mass. We investigate whether dust scattering indeed reduces …

2020 The Astrophysical Journal
Gaia 41
Presupernova Neutrinos: Directional Sensitivity and Prospects for Progenitor Identification
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab99a6 Bibcode: 2020ApJ...899..153M

Timmes, F. X.; Mukhopadhyay, Mainak; Lunardini, Cecilia +1 more

We explore the potential of current and future liquid scintillator neutrino detectors of ${ \mathcal O }(10)$ kt mass to localize a presupernova neutrino signal in the sky. In the hours preceding the core collapse of a nearby star (at distance $D\lesssim 1$ kpc), tens to hundreds of inverse beta decay events will be recorded, and their reconstruct…

2020 The Astrophysical Journal
Gaia 41
Spectroscopically Confirmed Lyα Emitters from Redshift 5 to 7 behind 10 Galaxy Cluster Lenses
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab959f Bibcode: 2020ApJ...896..156F

Hoag, A.; Bradač, M.; Treu, T. +10 more

We present 36 spectroscopically confirmed intrinsically UV-faint Lyα-emitting galaxies from follow-up observations with Keck/DEep Imaging Multi-Object Spectrograph of gravitationally lensed high-redshift candidates. Candidates were selected to be between 5 ≲ z ≲ 7 from photometric data using Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer imaging surveys. We p…

2020 The Astrophysical Journal
eHST 41
Hot Plasma Flows and Oscillations in the Loop-top Region During the 2017 September 10 X8.2 Solar Flare
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/abc4e0 Bibcode: 2020ApJ...905..165R

Reeves, Katharine K.; Polito, Vanessa; Chen, Bin +4 more

In this study, we investigate motions in the hot plasma above the flare loops during the 2017 September 10 X8.2 flare event. We examine the region to the south of the main flare arcade, where there is data from the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) and the Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) on Hinode. We find that there are …

2020 The Astrophysical Journal
Hinode IRIS 41
Model-independent Constraints on Cosmic Curvature: Implication from Updated Hubble Diagram of High-redshift Standard Candles
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/abb0e4 Bibcode: 2020ApJ...901..129L

Li, Xiaolei; Liu, Yuting; Cao, Shuo +4 more

The cosmic curvature (Ωk) is a fundamental parameter for cosmology. In this paper, we propose an improved model-independent method to constrain the cosmic curvature, which is geometrically related to the Hubble parameter H(z) and luminosity distance DL(z). Using the currently largest H(z) sample from the well-known cosmic chr…

2020 The Astrophysical Journal
eHST 41
Exploring the Galactic Warp through Asymmetries in the Kinematics of the Galactic Disk
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/abc3c2 Bibcode: 2020ApJ...905...49C

Majewski, Steven R.; Cheng, Xinlun; Anguiano, Borja +10 more

Previous analyses of large databases of Milky Way stars have revealed the stellar disk of our Galaxy to be warped and that this imparts a strong signature on the kinematics of stars beyond the solar neighborhood. However, due to the limitation of accurate distance estimates, many attempts to explore the extent of these Galactic features have gener…

2020 The Astrophysical Journal
Gaia 41
A Catalog of M-dwarf Flares with ASAS-SN
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab793a Bibcode: 2020ApJ...892..144R

Holoien, Thomas W. -S.; Auchettl, Katie; Kochanek, Christopher S. +5 more

We analyzed the light curves of 1376 early-to-late, nearby M dwarfs to search for white-light flares using photometry from the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae. We identified 480 M dwarfs with at least one potential flare employing a simple statistical algorithm that searches for sudden increases in V-band flux. After more detailed evaluati…

2020 The Astrophysical Journal
Gaia 41
Dissecting the Phase Space Snail Shell
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab6b21 Bibcode: 2020ApJ...890...85L

Shen, Juntai; Li, Zhao-Yu

The ongoing vertical phase-mixing, manifesting itself as a snail shell in the $Z-{V}_{Z}$ phase space, has been discovered with Gaia DR2 data. To better understand the origin and properties of the phase-mixing process, we study the vertical phase-mixing signatures in arches (including the classical "moving groups") of the ${V}_{R}-{V}_{\phi }$ pha…

2020 The Astrophysical Journal
Gaia 40