Search Publications
Ephemeris, orbital decay, and masses of ten eclipsing high-mass X-ray binaries
Bonnet-Bidaud, J. M.; Lutovinov, A.; Bozzo, E. +3 more
We update the ephemeris of the eclipsing high-mass X-ray binary (HMXB) systems LMC X-4, Cen X-3, 4U 1700-377, 4U 1538-522, SMC X-1, IGR J18027-2016, Vela X-1,IGR J17252-3616, XTE J1855-026, and OAO 1657-415 with the help of more than ten years of monitoring these sources with the All Sky Monitor onboard RXTE and with the Integral Soft Gamma-Ray Im…
The pH of Enceladus' ocean
Glein, Christopher R.; Waite, J. Hunter; Baross, John A.
Saturn's moon, Enceladus, is a geologically active waterworld. The prevailing paradigm is that there is a subsurface ocean that erupts to the surface, which leads to the formation of a plume of vapor and ice above the south polar region. The chemistry of the ocean is just beginning to be understood, but is of profound geochemical and astrobiologic…
Major Mergers Host the Most-luminous Red Quasars at z ~ 2: A Hubble Space Telescope WFC3/IR Study
Schawinski, Kevin; Urry, C. M.; Glikman, Eilat +3 more
We used the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) near-infrared camera to image the host galaxies of a sample of 11 luminous, dust-reddened quasars at z∼ 2—the peak epoch of black hole growth and star formation in the universe—to test the merger-driven picture for the coevolution of galaxies and their nuclear black holes. The red…
A spectral-timing model for ULXs in the supercritical regime
Pintore, Fabio; Middleton, Matthew J.; Roberts, Timothy P. +2 more
Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) with luminosities lying between ∼3 × 1039 and 2 × 1040 erg s-1 represent a contentious sample of objects as their brightness, together with a lack of unambiguous mass estimates for the vast majority of the central objects, leads to a degenerate scenario where the accretor could be…
Flows of X-ray gas reveal the disruption of a star by a massive black hole
Ramirez-Ruiz, Enrico; Cenko, S. Bradley; Drake, Jeremy J. +18 more
Tidal forces close to massive black holes can violently disrupt stars that make a close approach. These extreme events are discovered via bright X-ray and optical/ultraviolet flares in galactic centres. Prior studies based on modelling decaying flux trends have been able to estimate broad properties, such as the mass accretion rate. Here we report…
HST hot-Jupiter transmission spectral survey: detection of potassium in WASP-31b along with a cloud deck and Rayleigh scattering
Aigrain, S.; Pont, F.; Fortney, J. J. +15 more
We present Hubble Space Telescope optical and near-IR transmission spectra of the transiting hot-Jupiter WASP-31b. The spectrum covers 0.3-1.7 µm at a resolution R ∼ 70, which we combine with Spitzer photometry to cover the full-optical to IR. The spectrum is dominated by a cloud deck with a flat transmission spectrum which is apparent at wa…
Evolution of the specific star formation rate function at z< 1.4 Dissecting the mass-SFR plane in COSMOS and GOODS
Aussel, H.; Le Floc'h, E.; Sanders, D. B. +21 more
The relation between the stellar mass (M⋆) and the star formation rate (SFR) characterizes how the instantaneous star formation is determined by the galaxy past star formation history and by the growth of the dark matter structures. We deconstruct the M⋆-SFR plane by measuring the specific SFR functions in several stellar mass bins from z = 0.2 ou…
Large heterogeneities in comet 67P as revealed by active pits from sinkhole collapse
Bertaux, Jean-Loup; Naletto, Giampiero; Debei, Stefano +64 more
Pits have been observed on many cometary nuclei mapped by spacecraft. It has been argued that cometary pits are a signature of endogenic activity, rather than impact craters such as those on planetary and asteroid surfaces. Impact experiments and models cannot reproduce the shapes of most of the observed cometary pits, and the predicted collision …
High-precision Photometric Redshifts from Spitzer/IRAC: Extreme [3.6] - [4.5] Colors Identify Galaxies in the Redshift Range z ∼ 6.6 - 6.9
Holwerda, Benne; Franx, Marijn; Labbé, Ivo +7 more
One of the most challenging aspects of studying galaxies in the z≳ 7 universe is the infrequent confirmation of their redshifts through spectroscopy, a phenomenon thought to occur from the increasing opacity of the intergalactic medium to Lyα photons at z\gt 6.5. The resulting redshift uncertainties inhibit the efficient search for [C ii] in z∼ 7 …
Probing the role of the galactic environment in the formation of stellar clusters, using M83 as a test bench
Bastian, N.; Adamo, A.; Silva-Villa, E. +2 more
We present a study of the M83 cluster population, covering the disc of the galaxy between radii of 0.45 and 4.5 kpc. We aim to probe the properties of the cluster population as a function of distance from the galactic centre. We observe a net decline in cluster formation efficiency (Γ, i.e. amount of star formation happening in bound clusters) fro…