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Observational Constraints on Black Hole Spin
Reynolds, Christopher S.
The spin of a black hole is an important quantity to study, providing a window into the processes by which a black hole was born and grew. Furthermore, spin can be a potent energy source for powering relativistic jets and energetic particle acceleration. In this review, I describe the techniques currently used to detect and measure the spins of bl…
The CHEOPS mission
Guterman, P.; Alonso, R.; Deleuil, M. +107 more
The CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (CHEOPS) was selected on October 19, 2012, as the first small mission (S-mission) in the ESA Science Programme and successfully launched on December 18, 2019, as a secondary passenger on a Soyuz-Fregat rocket from Kourou, French Guiana. CHEOPS is a partnership between ESA and Switzerland with important contri…
Tango for three: Sagittarius, LMC, and the Milky Way
Erkal, Denis; Vasiliev, Eugene; Belokurov, Vasily
We assemble a catalogue of candidate Sagittarius stream members with 5D and 6D phase-space information, using astrometric data from Gaia DR2, distances estimated from RR Lyrae stars, and line-of-sight velocities from various spectroscopic surveys. We find a clear misalignment between the stream track and the direction of the reflex-corrected prope…
Cygnus X-1 contains a 21-solar mass black hole—Implications for massive star winds
Gou, Lijun; Byun, Do-Young; Bahramian, Arash +23 more
The evolution of massive stars is influenced by the mass lost to stellar winds over their lifetimes. These winds limit the masses of the stellar remnants (such as black holes) that the stars ultimately produce. We used radio astrometry to refine the distance to the black hole x-ray binary Cygnus X-1, which we found to be 2.22-0.17+…
Molecules with ALMA at Planet-forming Scales (MAPS). I. Program Overview and Highlights
Zhang, Ke; Wilner, David J.; Ménard, François +35 more
Planets form and obtain their compositions in dust- and gas-rich disks around young stars, and the outcome of this process is intimately linked to the disk chemical properties. The distributions of molecules across disks regulate the elemental compositions of planets, including C/N/O/S ratios and metallicity (O/H and C/H), as well as access to wat…
Updated parameters of 1743 open clusters based on Gaia DR2
Moitinho, A.; Paunzen, E.; Carraro, G. +5 more
In this study, we follow up our recent paper (Monteiro et al. 2020) and present a homogeneous sample of fundamental parameters of open clusters in our Galaxy, entirely based on Gaia DR2 data. We used published membership probability of the stars derived from Gaia DR2 data and applied our isochrone fitting code, updated as in Monteiro et al. (2020)…
The SPHERE infrared survey for exoplanets (SHINE). III. The demographics of young giant exoplanets below 300 au with SPHERE
Moutou, C.; Fantinel, D.; Dominik, C. +108 more
The SpHere INfrared Exoplanet (SHINE) project is a 500-star survey performed with SPHERE on the Very Large Telescope for the purpose of directly detecting new substellar companions and understanding their formation and early evolution. Here we present an initial statistical analysis for a subsample of 150 stars spanning spectral types from B to M …
California Legacy Survey. II. Occurrence of Giant Planets beyond the Ice Line
Henry, Gregory W.; Knutson, Heather A.; Kane, Stephen R. +20 more
We used high-precision radial velocity measurements of FGKM stars to determine the occurrence of giant planets as a function of orbital separation spanning 0.03-30 au. Giant planets are more prevalent at orbital distances of 1-10 au compared to orbits interior or exterior of this range. The increase in planet occurrence at ~1 au by a factor of ~4 …
Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Photometric Data Set for Cosmology
Benoit-Lévy, A.; Bechtol, K.; Smith, M. +112 more
We describe the Dark Energy Survey (DES) photometric data set assembled from the first three years of science operations to support DES Year 3 cosmologic analyses, and provide usage notes aimed at the broad astrophysics community. Y3 GOLD improves on previous releases from DES, Y1 GOLD, and Data Release 1 (DES DR1), presenting an expanded and cura…
Exoplanet Statistics and Theoretical Implications
Dong, Subo; Zhu, Wei
In the past few years, significant advances have been made in understanding the distributions of exoplanet populations and the architecture of planetary systems. We review the recent progress of planet statistics, with a focus on the inner ≲1-AU region of planetary systems that has been fairly thoroughly surveyed by the Kepler mission. We also dis…