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Final Results from the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project to Measure the Hubble Constant
Kelson, Daniel D.; Illingworth, Garth D.; Huchra, John P. +12 more
We present here the final results of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Key Project to measure the Hubble constant. We summarize our method, the results, and the uncertainties, tabulate our revised distances, and give the implications of these results for cosmology. Our results are based on a Cepheid calibration of several secondary distance methods…
The European Photon Imaging Camera on XMM-Newton: The pn-CCD camera
Bignami, G. F.; Pietsch, W.; Haberl, F. +55 more
The European Photon Imaging Camera (EPIC) consortium has provided the focal plane instruments for the three X-ray mirror systems on XMM-Newton. Two cameras with a reflecting grating spectrometer in the optical path are equipped with MOS type CCDs as focal plane detectors (Turner \cite{mturner}), the telescope with the full photon flux operates the…
The European Photon Imaging Camera on XMM-Newton: The MOS cameras
Bignami, G. F.; Tiengo, A.; Arnaud, M. +60 more
The EPIC focal plane imaging spectrometers on XMM-Newton use CCDs to record the images and spectra of celestial X-ray sources focused by the three X-ray mirrors. There is one camera at the focus of each mirror; two of the cameras contain seven MOS CCDs, while the third uses twelve PN CCDs, defining a circular field of view of 30' diamet…
XMM-Newton observatory. I. The spacecraft and operations
Altieri, B.; Vacanti, G.; Gondoin, P. +12 more
The XMM-Newton Observatory is a cornerstone mission of the European Space Agency's Horizon 2000 programme, and is the largest scientific satellite it has launched to date. This paper summarises the principal characteristics of the Observatory which are pertinent to scientific operations. The scientific results appearing in this issue have been ena…
Cosmic-Ray Rejection by Laplacian Edge Detection
van Dokkum, Pieter G.
Conventional algorithms for rejecting cosmic rays in single CCD exposures rely on the contrast between cosmic rays and their surroundings and may produce erroneous results if the point-spread function is smaller than the largest cosmic rays. This paper describes a robust algorithm for cosmic-ray rejection, based on a variation of Laplacian edge de…
Interpreting the Cosmic Infrared Background: Constraints on the Evolution of the Dust-enshrouded Star Formation Rate
Elbaz, D.; Chary, R.
The mid-infrared local luminosity function is evolved with redshift to fit the spectrum of the cosmic infrared background (CIRB) at λ>5 µm and the galaxy counts from various surveys at mid-infrared, far-infrared, and submillimeter wavelengths. A variety of evolutionary models provide satisfactory fits to the CIRB and the number counts. Th…
The Cluster Magnetic Field Investigation: overview of in-flight performance and initial results
Balogh, A.; Glassmeier, K. -H.; Dunlop, M. W. +10 more
The accurate measurement of the magnetic field along the orbits of the four Cluster spacecraft is a primary objective of the mission. The magnetic field is a key constituent of the plasma in and around the magnetosphere, and it plays an active role in all physical processes that define the structure and dynamics of magnetospheric phenomena on all …
First multispacecraft ion measurements in and near the Earth's magnetosphere with the identical Cluster ion spectrometry (CIS) experiment
Lundin, R.; Escoubet, C. P.; Balsiger, H. +75 more
On board the four Cluster spacecraft, the Cluster Ion Spectrometry (CIS) experiment measures the full, three-dimensional ion distribution of the major magnetospheric ions (H+, He+, He++, and O+) from the thermal energies to about 40 keV/e. The experiment consists of two different instruments: a COmpositi…
The Farthest Known Supernova: Support for an Accelerating Universe and a Glimpse of the Epoch of Deceleration
Dickinson, Mark; Casertano, Stefano; Filippenko, Alexei V. +16 more
We present photometric observations of an apparent Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) at a redshift of ~1.7, the farthest SN observed to date. The supernova, SN 1997ff, was discovered in a repeat observation by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) of the Hubble Deep Field-North (HDF-N) and serendipitously monitored with NICMOS on HST throughout the Thompson et…
The Reflection Grating Spectrometer on board XMM-Newton
Kaastra, J. S.; Mewe, R.; Audard, M. +35 more
The ESA X-ray Multi Mirror mission, XMM-Newton, carries two identical Reflection Grating Spectrometers (RGS) behind two of its three nested sets of Wolter I type mirrors. The instrument allows high-resolution (E/Delta E = 100 to 500) measurements in the soft X-ray range (6 to 38 Å, or 2.1 to 0.3 keV) with a maximum effective area of about 140 cm