Table of contents

We study Hinode/EIS observations of an active region taken before, during, and after a small C2.0 flare in order to monitor the evolution of the magnetic field and its relation to the flare event. We find that while the flare left the active region itself unaltered, the event included a large magnetic field enhancement (MFE), which consisted of a large magnetic field strength increase to values just short of 500 G in a rather small region where no magnetic field was measured before. This MFE is observed during the impulsive phase of the flare at the footpoints of flare loops, its magnetic energy is sufficient to power the radiative losses of the entire flare, and has completely dissipated after the flare. We argue that the MFE might occur at the location of the reconnection event triggering the flare, and note that it formed within 22 minutes of the flare start (as given by the EIS raster return time). These results open the door to a new line of studies aimed at determining whether MFEs can be flare precursor events or used for Space Weather forecasts, what advance warning time they could provide and if this time is long enough to allow for mitigation procedures to be implemented; as well as to explore which physical processes lead to MFE formation and dissipation, whether such processes are the same in both long-duration and impulsive flares, and whether they can be predicted by theoretical models.

We develop a deep-learning technique to infer the nonlinear velocity field from the dark matter density field. The deep-learning architecture we use is a "U-net" style convolutional neural network, which consists of 15 convolution layers and 2 deconvolution layers. This setup maps the three-dimensional density field of 32³ voxels to the three-dimensional velocity or momentum fields of 20³ voxels. Through the analysis of the dark matter simulation with a resolution of 2h⁻¹ Mpc, we find that the network can predict the the nonlinearity, complexity, and vorticity of the velocity and momentum fields, as well as the power spectra of their value, divergence, and vorticity and its prediction accuracy reaches the range of k ≃ 1.4 h Mpc⁻¹ with a relative error ranging from 1% to ≲10%. A simple comparison shows that neural networks may have an overwhelming advantage over perturbation theory in the reconstruction of velocity or momentum fields.

We derive a distance of D = 16.6 ± 0.3 Mpc (μ = 31.10 ± 0.04 mag) to the archetypal narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 4051 based on Cepheid period–luminosity relations and new Hubble Space Telescope multiband imaging. We identify 419 Cepheid candidates and estimate the distance at both optical and near-infrared wavelengths using subsamples of precisely photometered variables (123 and 47 in the optical and near-infrared subsamples, respectively). We compare our independent photometric procedures and distance-estimation methods to those used by the Supernovae, H0, for the Equation of State team and find agreement to 0.01 mag. The distance we obtain suggests an Eddington ratio of $\dot{m}\approx 0.2$ for NGC 4051, typical of narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies, unlike the seemingly odd value implied by previous distance estimates. We derive a peculiar velocity of −490 ± 34 km s⁻¹ for NGC 4051, consistent with the overall motion of the Ursa Major Cluster in which it resides. We also revisit the energetics of the NGC 4051 nucleus, including its outflow and mass accretion rates.

Although the solar wind flows primarily outward from the Sun to interplanetary space, there are times when small-scale plasma inflows are observed. Inward-propagating density fluctuations in polar coronal holes were detected by the COR2 coronagraph on board the STEREO-A spacecraft at heliocentric distances of 7–12 solar radii, and these fluctuations appear to undergo substantial deceleration as they move closer to the Sun. Models of linear magnetohydrodynamic waves have not been able to explain these deceleration patterns, so they have been interpreted more recently as jets from coronal sites of magnetic reconnection. In this paper, we develop a range of dynamical models of discrete plasma parcels with the goal of better understanding the observed deceleration trend. We found that parcels with a constant mass do not behave like the observed flows, and neither do parcels undergoing ablative mass loss. However, parcels that accrete mass in a snowplow-like fashion can become decelerated as observed. We also extrapolated OMNI in situ data down to the so-called Alfvén surface and found that the initial launch point for the observed parcels may often be above this critical radius. In other words, in order for the parcels to flow back down to the Sun, their initial speeds are probably somewhat nonlinear (i.e., supra-Alfvénic), and thus the parcels may be associated with structures such as shocks, jets, or shear instabilities.

Since its launch, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer—02 (AMS-02) has delivered outstanding quality measurements of the spectra of cosmic-ray (CR) species ($\bar{p}$, e^±, and nuclei, ₁H–₈O, ₁₀Ne, ₁₂Mg, ₁₄Si) which resulted in a number of breakthroughs. One of the latest long-awaited surprises is the spectrum of ₂₆Fe just published by AMS-02. Because of the large fragmentation cross section and large ionization energy losses, most of CR iron at low energies is local and may harbor some features associated with relatively recent supernova (SN) activity in the solar neighborhood. Our analysis of the new AMS-02 results, together with Voyager 1 and ACE-CRIS data, reveals an unexpected bump in the iron spectrum and in the Fe/He, Fe/O, and Fe/Si ratios at 1–2 GV, while a similar feature in the spectra of He, O, and Si and in their ratios is absent, hinting at a local source of low-energy CRs. The found excess extends the recent discoveries of radioactive ⁶⁰Fe deposits in terrestrial and lunar samples and in CRs. We provide an updated local interstellar spectrum (LIS) of iron in the energy range from 1 MeV nucleon⁻¹ to ∼10 TeV nucleon⁻¹. Our calculations employ the GalProp–HelMod framework, which has proved to be a reliable tool in deriving the LIS of CR $\bar{p}$, e⁻, and nuclei Z ≤ 28.

We examine the robustness of the color–color selection of quiescent galaxies (QGs) against contamination of dusty star-forming galaxies using the latest submillimeter data. We selected 18,304 QG candidates out to z ∼ 3 using the commonly adopted NUV–r–J selection based on the high-quality multiwavelength COSMOS2015 catalog. Using extremely deep 450 and 850 μm catalogs from the latest JCMT SCUBA-2 Large Programs, S2COSMOS and STUDIES, as well as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array submillimeter, VLA 3 GHz, and Spitzer MIPS 24 μm catalogs, we identified luminous, dusty, star-forming galaxies among the QG candidates. We also conducted stacking analyses in the SCUBA-2 450 and 850 μm images to look for less-luminous dusty galaxies among the QG candidates. By cross matching to the 24 μm and 3 GHz data, we were able to identify a subgroup of "IR-radio-bright" QGs that possess strong 450 and 850 μm stacking signals. The potential contamination of these luminous and less-luminous dusty galaxies accounts for approximately 10% of the color-selected QG candidates. In addition, there exists a spatial correlation between the luminous star-forming galaxies and the QGs at a ≲60 kpc scale. Finally, we found a high QG fraction among radio active galactic nuclei (AGNs) at z < 1.5. Our data show a strong correlation between QGs and radio AGNs, which may suggest a connection between the quenching process and the radio-mode AGN feedback.

We model the 21 cm power spectrum across the Cosmic Dawn and the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) in fuzzy dark matter (FDM) cosmologies. The suppression of low-mass halos in FDM models leads to a delay in the onset redshift of these epochs relative to cold dark matter (CDM) scenarios. This strongly impacts the 21 cm power spectrum and its redshift evolution. The 21 cm power spectrum at a given stage—i.e., compared at fixed average brightness temperature but varying redshift—of the EoR/Cosmic Dawn process is also modified: in general, the amplitude of 21 cm fluctuations is boosted by the enhanced bias factor of galaxy-hosting halos in FDM. We forecast the prospects for discriminating between CDM and FDM with upcoming power spectrum measurements from HERA, accounting for degeneracies between astrophysical parameters and dark matter properties. If FDM constitutes the entirety of the dark matter and the FDM particle mass is 10⁻²¹ eV, HERA can determine the mass to within 20% at 2σ confidence.

We present a new study of the merger dynamics of A1775 by analyzing the high-quality Chandra and XMM-Newton archival data. We confirm/identify an arc-shaped edge (i.e., the head) at ∼48 kpc west of the X-ray peak, a split cold gas tail that extends eastward to ∼163 kpc, and a plume of spiral-like X-ray excess (within about 81–324 kpc northeast of the cluster core) that connects to the end of the tail. The head, across which the projected gas temperature rises outward from ${3.39}_{-0.18}^{+0.28}$ to ${5.30}_{-0.43}^{+0.54}$ keV, is found to be a cold front with a Mach number of ${ \mathcal M }\sim 0.79$. Along the surfaces of the cold front and tail, typical Kelvin–Helmholtz instability features (noses and wings, etc.) are found and are used to constrain the upper limit of the magnetic field (∼11.2 μG) and the viscosity suppression factor (∼0.01). Combining optical and radio evidence, we propose a two-body merger (instead of systematic motion in a large-scale gas environment) scenario and have carried out idealized hydrodynamic simulations to verify it. We find that the observed X-ray emission and temperature distributions can be best reproduced with a merger mass ratio of 5 after the first pericentric passage. The NAT radio galaxy is thus more likely to be a single galaxy falling into the cluster center at a relative velocity of 2800 km s⁻¹, a speed constrained by its radio morphology. The infalling subcluster is expected to have a relatively low gas content, because only a gas-poor subcluster can cause central-only disturbances as observed in such an off-axis merger.

To date, at least three comets—2I/Borisov, C/2016 R2 (PanSTARRS), and C/2009 P1 (Garradd)—have been observed to have unusually high CO concentrations compared to water. We attempt to explain these observations by modeling the effect of drifting solid (ice and dust) material on the ice compositions in protoplanetary disks. We find that, independent of the exact disk model parameters, we always obtain a region of enhanced ice-phase CO/H₂O that spreads out in radius over time. The inner edge of this feature coincides with the CO snowline. Almost every model achieves at least CO/H₂O of unity, and one model reaches a CO/H₂O ratio >10. After running our simulations for 1 Myr, an average of 40% of the disk ice mass contains more CO than H₂O ice. In light of this, a population of CO-ice-enhanced planetesimals are likely to generally form in the outer regions of disks, and we speculate that the aforementioned CO-rich comets may be more common, both in our own solar system and in extrasolar systems, than previously expected.

We report on Mg and Si isotope data of 86 presolar silicate grains identified through NanoSIMS oxygen ion imaging in thin sections of carbonaceous and ordinary chondrites. The O, Mg, and Si isotope data of 106 presolar silicates (including grains studied previously by our group) suggest division of O isotope Group 1 grains into four subpopulations: (i) "normal," (ii) ²⁵Mg-rich, (iii) ²⁶Mg-rich, and (iv) ²⁵Mg-poor. Normal Group 1 grains (∼60% of Group 1 grains) formed in the winds of low-mass asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars, with Mg and Si defining linear arrays with slopes of ∼0.9 and 1.37, respectively, in three-isotope representations, most likely representing Galactic chemical evolution (GCE). The ²⁵Mg-rich grains (∼25%) show enrichments in ²⁵Mg of up to a factor 2.4 relative to solar composition and most likely formed in supernova (SN) ejecta or the winds of intermediate-mass AGB stars. The ²⁶Mg-rich and ²⁵Mg-poor Group 1 grains lie below the Mg GCE line and their isotopic compositions favor origins from supergiants or SNe. The O isotope Group 2 grains show a wide range of Mg-isotopic compositions, similar to Group 1 grains, with likely origins from massive AGB stars, super-AGB stars, supergiants, and SNe. The Mg- and Si-isotopic compositions of Group 4 grains are compatible with previously proposed SN origins. Our results suggest that >30% of presolar silicates formed in the winds of supergiants and in SN ejecta, and that low-mass AGB stars appear to have contributed only some 50% to presolar silicates, less than previously thought.

We present the results of spectroscopic follow-up for 1897 low-metallicity star candidates, selected from the Best & Brightest (B&B) Survey, carried out with the GMOS-N/S (Gemini North/South telescopes) and Goodman (SOAR Telescope) spectrographs. From these low-resolution (R ∼ 2000) spectra, we estimate stellar atmospheric parameters, as well as carbon and magnesium abundance ratios. We confirm that 56% of our program stars are metal-poor ([Fe/H] < − 1.0), 30% are very metal-poor (VMP; [Fe/H] < − 2.0), and 2% are extremely metal-poor (EMP; [Fe/H] < − 3.0). There are 191 carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars, resulting in CEMP fractions of 19% and 43% for the VMP and EMP regimes, respectively. A total of 94 confirmed CEMP stars belong to Group I (A(C) ≳ 7.25) and 97 to Group II (A(C) ≲ 7.25) in the Yoon–Beers A(C)−[Fe/H] diagram. Moreover, we combine these data with Gaia EDR3 astrometric information to delineate new target-selection criteria, which have been applied to the Goodman/SOAR candidates, to more than double the efficiency for identification of bona fide VMP and EMP stars in comparison to random draws from the B&B catalog. We demonstrate that this target-selection approach can achieve success rates of 96%, 76%, 28%, and 4% for [Fe/H] ≤ − 1.5, ≤ − 2.0, ≤ − 2.5 and ≤ − 3.0, respectively. Finally, we investigate the presence of dynamically interesting stars in our sample. We find that several VMP/EMP ([Fe/H] ≤ − 2.5) stars can be associated with either the disk system or halo substructures like Gaia-Sausage/Enceladus and Sequoia.

Modern astronomical surveys are observing spectral data for millions of stars. These spectra contain chemical information that can be used to trace the Galaxy's formation and chemical enrichment history. However, extracting the information from spectra and making precise and accurate chemical abundance measurements is challenging. Here we present a data-driven method for isolating the chemical factors of variation in stellar spectra from those of other parameters (i.e., T_eff, log g, [Fe/H]). This enables us to build a spectral projection for each star with these parameters removed. We do this with no ab initio knowledge of elemental abundances themselves and hence bypass the uncertainties and systematics associated with modeling that rely on synthetic stellar spectra. To remove known nonchemical factors of variation, we develop and implement a neural network architecture that learns a disentangled spectral representation. We simulate our recovery of chemically identical stars using the disentangled spectra in a synthetic APOGEE-like data set. We show that this recovery declines as a function of the signal-to-noise ratio but that our neural network architecture outperforms simpler modeling choices. Our work demonstrates the feasibility of data-driven abundance-free chemical tagging.

We present a detailed spectral analysis of the joint XMM-Newton and NuSTAR observations of the active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in the Seyfert 1.5 Galaxy ESO 362-G18. The broadband (0.3–79 keV) spectrum shows the presence of a power-law continuum with a soft excess below 2 keV, iron Kα emission (∼6.4 keV), and a Compton hump (peaking at ∼20 keV). We find that the soft excess can be modeled by two different possible scenarios: a warm (kT_e ∼ 0.2 keV) and optically thick (τ ∼ 34) Comptonizing corona, or with a relativistically blurred reflection off a high-density ($\mathrm{log}[{n}_{{\rm{e}}}/{\mathrm{cm}}^{-3}]\gt 18.3$) inner disk. These two models cannot be easily distinguished solely from their fit statistics. However, the low temperature (kT_e ∼ 20 keV) and the thick optical depth (τ ∼ 5) of the hot corona required by the warm corona scenario are uncommon for AGNs. We also fit a "hybrid" model, which includes both disk reflection and a warm corona. Unsurprisingly, as this is the most complex of the models considered, this provides the best fit, and more reasonable coronal parameters. In this case, the majority of the soft excess flux arises in the warm corona component. However, based on recent simulations of warm coronae, it is not clear whether such a structure can really exist at the low accretion rates relevant for ESO 362-G18 ($\dot{m}\sim 0.015$). This may therefore argue in favor of a scenario in which the soft excess is instead dominated by the relativistic reflection. Based on this model, we find that the data would require a compact hot corona (h ∼ 3 R_Horizon) around a rapidly spinning (a_⋆ > 0.927) black hole.

We presented a multiwavelength study of the AFGL 333-Ridge. The molecular line data reveals that the AFGL 333-Ridge has two independent velocity components at −50.5 and −48.0 km s⁻¹. In the position–velocity diagram, the bridge feature connects with two parts that are spatially correlated but separated in velocity. This observational evidence supports the scenario that the two velocity components have collided and merged into one molecular cloud. The majority of Class I young stellar objects (YSOs) are distributed within the collision region, suggesting that the cloud–cloud collision has induced the YSOs' formation in the ridge. Using the radio recombination line (RRL) data obtained by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope, the RRL velocities of three H ii regions are consistent with that of the AFGL 333-Ridge. By comparing the three H ii regions' dynamical ages with the collision timescale of the two components, we conclude that the influence of the three H ii regions may not drive the two clouds to merge. The formation of the AFGL 333-Ridge is probably due to the expansion of the giant H ii region W4.

We study the nature of energy release and transfer for two sub-A class solar microflares observed during the second Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager (FOXSI-2) sounding rocket flight on 2014 December 11. FOXSI is the first solar-dedicated instrument to utilize focusing optics to image the Sun in the hard X-ray (HXR) regime, sensitive to energies of 4–20 keV. Through spectral analysis of the microflares using an optically thin isothermal plasma model, we find evidence for plasma heated to ∼10 MK and emission measures down to ∼10⁴⁴ cm⁻³. Though nonthermal emission was not detected for the FOXSI-2 microflares, a study of the parameter space for possible hidden nonthermal components shows that there could be enough energy in nonthermal electrons to account for the thermal energy in microflare 1, indicating that this flare is plausibly consistent with the standard thick-target model. With a solar-optimized design and improvements in HXR focusing optics, FOXSI-2 offers approximately five times greater sensitivity at 10 keV than the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array for typical microflare observations and allows for the first direct imaging spectroscopy of solar HXRs with an angular resolution at scales relevant for microflares. Harnessing these improved capabilities to study small-scale events, we find evidence for spatial and temporal complexity during a sub-A class flare. This analysis, combined with contemporaneous observations by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory, indicates that these microflares are more similar to large flares in their evolution than to the single burst of energy expected for a nanoflare.

Supermassive black hole binaries are likely to accrete interstellar gas through a circumbinary disk. Shortly before merger, the inner portions of this circumbinary disk are subject to general relativistic effects. To study this regime, we approximate the spacetime metric of close orbiting black holes by superimposing two boosted Kerr–Schild terms. After demonstrating the quality of this approximation, we carry out very long-term general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the circumbinary disk. We consider black holes with spin dimensionless parameters of magnitude 0.9, in one simulation parallel to the orbital angular momentum of the binary, but in another anti-parallel. These are contrasted with spinless simulations. We find that, for a fixed surface mass density in the inner circumbinary disk, aligned spins of this magnitude approximately reduce the mass accretion rate by 14% and counter-aligned spins increase it by 45%, leaving many other disk properties unchanged.

The location of the obscuring "torus" in an active galactic nucleus (AGN) is still an unresolved issue. The line widths of X-ray fluorescence lines originating from the torus, particularly Fe Kα, carry key information on the radii of line-emitting regions. Utilizing XCLUMPY, an X-ray clumpy torus model, we develop a realistic model of emission line profiles from an AGN torus where we take into account line broadening due to the Keplerian motion around the black hole. Then, we apply the updated model to the best available broadband spectra (3–100 keV) of the Circinus galaxy observed with Suzaku, XMM-Newton, Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, and Chandra, including 0.62 Ms Chandra/HETG data. We confirm that the torus is Compton-thick (hydrogen column density along the equatorial plane is ${N}_{{\rm{H}}}^{\mathrm{Equ}}={2.16}_{-0.16}^{+0.24}\times {10}^{25}\ {\mathrm{cm}}^{-2}$), geometrically thin (torus angular width $\sigma \,={10.3}_{-0.3}^{+0.7}\,{\rm{d}}{\rm{e}}{\rm{g}}$), viewed edge-on (inclination $i={78.3}_{-0.9}^{+0.4}\,{\rm{d}}{\rm{e}}{\rm{g}}$), and has supersolar abundance (${1.52}_{-0.06}^{+0.04}$ times solar). Simultaneously analyzing the Chandra/HETG first-, second-, and third-order spectra with consideration of the spatial extent of the Fe Kα line-emitting region, we constrain the inner radius of the torus to be ${1.9}_{-0.8}^{+3.1}\times {10}^{5}$ times the gravitational radius, or ${1.6}_{-0.9}^{+1.5}\times {10}^{-2}\ \mathrm{pc}$ for a black hole mass of (1.7 ± 0.3) × 10⁶M_⊙. This is about three times smaller than that estimated from the dust sublimation radius, suggesting that the inner side of the dusty region of the torus is composed of dust-free gas.

We report the serendipitous detection of an H₂-bearing damped Lyα absorber at z = 0.576 in the spectrum of the QSO J0111–0316 in the Cosmic Ultraviolet Baryon Survey. Spectroscopic observations from Hubble Space Telescope-COS in the far-ultraviolet reveal a damped absorber with log[N(H i)/cm⁻²] = 20.1 ± 0.2 and log[N(H₂)/cm⁻²] $={18.97}_{-0.06}^{+0.05}$. The diffuse molecular gas is found in two velocity components separated by Δ ν ≈ 60 km s⁻¹, with >99.9% of the total H₂ column density concentrated in one component. At a metallicity of ≈50% of solar, there is evidence for Fe enhancement and dust depletion, with a dust-to-gas ratio κ_O ≈ 0.4. A galaxy redshift survey conducted with IMACS and LDSS-3C on Magellan reveals an overdensity of nine galaxies at projected distance d ≤ 600 proper kpc (pkpc) and line-of-sight velocity offset Δ ν_g ≤ 300 km s⁻¹ from the absorber. The closest is a massive, early-type galaxy at d = 41 pkpc that contains ≈70% of the total stellar mass identified at d ≤ 310 pkpc of the H₂ absorber. The close proximity of the H₂-bearing gas to the quiescent galaxy and the Fe-enhanced chemical abundance pattern of the absorber suggest a physical connection, in contrast to a picture in which DLAs are primarily associated with gas-rich dwarfs. This case study illustrates that deep galaxy redshift surveys are needed to gain insight into the diverse environments that host dense and potentially star-forming gas.

We report a series of numerical experiments for the propagation of a momentum pulse representing a chromospheric jet, simulated using an idealized magnetohydrodynamic model. The jet in a stratified lower solar atmosphere is subjected to a varied initial driver (amplitude, period) and magnetic field conditions to examine the parameter influence over jet morphology and kinematics. The simulated jet captured key observed spicule characteristics including maximum heights, field-aligned mass motions/trajectories, and cross-sectional width deformations. Next, the jet features also show a prominent bright, bulb-like apex, similar to reported observed chromospheric jets, formed due to the higher density of plasma and/or waves. Furthermore, the simulations highlight the presence of not yet observed internal crisscross/knots substructures generated by shock waves reflected within the jet structure. Therefore we suggest verifying these predicted fine-scale structures in highly localized lower solar atmospheric jets, e.g., in spicules or fibrils by high-resolution observations, offered by the Daniel K. Inoyue Solar Telescope or otherwise.

Observations by the spacecraft Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE), Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE), Chandra, and XMM-Newton of Capella (α Aurigae) have encountered problems with the relative intensities of the Fe xviii and Fe xix line emission in the soft-X-ray (XUV) and extreme-ultraviolet spectral ranges versus various model predictions based on theoretical atomic data. The reason may either lie in astrophysical phenomena, e.g., at emission or because of absorption by the interstellar medium, in the theoretical atomic data, in one or more spectrometer calibrations, or in the spectral modeling. By measurements using an electron beam ion trap we provide laboratory data obtained under conditions that are reasonably close to stellar emission regions. The laboratory data on Fe xviii and Fe xix show line ratios that are rather similar to the observations of Capella. The measurements, therefore, rule out astrophysical phenomena and calibration errors and point to issues with the modeling of the observed Capella emission.

Gas phase formation processes feasible at low temperatures are determined theoretically for 38 isomers obeying the C₃O₃H₆ empirical formula, one of them, the simplest ketose dihydroxyacetone, has been observed in gas phase sources. A preliminary search for isomeric forms first targets ethoxy formic acid (C₂H₅–O–COOH) as the most stable isomer followed by lactic acid. Profiles corresponding to the minimum energy pathways reveal that the favored conformers of 14 of these isomers can be formed in the gas phase through 29 barrierless processes involving the OH*, CH₃O*, HCO*, CH₃*, CH₂OH, HCOO*, and OHCO* radicals, all of them observed in the interstellar medium. Kinetic rates are provided at 200, 298, and 500 K, confirming the suitability of 16 processes at low temperatures. Faster processes involve the OH hydroxyl radical whereas, to a lesser degree, the processes involving the HOCO radical and the methoxy methyl radical CH₃O*, are quite significant. Spectroscopic parameters (rovibrational and torsional) are obtained for methoxy acetic acid (CH₃–O–CH₂COOH) for which two low-lying isoenergetic conformers can be produced from the CH₃OCH₂* radical predicted to be a precursor of abundant observed molecules. Profiles and spectroscopic properties make methoxy acetic acid a good candidate to be detected in the gas phase of extraterrestrial sources.

We present element abundance ratios and ionizing radiation of local young low-mass (∼10⁶ M_⊙) extremely metal-poor galaxies (EMPGs) with a 2% solar oxygen abundance (O/H)_⊙ and a high specific star formation rate (sSFR ∼ 300 Gyr⁻¹) and other (extremely) metal-poor galaxies, which are compiled from Extremely Metal-Poor Representatives Explored by the Subaru Survey (EMPRESS) and the literature. Weak emission lines such as [Fe iii] λ4658 and He iiλ4686 are detected in very deep optical spectra of the EMPGs taken with 8 m class telescopes, including Keck and Subaru, enabling us to derive element abundance ratios with photoionization models. We find that neon-to-oxygen and argon-to-oxygen ratios are comparable to those of known local dwarf galaxies and that the nitrogen-to-oxygen abundance ratios (N/O) are lower than 20% (N/O)_⊙, consistent with the low oxygen abundance. However, the iron-to-oxygen abundance ratios (Fe/O) of the EMPGs are generally high; the EMPGs with the 2%-solar oxygen abundance show high Fe/O ratios of ∼90%–140% (Fe/O)_⊙, which are unlikely to be explained by suggested scenarios of Type Ia supernova iron productions, iron's dust depletion, and metal-poor gas inflow onto previously metal-riched galaxies with solar abundances. Moreover, the EMPGs with the 2%-solar oxygen abundance have very high He iiλ4686/Hβ ratios of ∼1/40, which are not reproduced by existing models of high-mass X-ray binaries with progenitor stellar masses <120 M_⊙. Comparing stellar-nucleosynthesis and photoionization models with a comprehensive sample of EMPGs identified by this and previous EMPG studies, we propose that both the high Fe/O ratios and the high He iiλ4686/Hβ ratios are explained by the past existence of supermassive (>300 M_⊙) stars, which may evolve into intermediate-mass black holes (≳100 M_⊙).

We measure chemical abundances for over 20 elements of 15 N-rich field stars with high-resolution (R ∼ 30,000) optical spectra. We find that Na, Mg, Al, Si, and Ca abundances of our N-rich field stars are mostly consistent with those of stars from globular clusters (GCs). Seven stars are estimated to have [Al/Fe ] > 0.5, which is not found in most GC "first generation" stars. On the other hand, α element abundances (especially Ti) could show distinguishable differences between in situ stars and accreted stars. We discover that one interesting star, with consistently low [Mg/Fe], [Si/Fe], [Ca/Fe], [Ti/Fe], [Sc/Fe], [V/Fe], and [Co/Fe], show similar kinematics and [Ba/Eu] as other stars from the dissolved dwarf galaxy "Gaia–Sausage–Enceladus." The α-element abundances and the iron-peak element abundances of the N-rich field stars with metallicities − 1.25 ≤ [Fe/H] ≤ − 0.95 show consistent values with Milky Way field stars (we refer to Milky Way field stars as Milky Way halo field stars unless otherwise specified in this paper) rather than stars from dwarf galaxies, indicating that they were formed in situ. In addition, the neutron-capture elements of N-rich field stars show that most of them could be enriched by asymptotic giant branch stars with masses around 3–5 M_⊙.

Whether or not dark energy evolves with time may be determined by the nonparametric method. In order to avoid instability of the derivative for the functional data, we linearize the luminosity-distance integral formula in near-flat space by adopting Lagrange interpolation for the numerical integral, and proposing a method of combining principal component analysis (PCA) and biased estimation on the basis of ridge regression analysis to reconstruct the regression parameters. We also present a principal component selection criterion to better distinguish between ΛCDM and w(z) ≠ −1 models by reconstruction. We define the type I error as the situation where w_true = −1 but w_recon ≠ −1, and the type II error as the situation where w_true ≠ −1 but w_recon = −1; we use the various w(z) functions to test the method. The preliminary test results demonstrate that the PCA-biased method can be used to determine the most probable behavior of w(z). Finally, we apply this method to recent supernova measurements, reconstructing the continuous history of w(z) out to redshift z = 1.5.

Ultralight dark matter (ULDM) is currently one of the most popular classes of cosmological dark matter. The most important advantage is that ULDM with mass m ∼ 10⁻²² eV can account for the small-scale problems encountered in the standard cold dark matter model like the core–cusp problem, missing satellite problem, and the too-big-to-fail problem in galaxies. In this paper, we formulate a new simple model-independent analysis using the Spitzer Photometry and Accurate Rotation Curves data to constrain the range of ULDM mass. In particular, the most stringent constraint comes from the data of a galaxy ESO563–G021, which can conservatively exclude a ULDM mass range m = (0.14–3.11) × 10⁻²² eV. This model-independent excluded range is consistent with many bounds obtained by recent studies and it suggests that the ULDM proposal may not be able to alleviate the small-scale problems.

Binary neutron star (NS) mergers have been expected to synthesize r-process elements and emit radioactively powered radiation, called kilonovae. Although r-process nucleosynthesis was confirmed by the observations of GW170817/AT2017gfo, no trace of individual elements has been identified except for strontium. In this paper, we perform systematic calculations of line strength for bound–bound transitions and radiative transfer simulations in NS merger ejecta toward element identification in kilonova spectra. We find that Sr ii triplet lines appear in the spectrum of a lanthanide-poor model, which is consistent with the absorption feature observed in GW170817/AT2017gfo. The synthetic spectrum also shows the strong Ca ii triplet lines. This is natural because Ca and Sr are coproduced in the material with relatively high electron fraction and their ions have similar atomic structures with only one s-electron in the outermost shell. The line strength, however, highly depends on the abundance distribution and temperature in the ejecta. For our lanthanide-rich model, the spectra show the features of doubly ionized heavy elements, such as Ce, Tb, and Th. Our results suggest that the line-forming region of GW170817/AT2017gfo was lanthanide-poor. We show that the Sr ii and Ca ii lines can be used as a probe of physical conditions in NS merger ejecta. Absence of the Ca ii line features in GW170817/AT2017gfo implies that the Ca/Sr ratio is <0.002 in mass fraction, which is consistent with nucleosynthesis for electron fraction ≥0.40 and entropy per nucleon (in units of Boltzmann constant) ≥25.

We perform a Bayesian analysis of the maximum mass M_TOV of neutron stars with a quark core, incorporating the observational data from tidal deformability of the GW170817 binary neutron star merger as detected by LIGO/Virgo and the mass and radius of PSR J0030+0451 as detected by the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer. The analysis is performed under the assumption that the hadron–quark phase transition is of first order, where the low-density hadronic matter described in a unified manner by the soft QMF or the stiff DD2 equation of state (EOS) transforms into a high-density phase of quark matter modeled by the generic "constant-sound-speed" parameterization. The mass distribution measured for the 2.14 M_⊙ pulsar MSP J0740+6620 is used as the lower limit on M_TOV. We find the most probable values of the hybrid star maximum mass are ${M}_{\mathrm{TOV}}={2.36}_{-0.26}^{+0.49}\,{\text{}}{M}_{\odot }$ (${2.39}_{-0.28}^{+0.47}\,{\text{}}{M}_{\odot }$) for QMF (DD2), with an absolute upper bound around 2.85 M_⊙, to the 90% posterior credible level. Such results appear robust with respect to the uncertainties in the hadronic EOS. We also discuss astrophysical implications of this result, especially on the postmerger product of GW170817, short gamma-ray bursts, and other likely binary neutron star mergers.

Coronal holes are the observational manifestation of the solar magnetic field open to the heliosphere and are of pivotal importance for our understanding of the origin and acceleration of the solar wind. Observations from space missions such as the Solar Dynamics Observatory now allow us to study coronal holes in unprecedented detail. Instrumental effects and other factors, however, pose a challenge to automatically detect coronal holes in solar imagery. The science community addresses these challenges with different detection schemes. Until now, little attention has been paid to assessing the disagreement between these schemes. In this COSPAR ISWAT initiative, we present a comparison of nine automated detection schemes widely applied in solar and space science. We study, specifically, a prevailing coronal hole observed by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly instrument on 2018 May 30. Our results indicate that the choice of detection scheme has a significant effect on the location of the coronal hole boundary. Physical properties in coronal holes such as the area, mean intensity, and mean magnetic field strength vary by a factor of up to 4.5 between the maximum and minimum values. We conclude that our findings are relevant for coronal hole research from the past decade, and are therefore of interest to the solar and space research community.

We report 1.2 mm polarized continuum emission observations carried out with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array toward the high-mass star formation region G5.89–0.39. The observations show a prominent 0.2 pc north–south filamentary structure. The ultracompact H ii region in G5.89–0.39 breaks the filament into two pieces. Its millimeter emission shows a dusty belt with a mass of 55–115 M_⊙ and 4500 au in radius, surrounding an inner part comprising mostly ionized gas, with dust emission only accounting for about 30% of the total millimeter emission. We also found a lattice of convex arches that may be produced by dragged dust and gas from the explosive dispersal event involving the O5 Feldt's star. The north–south filament has a mass between 300 and 600 M_⊙ and harbors a cluster of about 20 mm envelopes with a median size and mass of 1700 au and 1.5 M_⊙, respectively, some of which are already forming protostars. We interpret the polarized emission in the filament as mainly coming from magnetically aligned dust grains. The polarization fraction is ∼4.4% in the filaments and 2.1% at the shell. The magnetic fields are along the North Filament and perpendicular to the South Filament. In the Central Shell, the magnetic fields are roughly radial in a ring surrounding the dusty belt between 4500 and 7500 au, similar to the pattern recently found in the surroundings of Orion BN/KL. This may be an independent observational signpost of explosive dispersal outflows and should be further investigated in other regions.

We present optical spectroscopy for 18 halo white dwarfs identified using photometry from the Canada–France Imaging Survey and Pan-STARRS1 DR1 3π survey combined with astrometry from Gaia DR2. The sample contains 13 DA, 1 DZ, 2 DC, and 2 potentially exotic types of white dwarf. We fit both the spectrum and the spectral energy distribution in order to obtain the temperature and surface gravity, which we then convert into mass and then age using stellar isochrones and the initial-to-final mass relation. We find a large spread in ages that is not consistent with expected formation scenarios for the Galactic halo. We find a mean age of ${9.03}_{-2.03}^{+2.13}$ Gyr and a dispersion of ${4.21}_{-1.58}^{+2.33}$ Gyr for the inner halo using a maximum-likelihood method. This result suggests an extended star formation history within the local halo population.

Permanently deformed objects in binary systems can experience complex rotation evolution, arising from the extensively studied effect of spin–orbit coupling as well as more nuanced dynamics arising from spin–spin interactions. The ability of an object to sustain an aspheroidal shape largely determines whether or not it will exhibit nontrivial rotational behavior. In this work, we adopt a simplified model of a gravitationally interacting primary and satellite pair, where each body's quadrupole moment is approximated by two diametrically opposed point masses. After calculating the net gravitational torque on the satellite from the primary, as well as the associated equations of motion, we employ a Hamiltonian formalism that allows for a perturbative treatment of the spin–orbit and retrograde and prograde spin–spin coupling states. By analyzing the resonances individually and collectively, we determine the criteria for resonance overlap and the onset of chaos, as a function of orbital and geometric properties of the binary. We extend the 2D planar geometry to calculate the obliquity evolution. This calculation indicates that satellites in spin–spin resonances undergo precession when inclined out of the plane, but they do not tumble. We apply our resonance overlap criteria to the contact binary system (216) Kleopatra, and find that its satellites, Cleoselene and Alexhelios, may plausibly be exhibiting chaotic rotational dynamics from the overlap of the spin–orbit and retrograde spin–spin resonances. While this model is, by construction, generalizable to any binary system, it will be particularly useful for studies of small bodies in the Solar System, whose irregular shapes make them ideal candidates for exotic rotational states.

In the coming years, next-generation space-based infrared observatories will significantly increase our samples of rare massive stars, representing a tremendous opportunity to leverage modern statistical tools and methods to test massive stellar evolution in entirely new environments. Such work is only possible if the observed objects can be reliably classified. Spectroscopic observations are infeasible with more distant targets, and so we wish to determine whether machine-learning methods can classify massive stars using broadband infrared photometry. We find that a Support Vector Machine classifier is capable of coarsely classifying massive stars with labels corresponding to hot, cool, and emission-line stars with high accuracy, while rejecting contaminating low-mass giants. Remarkably, 76% of emission-line stars can be recovered without the need for narrowband or spectroscopic observations. We classify a sample of ∼2500 objects with no existing labels and identify 14 candidate emission-line objects. Unfortunately, despite the high precision of the photometry in our sample, the heterogeneous origins of the labels for the stars in our sample severely inhibit our classifier from distinguishing classes of stars with more granularity. Ultimately, no large and homogeneously labeled sample of massive stars currently exists. Without significant efforts to robustly classify evolved massive stars—which is feasible given existing data from large all-sky spectroscopic surveys—shortcomings in the labeling of existing data sets will hinder efforts to leverage the next generation of space observatories.

Spatially resolved spectroscopy from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey has revealed a class of quiescent, relatively common early-type galaxies termed "red geysers" that possibly host large-scale active galactic nuclei–driven winds. Given their potential importance in maintaining a low level of star formation at late times, additional evidence confirming that winds are responsible for the red geyser phenomenon is critical. In this work, we present follow-up observations with the Echellette Spectrograph and Imager (ESI) at the Keck telescope of two red geysers (z < 0.1) using multiple long slit positions to sample different regions of each galaxy. Our ESI data with a spectral resolution (R) ∼ 8000 improve upon MaNGA's resolution by a factor of 4, allowing us to resolve the ionized gas velocity profiles along the putative wind cone with an instrumental resolution of σ = 16 km s⁻¹. The line profiles of Hα and [N ii] λ6584 show asymmetric shapes that depend systematically on location: extended blue wings on the redshifted side of the galaxy and red wings on the opposite side. We construct a simple wind model and show that our results are consistent with geometric projections through an outflowing conical wind oriented at an angle toward the line of sight. An alternative hypothesis that assigns the asymmetric pattern to "beam smearing" of a rotating, ionized gas disk does a poor job matching the line asymmetry profiles. While our study features just two sources, it lends further support to the notion that red geysers are the result of galaxy-scale winds.

While dust is a major player in galaxy evolution, its relationship with gas and stellar radiation in the early universe is still not well understood. We combine 3D-Hubble Space Telescope emission-line fluxes with far-UV through far-IR photometry in a sample of 669 emission-line galaxies (ELGs) between 1.2 < z < 1.9 and use the MCSED spectral energy distribution fitting code to constrain the galaxies' physical parameters, such as their star formation rates (SFRs), stellar masses, and dust masses. We find that the assumption of energy balance between dust attenuation and emission is likely unreasonable in many cases. We highlight a relationship between the mass-specific SFR, stellar mass, and dust mass, although its exact form is still unclear. Finally, a stacking of Hα and Hβ fluxes shows that nebular attenuation increases with stellar mass and SFR for IR-bright ELGs.

Microinstabilities play important roles in both entropy generation and particle acceleration in collisionless shocks. Recent studies have suggested that in the transition region of quasi-perpendicular (Q_⊥) shocks in the high-beta (β = P_gas/P_B) intracluster medium (ICM), the ion temperature anisotropy due to the reflected-gyrating ions could trigger the Alfvén ion cyclotron (AIC) instability and the ion-mirror instability, while the electron temperature anisotropy induced by magnetic field compression could excite the whistler instability and the electron-mirror instability. Adopting the numerical estimates for ion and electron temperature anisotropies found in the particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of Q_⊥ shocks with sonic Mach numbers, M_s = 2–3, we carry out a linear stability analysis for these microinstabilities. The kinetic properties of the microinstabilities and the ensuing plasma waves on both ion and electron scales are described for wide ranges of parameters, including β and the ion-to-electron mass ratio. In addition, the nonlinear evolution of the induced plasma waves are examined by performing 2D PIC simulations with periodic boundary conditions. We find that for β ≈ 20–100, the AIC instability could induce ion-scale waves and generate shock surface ripples in supercritical shocks above the AIC critical Mach number, ${M}_{\mathrm{AIC}}^{* }\approx 2.3$. Also, electron-scale waves are generated primarily by the whistler instability in these high-β shocks. The resulting multiscale waves from electron to ion scales are thought to be essential in the electron injection to diffusive shock acceleration in Q_⊥ shocks in the ICM.

We present a comprehensive analysis of the shape of dark matter (DM) halos in a sample of 25 Milky Way-like galaxies in TNG50 simulation. Using an enclosed volume iterative method, we infer an oblate-to-triaxial shape for the DM halo with median T ≃ 0.24. We group DM halos into three different categories. Simple halos (32% of the population) establish principal axes whose ordering in magnitude does not change with radius and whose orientations are almost fixed throughout the halo. Twisted halos (32%) experience levels of gradual rotations throughout their radial profiles. Finally, stretched halos (36%) demonstrate a stretching in the lengths of their principal axes where the ordering of different eigenvalues changes with radius. Subsequently, the halo experiences a "rotation" of ∼90° where the stretching occurs. Visualizing the 3D ellipsoid of each halo, for the first time, we report signs of a reorienting ellipsoid in twisted and stretched halos. We examine the impact of baryonic physics on DM halo shape through a comparison to dark matter only (DMO) simulations. This suggests a triaxial (prolate) halo. We analyze the impacts of substructure on DM halo shape in both hydrodynamical and DMO simulations and confirm that they are subdominant. We study the distribution of satellites in our sample. In simple and twisted halos, the angle between satellites' angular momentum and the galaxy's angular momentum grows with radius. However, stretched halos show a flat distribution of angles. Overlaying our theoretical outcome on the observational results presented in the literature establishes a fair agreement.

Multiwavelength images from the far-UV (∼0.15 μm) to the submillimeter of the central region of the galaxy NGC 3351 are analyzed to constrain its stellar populations and dust attenuation. Despite hosting a ∼1 kpc circumnuclear starburst ring, NGC 3351 deviates from the IRX–β relation, the relation between the infrared-to-UV luminosity ratio and the UV continuum slope β that other starburst galaxies follow. To understand the reason for the deviation, we leverage the high angular resolution of archival near-UV-to-near-IR Hubble Space Telescope images to divide the ring into ∼60–180 pc size regions and model each individually. We find that the UV slope of the combined intrinsic (dust-free) stellar populations in the central region is redder than what is expected for a young model population. This is due to the region's complex star formation history, which boosts the near-UV emission relative to the far-UV. The resulting net attenuation curve has a UV slope that lies between those of the starburst attenuation curve (Calzetti et al. 2000) and the Small Magellanic Cloud extinction curve; the total-to-selective attenuation value, $R^{\prime}$(V) = 4.93, is larger than both. As found for other star-forming galaxies, the stellar continuum of NGC 3351 is less attenuated than the ionized gas, with E(B − V)_star = 0.40 E(B − V)_gas. The combination of the "red" intrinsic stellar population and the new attenuation curve fully accounts for the location of the central region of NGC 3351 on the IRX–β diagram. Thus, the observed characteristics result from the complex mixture of stellar populations and dust column densities in the circumnuclear region. Despite being a sample of one, these findings highlight the difficulty of defining attenuation curves of general applicability outside the regime of centrally concentrated starbursts.

The Cepheid period–luminosity (PL) relation is the key tool for measuring astronomical distances and for establishing the extragalactic distance scale. In particular, the local value of the Hubble constant (H₀) strongly depends on Cepheid distance measurements. The recent Gaia Data Releases and other parallax measurements from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) already enabled us to improve the accuracy of the slope (α) and intercept (β) of the PL relation. However, the dependence of this law on metallicity is still largely debated. In this paper, we combine three samples of Cepheids in the Milky Way (MW), the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) in order to derive the metallicity term (hereafter γ) of the PL relation. The recent publication of extremely precise LMC and SMC distances based on late-type detached eclipsing binary systems provides a solid anchor for the Magellanic Clouds. In the MW, we adopt Cepheid parallaxes from the early third Gaia Data Release. We derive the metallicity effect in V, I, J, H, K_S, W_VI, and W_JK. In the K_S band we report a metallicity effect of −0.221 ± 0.051 mag dex⁻¹, the negative sign meaning that more metal-rich Cepheids are intrinsically brighter than their more metal-poor counterparts of the same pulsation period.

We present the kinematic and chemical profiles of red giant stars observed by the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE)-2 survey in the direction of the Jhelum stellar stream, a Milky Way substructure located in the inner halo of the Milky Way at a distance from the Sun of ≈13 kpc. From the six APOGEE-2 Jhelum pointings, we isolate stars with log(g) < 3.5, leaving a sample of 289 red giant stars. From this sample of APOGEE-2 giants, we identified seven stars that are consistent with the astrometric signal from Gaia DR2 for this stream. Of these seven, one falls onto the red giant branch (RGB) along the same sequence as the Jhelum stars presented by Ji et al. This new Jhelum member has [Fe/H] = −2.2 and is at the tip of the RGB. By selecting high orbital eccentricity, metal-rich stars, we identify red giants in our APOGEE2 sample that are likely associated with the Gaia-Enceladus-Sausage (GES) merger. We compare the abundance profiles of the Jhelum stars and GES stars and find similar trends in α-elements, as expected for low-metallicity populations. However, we find that the orbits for GES and Jhelum stars are not generally consistent with a shared origin. The chemical abundances for the APOGEE-2 Jhelum star and other confirmed members of the stream are similar to stars in known stellar streams and thus are consistent with an accreted dwarf galaxy origin for the progenitor of the stream, although we cannot rule out a globular cluster origin.

Characterizing the atmospheres of planets orbiting M dwarfs requires understanding the spectral energy distributions of M dwarfs over planetary lifetimes. Surveys like MUSCLES, HAZMAT, and FUMES have collected multiwavelength spectra across the spectral type's range of T_eff and activity, but the extreme ultraviolet (EUV, 100–912 Å) flux of most of these stars remains unobserved because of obscuration by the interstellar medium compounded with limited detector sensitivity. While targets with observable EUV flux exist, there is no currently operational facility observing between 150 and 912 Å. Inferring the spectra of exoplanet hosts in this regime is critical to studying the evolution of planetary atmospheres because the EUV heats the top of the thermosphere and drives atmospheric escape. This paper presents our implementation of the differential emission measure technique to reconstruct the EUV spectra of cool dwarfs. We characterize our method's accuracy and precision by applying it to the Sun and AU Mic. We then apply it to three fainter M dwarfs: GJ 832, Barnard's star, and TRAPPIST-1. We demonstrate that with the strongest far-ultraviolet (FUV, 912–1700 Å) emission lines, observed with the Hubble Space Telescope and/or Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer, and a coarse X-ray spectrum from either the Chandra X-ray Observatory or XMM-Newton, we can reconstruct the Sun's EUV spectrum to within a factor of 1.8, with our model's formal uncertainties encompassing the data. We report the integrated EUV flux of our M dwarf sample with uncertainties of a factor of 2–7 depending on available data quality.

We report the detection of [O i] 145.5 μm in the BR 1202-0725 system, a compact group at z = 4.7 consisting of a quasar (QSO), a submillimeter-bright galaxy (SMG), and three faint Lyα emitters. By taking into account the previous detections and upper limits, the [O i] /[C ii] line ratios of the now five known high-z galaxies are higher than or on the high end of the observed values in local galaxies ([O i] /[C ii] ≳ 0.13). The high [O i] /[C ii] ratios and the joint analysis with previous detection of [N ii] lines for both of the QSO and the SMG suggest the presence of warm and dense neutral gas in these highly star-forming galaxies. This is further supported by new CO (12–11) line detections and a comparison with cosmological simulations. There is a possible positive correlation between the [N ii] 122/205 line ratio and the [O i] /[C ii] ratio when all local and high-z sources are taken into account, indicating that the denser the ionized gas, the denser and warmer the neutral gas (or vice versa). The detection of the [O i] line in the BR 1202-0725 system with a relatively short amount of integration with Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) demonstrates the great potential of this line as a dense gas tracer for high-z galaxies.

We analyze the LIGO/Virgo GWTC-2 catalog to study the primary mass distribution of the merging black holes. We perform hierarchical Bayesian analysis and examine whether the mass distribution has a sharp cutoff for primary black hole masses below 65 M_⊙, as predicted in the pulsational pair-instability supernova model. We construct two empirical mass functions. One is a piece-wise function with two power-law segments joined by a sudden drop. The other consists of a main-truncated power-law component, a Gaussian component, and a third very massive component. Both models can reasonably fit the data and a sharp drop of the mass distribution is found at ∼50M_⊙, suggesting that the majority of the observed black holes can be explained by the stellar evolution scenarios in which the pulsational pair-instability process takes place. On the other hand, the very massive subpopulation, which accounts for at most several percent of the total, may be formed through hierarchical mergers or other processes.

Spectroastrometry is used to investigate the low-velocity component (LVC) of the optical forbidden emission from the T Tauri stars RU Lupi and AS 205 N. Both stars also have high-velocity forbidden emission, which is tracing a jet. For AS 205 N, analysis reveals a complicated outflow system. For RU Lupi, the [O i] λ6300 and [S ii]λλ6716,6731 LV narrow component (NC) is offset along the same position angle (PA) as the high-velocity component but with a different velocity gradient than the jet, in that displacement from the stellar position along the rotation axis is decreasing with increasing velocity. From the LVC, NC, PA, and velocity gradient, it is inferred that the NC is tracing a wide-angled magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) disk wind. A photoevaporative wind is ruled out. This is supported by a comparison with a previous spectroastrometric study of the CO fundamental line. The decrease in offset with increasing velocity is interpreted as tracing an increase in the height of the wind with increasing disk radius. This is one of the first measurements of the spatial extent of the forbidden emission line LVC NC (∼40 au, 8 au for RU Lupi in the [S ii] λ6731 and [O i] λ6300 lines) and the first direct confirmation that the LVC narrow component can trace an MHD disk wind.

Searching in the MaNGA IFU survey, I identify nine galaxies that have strong Balmer absorption lines and weak nebular emission lines measured from the spectra integrated over the entire IFU. The spectral features measured from the bulk of the stellar light make these galaxies local analogs of high-redshift spectroscopically selected poststarburst galaxies and thus proxies to understand the mechanisms producing poststarburst galaxies at high redshifts. I present the distributions of absorption line indices and emission line strengths, as well as the stellar kinematics of these local poststarburst galaxies. Almost all local poststarburst galaxies have central compact emission line regions at the central <1 kpc, mostly powered by weak star formation activities. The age-sensitive absorption line indices EW(Hδ) and D_n4000 indicate that the stellar populations at the outskirts are older. Toy stellar population synthesis models suggest that the galaxies as a whole are experiencing a rapid decline of star formation with residual star formation activities at the centers. These features indicate that most poststarburst galaxies are the aftermath of highly dissipative processes that drive gas into centers, invoke centrally concentrated star formation, and then quench the galaxies. Meanwhile, when measurable, poststarburst galaxies have the directions of maximum stellar velocity gradients aligned with photometric major axes, which suggest against major mergers being the principal driving mechanism, while gas-rich minor mergers are plausible. While directly obtaining the same quality of spatially resolved spectra of high-redshift poststarburst galaxies is very difficult, finding proper local counterparts provides an alternative to understand quenching processes in the distant universe.

Star formation histories (SFHs) reveal physical processes that influence how galaxies form their stellar mass. We compare the SFHs of a sample of 36 nearby (D ⪅ 4 Mpc) dwarf galaxies from the ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury (ANGST), inferred from the color–magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of individually resolved stars in these galaxies, with those reconstructed by broadband spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting using the dense basis SED-fitting code. When comparing individual SFHs, we introduce metrics for evaluating SFH reconstruction techniques. For both the SED and CMD methods, the median normalized SFH of galaxies in the sample shows a period of quiescence at lookback times of 3–6 Gyr followed by rejuvenated star formation over the past 3 Gyr that remains active until the present day. To determine if these represent special epochs of star formation in the D <4 Mpc portion of the Local Volume, we break this ANGST dwarf galaxy sample into subsets based on specific star formation rate and spatial location. Modulo offsets between the methods of about 1 Gyr, all subsets show significant decreases and increases in their median normalized SFHs at the same epochs, and the majority of the individual galaxy SFHs are consistent with these trends. These results motivate further study of potential synchronized star formation quiescence and rejuvenation in the Local Volume as well as development of a hybrid method of SFH reconstruction that combines CMDs and SEDs, which have complementary systematics.

Superhydrogenated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have been suggested to catalyze the formation of H₂ in certain regions of space, but it remains unclear under which circumstances this mechanism is viable given the reduced carbon backbone stability of superhydrogenated PAHs. We report a laboratory study on the stability of the smallest pericondensed PAH, pyrene (C₁₆H_10+N, with N = 4, 6, and 16 additional H atoms), against photodestruction by single vacuum ultraviolet photons using the photoelectron–photoion coincidence technique. For N = 4, we observe a protective effect of hydrogenation against the loss of native hydrogens, in the form of an increase in the appearance energies of the ${{\rm{C}}}_{16}{{\rm{H}}}_{9}^{+}$ and C₁₆H₈⁺ daughter ions compared to those reported for pristine pyrene (C₁₆H₁₀). No such effect is seen for N = 6 or 16, where the weakening effect of replacing aromatic bonds with aliphatic ones outweighs the buffering effect of the additional hydrogen atoms. The onset of fragmentation occurs at similar internal energies for N = 4 and 6, but is significantly lower for N = 16. In all three cases, H-loss and C_mH_n-loss (m ≥ 1, carbon backbone fragmentation) channels open at approximately the same energy. The branching fractions of the primary channels favor H-loss for N = 4, C_mH_n-loss for N = 16, and are roughly equal for the intermediate N = 6. We conclude that superhydrogenated pyrene is probably too small to support catalytic H₂-formation, while trends in the current and previously reported data suggest that larger PAHs may serve as catalysts up to a certain level of hydrogenation.

In this study, we present the magnetic configuration of an erupting pseudostreamer observed on 2015 April 19, on the southwest limb of the Sun, with a prominence cavity embedded inside. The eruption resulted in a partial halo coronal mass ejection. The prominence eruption begins with a slow rise and then evolves to a fast-rise phase. We analyze this erupting pseudostreamer using the flux-rope insertion method and magnetofrictional relaxation to establish a sequence of plausible out-of-equilibrium magnetic configurations. This approach allows the direct incorporation of observations of structures seen in the corona (filament and cavity) to appropriately model the pseudostreamer based on SDO/HMI line-of-sight photospheric magnetograms. We also perform a topological analysis in order to determine the location of quasiseparatrix layers (QSLs) in the models, producing Q-maps to examine how the QSL locations progress in the higher iterations. We found that the axial flux in our best-fit unstable model was a factor of 20 times higher than we found in our marginally stable case. We computed the average magnetic field strength of the prominence and found that the unstable model exhibits twice the average field strength of the stable model. The eruption height from our modeling matches very well with the prominence eruption height measured from the AIA observation. The Q-maps derived from the model reproduce structures observed in LASCO/C2. Thus, the modeling and topological analysis results are fully consistent with the observed morphological features, implying that we have captured the large magnetic structure of the erupting filament in our magnetofrictional simulation.

We report on optical observations and modeling of HD96670, a single-line spectroscopic binary in the Carina OB2 association. We collected 10 epochs of optical spectroscopy, and optical photometry on 17 nonconsecutive nights on the source. We construct a radial velocity curve from the spectra, and update the orbital period of the binary to be P = 5.28388 ± 0.00046 days. The spectra show oxygen and helium absorption, consistent with an O-type primary. We see no evidence for spectral lines from the secondary star in the binary. We model the optical light curve and radial velocity curve simultaneously using the Wilson–Devinney code and find a best-fit mass of ${M}_{1}={22.7}_{-3.6}^{+5.2}\,{M}_{\odot }$ for the primary, and ${M}_{2}={6.2}_{-0.7}^{+0.9}\,{M}_{\odot }$ for the secondary. An object of this mass is consistent with either a B-type star, or a black hole. Given that we see no absorption lines from the secondary, in combination with an observed hard power-law X-ray spectrum with Γ = 2.6 detected past 10 keV that may have been produced by wind accretion onto the secondary, we conclude that the secondary is most likely a black hole. We see asymmetrical helium lines with a shape consistent with the presence of a third star. If the secondary is indeed a black hole, this system would add to the small sample of only four possible black hole high mass X-ray binaries in the galaxy.

Improving the use of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) as standard candles requires a better approach to incorporate the relationship between SNe Ia and the properties of their host galaxies. Using a spectroscopically confirmed sample of ∼1600 SNe Ia, we develop the first empirical model of underlying populations for SNe Ia light-curve properties that includes their dependence on host-galaxy stellar mass; we find a significant correlation between stretch population and stellar mass (99.9% confidence) and a weaker correlation between color and stellar mass (90% confidence). These populations are important inputs to simulations that are used to model selection effects and correct distance biases within the BEAMS with Bias Correction (BBC) framework. Here we improve BBC to also account for SNe Ia-host correlations, and we validate this technique on simulated data samples. We recover the input relationship between SNe Ia luminosity and host-galaxy stellar mass (the mass step, γ) with a bias of 0.004 ±0.001 mag, which is a factor of 5 improvement over previous methods that have a γ bias of ∼0.02 ± 0.001 mag. We adapt BBC for a novel dust-based model of intrinsic brightness variations, which results in a greatly reduced mass step for data (γ = 0.017 ± 0.008) and for simulations (γ = 0.006 ± 0.007). Analyzing simulated SNe Ia, the biases on the dark energy equation of state, w, vary from Δw = 0.006(5) to 0.010(5) with our new BBC method; these biases are significantly smaller than the 0.02(5) w bias using previous BBC methods that ignore SNe Ia-host correlations.

We present the first results from a Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3/Infrared program, which obtained direct imaging and grism observations of galaxies near quasar sightlines with a high frequency of uncorrelated foreground Mg ii absorption. These highly efficient observations targeted 54 Mg ii absorbers along the line of sight to nine quasars at z_(qso ∼ 2. We find that 89% of the absorbers in the range of 0.64 < z < 1.6 can be spectroscopically matched to at least one galaxy with an impact parameter of less than 200 kpc and ∣Δz∣/(1 + z) < 0.006. We have estimated the star formation rates and measured structural parameters for all detected galaxies with impact parameters in the range of 7–200 kpc and star formation rates greater than 1.3 M_⊙ yr⁻¹. We find that galaxies associated with Mg ii absorption have significantly higher mean star formation rates and marginally higher mean star formation rate surface densities compared to galaxies with no detected Mg ii. Nearly half of the Mg ii absorbers match more than one galaxy, and the mean equivalent width of the Mg ii absorption is found to be greater for groups, compared to isolated galaxies. Additionally, we observe a significant redshift evolution in the physical extent of Mg ii-absorbing gas around galaxies and evidence of an enhancement of Mg ii within 50° of the minor axis, characteristic of outflows, which persists to 80 kpc around the galaxies, in agreement with recent predictions from simulations.

We have calculated the thermonuclear ¹⁹F(p, α_γ)¹⁶O reaction rate in a wide temperature region of 0.001–10 GK by re-evaluating the available experimental data. Together with recently evaluated ¹⁹(p, α₀)¹⁶O and ¹⁹(p, α_π)¹⁶O data, we have derived a new total reaction rate of ¹⁹F(p, α)¹⁶O using a Monte Carlo technique. The present rate is larger than the NACRE recommended one by factors of 36.4, 2.3, and 1.7 at temperatures of 0.01, 0.05, and 0.1 GK, respectively. This is because we have considered the enhanced low-energy astrophysical S factors in the (p, α_γ) channel, owing to the interference effect between an 11 keV resonance and the well-known 323 keV resonance. It shows that the (p, α_γ) channel dominates the total rate over the entire temperature region, except for a narrow region of 0.05–0.12 GK where the (p, α₀) channel dominates, contrary to the previous conclusion. We have investigated the impact of the ¹⁹F(p, α)¹⁶O reaction rate using a simple parametric model of extra mixing in low-mass AGB stars, which would lower the fluorine abundance produced and observed in these stars. However, models considering different temperature profiles and more sophisticated approaches, such as extra mixing induced by magnetic fields, are needed to verify the results of our preliminary tests. Interestingly, our new rate has a strong impact on destruction of ¹⁹F in the CNO cycle at low temperatures of 0.02–0.03 GK, and this general behavior needs to be analyzed further.

We investigate ionization and heating of gas in the dense, shielded clumps/cores of molecular clouds bathed by an influx of energetic, charged cosmic rays (CRs). These molecular clouds have complex structures, with substantial variation in their physical properties over a wide range of length scales. The propagation and distribution of CRs is thus regulated accordingly, in particular, by the magnetic fields threaded through the clouds and into the dense regions within. We have found that a specific heating rate reaching 10⁻²⁶ erg cm⁻³ s⁻¹ can be sustained in the dense clumps/cores for Galactic environments, and this rate increases with CR energy density. The propagation of CRs and heating rates in some star-forming filaments identified in IC 5146 are calculated, with the CR diffusion coefficients in these structures determined from magnetic field fluctuations inferred from optical and near-infrared polarizations of starlight, which is presumably a magnetic field tracer. Our calculations indicate that CR heating can vary by nearly three orders of magnitude between different filaments within a cloud due to different levels of CR penetration. The CR ionization rate among these filaments is similar. The equilibrium temperature that could be maintained by CR heating alone is of order 1 K in a Galactic environment, but this value would be higher in strongly star-forming environments, thus causing an increase in the Jeans mass of their molecular clouds.

The gas content of the complete compilation of Local Group dwarf galaxies (119 within 2 Mpc) is presented using H i survey data. Within the virial radius of the Milky Way (224 kpc here), 53 of 55 dwarf galaxies are devoid of gas to limits of M_{H i} < 10⁴M_⊙. Within the virial radius of M31 (266 kpc), 27 of 30 dwarf galaxies are devoid of gas (with limits typically <10⁵M_⊙). Beyond the virial radii of the Milky Way and M31, the majority of the dwarf galaxies have detected H i gas and H i masses higher than the limits. When the relationship between gas content and distance is investigated using a Local Group virial radius, more of the nondetected dwarf galaxies are within this radius (85 ± 1 of the 93 nondetected dwarf galaxies) than within the virial radii of the Milky Way and M31. Using the Gaia proper-motion measurements available for 38 dwarf galaxies, the minimum gas density required to completely strip them of gas is calculated. Halo densities between 10⁻⁵ and 5 × 10⁻⁴ cm⁻³ are typically required for instantaneous stripping at perigalacticon. When compared to halo density with radius expectations from simulations and observations, 80% of the dwarf galaxies with proper motions are consistent with being stripped by ram pressure at Milky Way pericenter. The results suggest that a diffuse gaseous galactic halo medium is important in quenching dwarf galaxies, and that a Local Group medium also potentially plays a role.

Presented are the first interferometric images of cool starspots on the chromospherically active giant λ Andromedae. Using the Michigan Infra-Red Combiner coupled to the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy Array, 26 interferometric observations were made between 2008 August 17 and 2011 September 24. The photometric time series acquired at Fairborn Observatory spanning 2008 September 20 to 2011 January 20 is also presented. The angular diameter and power-law limb-darkening coefficient of this star are 2.759 ± 0.050 mas and 0.229 ± 0.111, respectively. Starspot properties are obtained from both modeled and SQUEEZE reconstructed images. The images from 2010 through 2011 show anywhere from one to four starspots. The cadence in the data for the 2010 and 2011 data sets is sufficient to measure a stellar rotation period based on apparent starspot motion. This leads to estimates of the rotation period (P₂₀₁₀ = 61 ± 4.0 days, P₂₀₁₁ = 54.0 ± 2.4 days) that are consistent with the photometrically determined period of 54.8 days. In addition, the inclination and position angle of the rotation axis are computed for both the 2010 and 2011 data sets; values ($\bar{{\rm{\Psi }}}$ = 215, $\bar{i}$ = 780) for each are nearly identical between the two years.

The diversity of Type II supernovae (SNe II) is thought to be driven mainly by differences in their progenitor's hydrogen-rich (H-rich) envelope mass, with SNe IIP having long plateaus (∼100 days) and the most massive H-rich envelopes. However, it is an ongoing mystery why SNe II with short plateaus (tens of days) are rarely seen. Here, we present optical/near-infrared photometric and spectroscopic observations of luminous Type II short-plateau SNe 2006Y, 2006ai, and 2016egz. Their plateaus of about 50–70 days and luminous optical peaks (≲−18.4 mag) indicate significant pre-explosion mass loss resulting in partially stripped H-rich envelopes and early circumstellar material (CSM) interaction. We compute a large grid of MESA+STELLA single-star progenitor and light-curve models with various progenitor zero-age main-sequence (ZAMS) masses, mass-loss efficiencies, explosion energies, ⁵⁶Ni masses, and CSM densities. Our model grid shows a continuous population of SNe IIP–IIL–IIb-like light-curve morphology in descending order of H-rich envelope mass. With large ⁵⁶Ni masses (≳0.05 M_⊙), short-plateau SNe II lie in a confined parameter space as a transitional class between SNe IIL and IIb. For SNe 2006Y, 2006ai, and 2016egz, our findings suggest high-mass red supergiant (RSG) progenitors (M_ZAMS ≃ 18–22 M_⊙) with small H-rich envelope masses (${M}_{{{\rm{H}}}_{\mathrm{env}}}\simeq 1.7\,{M}_{\odot }$) that have experienced enhanced mass loss ($\dot{M}\simeq {10}^{-2}\,{M}_{\odot }\,{\mathrm{yr}}^{-1}$) for the last few decades before the explosion. If high-mass RSGs result in rare short-plateau SNe II, then these events might ease some of the apparent underrepresentation of higher-luminosity RSGs in observed SN II progenitor samples.

Active region EUV loops are believed to trace a subset of magnetic field lines through the corona. Malanushenko et al. proposed a method, using loop images and line-of-sight photospheric magnetograms, to infer the 3D shape and field strength along each loop. McCarthy et al. used this novel method to compute the total magnetic flux interconnecting a pair of active regions observed by SDO/AIA. They adopted the common assumption that each loop had a circular cross section. The accuracy of inferred shape and circularity of cross sections can both be tested using observations of the same loops from additional vantage points as provided by STEREO/EUVI. Here we use multiple viewing angles to confirm the 3D structure of loops. Of 151 viable cases, 105 (69.5%) matched some form of visible coronal structure when viewed approximately in quadrature. A loop with a circular cross section should appear of a similar width in different perspectives. In contradiction to this, we find a puzzling lack of correlation between loop diameters seen from different perspectives, even an anticorrelation in some cases. Features identified as monolithic loops in AIA may, in fact, be more complex density enhancements. The 30.5% of reconstructions from AIA that did not match any feature in EUVI might be such enhancements. Others may be genuine loop structures, but with elliptical cross sections. We observe an anticorrelation between diameter and brightness, lending support to the latter hypothesis. Of 13 loops suitable for width analysis, 4 are consistent with noncircular cross sections, where we find anticorrelation in both comparisons.

We present the first 850 μm polarization observations in the most active star-forming site of the Rosette Molecular Cloud (d ∼ 1.6 kpc) in the wall of the Rosette Nebula, imaged with the SCUBA-2/POL-2 instruments of the James Clerk Maxwell telescope, as part of the B-Fields In Star-forming Region Observations 2 (BISTRO-2) survey. From the POL-2 data we find that the polarization fraction decreases with the 850 μm continuum intensity with α = 0.49 ± 0.08 in the p ∝ I^−α relation, which suggests that some fraction of the dust grains remain aligned at high densities. The north of our 850 μm image reveals a "gemstone ring" morphology, which is a ∼1 pc diameter ring-like structure with extended emission in the "head" to the southwest. We hypothesize that it might have been blown by feedback in its interior, while the B-field is parallel to its circumference in most places. In the south of our SCUBA-2 field the clumps are apparently connected with filaments that follow infrared dark clouds. Here, the POL-2 magnetic field orientations appear bimodal with respect to the large-scale Planck field. The mass of our effective mapped area is ∼174 M_⊙, which we calculate from 850 μm flux densities. We compare our results with masses from large-scale emission-subtracted Herschel 250 μm data and find agreement within 30%. We estimate the plane-of-sky B-field strength in one typical subregion using the Davis–Chandrasekhar–Fermi technique and find 80 ± 30 μG toward a clump and its outskirts. The estimated mass-to-flux ratio of λ = 2.3 ± 1.0 suggests that the B-field is not sufficiently strong to prevent gravitational collapse in this subregion.

Multi-wave band synchrotron linear polarization of gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglows is studied under the assumption of an anisotropic turbulent magnetic field with a coherence length of the plasma skin-depth scale in the downstream of forward shocks. We find that for typical GRBs, in comparison to optical polarization, the degree of radio polarization shows a similar temporal evolution but a significantly smaller peak value. This results from differences in observed intensity image shapes between the radio and optical bands. We also show that the degree of the polarization spectrum undergoes a gradual variation from the low- to the high-polarization regime above the intensity of the spectral peak frequency, and that the difference in polarization angles in the two regimes is zero or 90°. Thus, simultaneous multi-wave band polarimetric observations of GRB afterglows would be a new determinative test of the plasma-scale magnetic field model. We also discuss theoretical implications from the recent detection of radio linear polarization in GRB 171205A with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array and other models of magnetic field configuration.

Solar jets are ubiquitous phenomena in the solar atmosphere. They are important in mass and energy transport to the upper atmosphere and interplanetary space. Here, we report a detailed analysis of a small-scale chromospheric jet with high-resolution He i 10830 Å and TiO 7057 Å images observed by the 1.6 m aperture Goode Solar Telescope at the Big Bear Solar Observatory. The observation reveals the finest dark threads inside the jet are rooted in the intergranular lanes. Their width is equal to the telescope's diffraction limit at 10830 Å (∼100 km). The jet is recurrent and its association with the emergence and convergence of magnetic flux is observed. Together with other important features like photospheric flow toward the magnetic polarity inversion line, a bald-patch magnetic configuration, and earlier excitation of helium atoms, we propose that the jet might be initiated by magnetic reconnection in a U-shaped loop configuration. The plasmoid configuration results from the possible buoyancy of the magnetic reconnection, which reoccurs in a second step with an overlying magnetic field line. Notably, the second-step magnetic reconnection produces not only bidirectional cool or hot flows but also a new U-shaped loop configuration. The feature may be used to explain the recurrent behavior of the jet, since the new U-shaped loop can be driven to reconnect again.

We present the systematic spectral analyses of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) detected by the Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor during its first ten years of operation. This catalog contains two types of spectra: time-integrated spectral fits and spectral fits at the brightest time bin, from 2297 GRBs, resulting in a compendium of over 18,000 spectra. The four different spectral models used for fitting the spectra were selected based on their empirical importance to the shape of many GRBs. We describe in detail our procedure and criteria for the analyses, and present the bulk results in the form of parameter distributions both in the observer frame and in the GRB rest frame. 941 GRBs from the first four years have been refitted using the same methodology as that of the 1356 GRBs in years five through ten. The data files containing the complete results are available from the High-Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center.

Submillimeter/far-IR spectroscopy was used to detect and quantify organic molecules sublimated after the ultraviolet photolysis (at 12 K) and warm-up (up to 300 K) of a methanol (CH₃OH) ice sample. Eleven sublimated photoproducts were uniquely identified: carbon monoxide (CO), formaldehyde (H₂CO), ketene (C₂H₂O), acetaldehyde (CH₃CHO), ethylene oxide (CH₂OCH₂), vinyl alcohol (CH₂CHOH), ethanol (CH₃CH₂OH), dimethyl ether (CH₃OCH₃), methyl formate (HCOOCH₃), glycolaldehyde (HOCH₂CHO), and acetone ((CH₃)₂CO). Two additional products were detected in the photolyzed ice by Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy: carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄). The rotational temperatures and gas densities were calculated for the organics containing two or more C atoms via a rotation diagram analysis, and the gas-phase submillimeter/far-IR technique was used in tandem with mass spectrometry and FTIR spectroscopy of the ice during photolysis. The abundance ratios of the sublimated species (normalized to methanol) were compared to those observed in hot cores (Orion-KL, Sagittarius B2(N), and IRAS 16293-2422(B)) and in comets C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) and 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

Red giants show a large number of absorption lines in both optical and near-infrared wavelengths. Still, the characteristics of the lines in different wave passbands are not necessarily the same. We searched for lines of Mg i, Si i, Ca i, Ti i, Cr i, and Ni i in the $z^{\prime}$, Y, and J bands (0.91–1.33 μm), that are useful for precise abundance analyses, from two different compilations of lines, namely, the third release of Vienna Atomic Line Database (VALD3) and the catalog published by Meléndez & Barbuy in 1999 (MB99). We selected sufficiently strong lines that are not severely blended and ended up with 191 lines (165 and 141 lines from VALD3 and MB99, respectively), in total, for the six elements. Combining our line lists with high-resolution (λ/Δλ = 28,000) and high signal-to-noise ratio (>500) spectra taken with the WINERED spectrograph, we measured the abundances of the six elements in addition to Fe i of two prototype red giants, i.e., Arcturus and μ Leo. The resultant abundances show reasonable agreement with the values in the literature within ∼0.2 dex, indicating that the available oscillator strengths are acceptable, although the abundances based on the two line lists show systematic differences by 0.1–0.2 dex. Furthermore, to improve the precision, solid estimation of the microturbulence (or the microturbulences if they are different for different elements) is necessary as far as the classical hydrostatic atmosphere models are used for the analysis.

We study the efficiency of grain alignment by radiative torques (RATs) for an ensemble of irregular grains. The grains are modeled as ensembles of oblate and prolate spheroids, deformed as Gaussian random ellipsoids, and their scattering interactions are solved using numerically exact methods. We define the fraction of the grains that both rotate fast and demonstrate perfect alignment with grain long axes perpendicular to the magnetic field. We quantify a factor related to the efficacy of alignment and show that it is related to a ${q}_{\max }$ factor of the analytical model of the RAT theory. For the interstellar radiation field, our results indicate that the degree of RAT alignment can reach ∼0.5, which may be sufficient to explain observations even if grains do not have magnetic inclusions.

Streamers and pseudostreamers structure the corona at the largest scales, as seen in both eclipse and coronagraph white-light images. Their inverted-goblet appearance encloses broad coronal loops at the Sun and tapers to a narrow radial stalk away from the star. The streamer associated with the global solar dipole magnetic field is long-lived, predominantly contains a single arcade of nested loops within it, and separates opposite-polarity interplanetary magnetic fields with the heliospheric current sheet (HCS) anchored at its apex. Pseudostreamers, on the other hand, are transient, enclose double arcades of nested loops, and separate like-polarity fields with a dense plasma sheet. We use numerical magnetohydrodynamic simulations to calculate, for the first time, the formation of pseudostreamers in response to photospheric magnetic-field evolution. Convective transport of a minority-polarity flux concentration, initially positioned under one side of a streamer, through the streamer boundary into the adjacent preexisting coronal hole forms the pseudostreamer. Interchange magnetic reconnection at the overlying coronal null point(s) governs the development of the pseudostreamer above—and of a new satellite coronal hole behind—the moving minority polarity. The reconnection dynamics liberate coronal-loop plasma that can escape into the heliosphere along so-called separatrix-web ("S-Web") arcs, which reach far from the HCS and the solar equatorial plane, and can explain the origin of high-latitude slow solar wind. We describe the implications of our results for in situ and remote-sensing observations of the corona and heliosphere as obtained, most recently, by Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter.

The polar magnetic field precursor is considered to be the most robust and physics-based method for the prediction of the next solar cycle strength. However, to make a reliable prediction of a cycle, is the polar field at the solar minimum of the previous cycle enough or do we need the polar field of many previous cycles? To answer this question, we performed several simulations using Babcock–Leighton-type flux-transport dynamo models with a stochastically forced source for the poloidal field (α term). We show that when the dynamo is operating near the critical dynamo transition or only weakly supercritical, the polar field of cycle n determines the amplitude of the next several cycles (at least three). However, when the dynamo is substantially supercritical, this correlation of the polar field is reduced to one cycle. This change in the memory of the polar field from multiple to one cycle with the increase of the supercriticality of the dynamo is independent of the importance of various turbulent transport processes in the model. Our this conclusion contradicts the existing idea. We further show that when the dynamo operates near the critical transition, it produces frequent extended episodes of weaker activity, resembling the solar grand minima. The occurrence of grand minima is accompanied by the multicycle correlation of the polar field. The frequency of grand minima decreases with the increase of supercriticality of the dynamo.

In the decay phase of solar energetic particle (SEP) events, particle intensities observed by widely separated spacecraft usually present comparable intensities (within a factor of 2–3) that evolve similarly in time. The phenomenon of SEP events is called a reservoir, which could be observed frequently in intensive gradual SEP events. In this work, we find the effects of the magnetic boundary could help to form the reservoir phenomenon in energetic proton and electron events. In the 1978 January 1 and the 2000 November 8 SEP events, we find the effects of the magnetic boundary associated with the reservoir phenomenon were observed simultaneously in the sheath of magnetic cloud/interplanetary coronal mass ejection. Based on the observations, we suggest that the effects of the magnetic boundary could be due to the magnetic mirrors and/or the small diffusion coefficients in the sheath region and they could help to form the reservoir phenomenon in both the energetic proton and electron events in some large SEP events.

We present radio observation of a millisecond pulsar PSR J0621+1002 using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope. The pulsar shows periodic pulse intensity modulations for both the first and the third pulse components. The fluctuation spectrum of the first pulse component has one peak of 3.0 ± 0.1 pulse periods, while that of the third pulse component has two diffused peaks of 3.0 ± 0.1 and 200 ± 1 pulse periods. The single pulse timing analysis is carried out for this pulsar and the single pulses can be divided into two classes based on the post-fit timing residuals. We examined the achievable timing precision using only the pulses in one class or bright pulses. However, the timing precision improvement is not achievable.

A pair of nonthermal radio bubbles recently discovered in the inner few hundred parsecs of the Galactic center bears a close spatial association with elongated, thermal X-ray features called the X-ray chimneys. While their morphology, position, and orientation vividly point to an outflow from the Galactic center, the physical processes responsible for the outflow remain to be understood. We use 3D magnetohydrodynamic simulations to test the hypothesis that the radio bubbles/X-ray chimneys are the manifestation of an energetic outflow driven by multiple core-collapsed supernovae (SNe) in the nuclear stellar disk, where numerous massive stars are known to be present. Our simulations are run with different combinations of two main parameters, the supernova birth rate and the strength of a global magnetic field being vertically oriented with respect to the disk. The simulation results show that a hot gas outflow can naturally form and acquire a vertically elongated shape due to collimation by the magnetic pressure. In particular, the simulation with an initial magnetic field strength of 80 μG and a supernova rate of 1 kyr⁻¹ can well reproduce the observed morphology, internal energy, and X-ray luminosity of the bubbles after an evolutionary time of 330 kyr. On the other hand, a magnetic field strength of 200 μG gives rise to an overly elongated outflow that is inconsistent with the observed bubbles. The simulations also reveal that, inside the bubbles, mutual collisions between the shock waves of individual SNe produce dense filaments of locally amplified magnetic field. Such filaments may account for a fraction of the synchrotron-emitting radio filaments known to exist in the Galactic center.

Light curves produced by the Kepler mission demonstrate stochastic brightness fluctuations (or flicker) of stellar origin which contribute to the noise floor, limiting the sensitivity of exoplanet detection and characterization methods. In stars with surface convection, the primary driver of these variations on short (sub-eight-hour) timescales is believed to be convective granulation. In this work, we improve existing models of this granular flicker amplitude, or F₈, by including the effect of the Kepler bandpass on measured flicker, by incorporating metallicity in determining convective Mach numbers, and by using scaling relations from a wider set of numerical simulations. To motivate and validate these changes, we use a recent database of convective flicker measurements in Kepler stars, which allows us to more fully detail the remaining model-prediction error. Our model improvements reduce the typical misprediction of flicker amplitude from a factor of 2.5–2. We rule out rotation period and strong magnetic activity as possible explanations for the remaining model error, and we show that binary companions may affect convective flicker. We also introduce an envelope model that predicts a range of flicker amplitudes for any one star to account for some of the spread in numerical simulations, and we find that this range covers 78% of observed stars. We note that the solar granular flicker amplitude is lower than most Sun-like stars. This improved model of convective flicker amplitude can better characterize this source of noise in exoplanet studies as well as better inform models and simulations of stellar granulation.

We analyze light curves of 284,834 unique K2 targets using a Gaussian process model with a quasi-periodic kernel function. By cross-matching K2 stars to observations from Gaia Data Release 2, we have identified 69,627 likely main-sequence stars. From these we select a subsample of 8977 stars on the main sequence with highly precise rotation period measurements. With this sample we recover the gap in the rotation period−color diagram first reported by McQuillan et al. While the gap was tentatively detected in Reinhold & Hekker, this work represents the first robust detection of the gap in K2 data for field stars. This is significant because K2 observed along many lines of sight at wide angular separation, in contrast to Kepler's single line of sight. Together with recent results for rotation in open clusters, we interpret this gap as evidence for a departure from the t^−1/2 Skumanich spin-down law, rather than an indication of a bimodal star formation history. We provide maximum likelihood estimates and uncertainties for all parameters of the quasi-periodic light-curve model for each of the 284,834 stars in our sample.

Effective spectroscopic diagnostics rely on the ability to convert a particular flux measurement into a physical interpretation. Knowledge of uncertainty is a central component of diagnostics. We present data from a simulated solar-like chromosphere, where we have addressed the question of whether degeneracy is a problem in mapping from a non-LTE chromospheric line profile to a particular vertical stratification of atmospheric properties along the line of sight. Our results indicate that stratification degeneracies do exist, at least in our simulated atmosphere. We quantify this effect through the creation of posterior densities for atmospheric properties based on the Mg ii h line profile using the approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) technique. We find that the predictive power of the ABC temperature posterior systematically varies as a function of atmospheric column mass and ground-truth temperature. The ABC posteriors more effectively reproduce the spectral intensity in the Ca ii 8542 Å line than they do temperature stratification, although residual error in the Ca ii line core is common. Our results illustrate that some degeneracies should be alleviated through simultaneous analysis of multiple chromospheric lines.

Stellar evolution and numerical hydrodynamics simulations depend critically on access to fast, accurate, thermodynamically consistent equations of state. We present Skye, a new equation of state for fully ionized matter. Skye includes the effects of positrons, relativity, electron degeneracy, Coulomb interactions, nonlinear mixing effects, and quantum corrections. Skye determines the point of Coulomb crystallization in a self-consistent manner, accounting for mixing and composition effects automatically. A defining feature of this equation of state is that it uses analytic free energy terms and provides thermodynamic quantities using automatic differentiation machinery. Because of this, Skye is easily extended to include new effects by simply writing new terms in the free energy. We also introduce a novel thermodynamic extrapolation scheme for extending analytic fits to the free energy beyond the range of the fitting data while preserving desirable properties like positive entropy and sound speed. We demonstrate Skye in action in the MESA stellar evolution software instrument by computing white dwarf cooling curves.

The analysis of exoplanetary atmospheres often relies upon the observation of transit or eclipse events. While very powerful, these snapshots provide mainly one-dimensional information on the planet structure and do not easily allow precise latitude–longitude characterizations. The phase curve technique, which consists of measuring the planet emission throughout its entire orbit, can break this limitation and provide useful two-dimensional thermal and chemical constraints on the atmosphere. As of today, however, computing performances have limited our ability to perform unified retrieval studies on the full set of observed spectra from phase curve observations at the same time. Here, we present a new phase curve model that enables fast, unified retrieval capabilities. We apply our technique to the combined phase curve data from the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes of the hot Jupiter WASP-43 b. We tested different scenarios and discussed the dependence of our solution on different assumptions in the model. Our more comprehensive approach suggests that multiple interpretations of this data set are possible, but our more complex model is consistent with the presence of thermal inversions and a metal-rich atmosphere, contrasting with previous data analyses, although this likely depends on the Spitzer data reduction. The detailed constraints extracted here demonstrate the importance of developing and understanding advanced phase curve techniques, which we believe will unlock access to a richer picture of exoplanet atmospheres.

The nonthermal broadening of spectral lines formed in the solar corona is often used to seek evidence of Alfvén waves propagating in the corona. To have a better understanding of the variation of line widths at different altitudes, we measured the line widths of the strong Fe xii 192.4, 193.5, and 195.1 Å and Fe xiii 202.0 Å in an off-limb southern coronal hole up to 1.5 R_⊙ observed by the Extreme Ultraviolet Spectrometer on board the Hinode satellite. We compared our measurements to the predictions from the Alfvén Wave Solar Model (AWSoM) and the SPECTRUM module. We found that the Fe xii and Fe xiii line widths first increase monotonically below 1.1 R_⊙ and then keep fluctuating between 1.1 and 1.5 R_⊙. The synthetic line widths of Fe xii and Fe xiii below 1.3 R_⊙ are notably lower than the observed ones. We found that the emission from a streamer in the line of sight significantly contaminates the coronal hole line profiles even up to 1.5 R_⊙ both in observations and simulations. We suggest that either the discrepancy between the observations and simulations is caused by insufficient nonthermal broadening at the streamer in the AWSoM simulation or the observations are less affected by the streamer. Our results emphasize the importance of identifying the origin of the coronal EUV emission in off-limb observations.

We apply for the first time a two-dimensional fitting statistic, τ², to rotational-evolution models (REMs) of stars (0.1–1.3 M_⊙) on the period–mass plane. The τ² statistic simultaneously considers all cluster rotation data to return a goodness of fit, allowing for data-driven improvement of REMs. We construct data sets for Upper Sco, the Pleiades, and Praesepe, to which we tune our REMs. We use consistently determined stellar masses (calculated by matching K_s magnitudes to isochrones) and literature rotation periods. As a first demonstration of the τ² statistic, we find the best-fitting gyrochronology age for Praesepe, which is in good agreement with the literature. We then systematically vary three parameters that determine the dependence of our stellar wind torque law on the Rossby number in the saturated and unsaturated regimes, and the location of the transition between the two. By minimizing τ², we find best-fit values for each parameter. These values vary slightly between clusters, mass determinations, and initial conditions, highlighting the precision of τ² and its potential for constraining REMs, gyrochronology, and our understanding of stellar physics. Our resulting REMs, which implement the best-possible fitting form of a broken-power-law torque, are statistically improved on previous REMs using similar formulations, but still do not simultaneously describe the observed rotation distributions of the lowest masses, which have both slow and fast rotators by the Praesepe age, and the shape of the converged sequence for higher masses. Further complexity in the REMs is thus required to accurately describe the data.

A total of 80% of the matter in the universe is in the form of dark matter that composes the skeleton of the large-scale structure called the cosmic web. As the cosmic web dictates the motion of all matter in galaxies and intergalactic media through gravity, knowing the distribution of dark matter is essential for studying the large-scale structure. However, the cosmic web's detailed structure is unknown because it is dominated by dark matter and warm−hot intergalactic media, both of which are hard to trace. Here we show that we can reconstruct the cosmic web from the galaxy distribution using the convolutional-neural-network-based deep-learning algorithm. We find the mapping between the position and velocity of galaxies and the cosmic web using the results of the state-of-the-art cosmological galaxy simulations of Illustris-TNG. We confirm the mapping by applying it to the EAGLE simulation. Finally, using the local galaxy sample from Cosmicflows-3, we find the dark matter map in the local universe. We anticipate that the local dark matter map will illuminate the studies of the nature of dark matter and the formation and evolution of the Local Group. High-resolution simulations and precise distance measurements to local galaxies will improve the accuracy of the dark matter map.