Table of contents

We use asteroseismic data obtained by the NASA Kepler mission to estimate the fundamental properties of more than 500 main-sequence and sub-giant stars. Data obtained during the first 10 months of Kepler science operations were used for this work, when these solar-type targets were observed for one month each in survey mode. Stellar properties have been estimated using two global asteroseismic parameters and complementary photometric and spectroscopic data. Homogeneous sets of effective temperatures, T_eff, were available for the entire ensemble from complementary photometry; spectroscopic estimates of T_eff and [Fe/H] were available from a homogeneous analysis of ground-based data on a subset of 87 stars. We adopt a grid-based analysis, coupling six pipeline codes to 11 stellar evolutionary grids. Through use of these different grid-pipeline combinations we allow implicitly for the impact on the results of stellar model dependencies from commonly used grids, and differences in adopted pipeline methodologies. By using just two global parameters as the seismic inputs we are able to perform a homogenous analysis of all solar-type stars in the asteroseismic cohort, including many targets for which it would not be possible to provide robust estimates of individual oscillation frequencies (due to a combination of low signal-to-noise ratio and short dataset lengths). The median final quoted uncertainties from consolidation of the grid-based analyses are for the full ensemble (spectroscopic subset) approximately 10.8% (5.4%) in mass, 4.4% (2.2%) in radius, 0.017 dex (0.010 dex) in log  g, and 4.3% (2.8%) in mean density. Around 36% (57%) of the stars have final age uncertainties smaller than 1 Gyr. These ages will be useful for ensemble studies, but should be treated carefully on a star-by-star basis. Future analyses using individual oscillation frequencies will offer significant improvements on up to 150 stars, in particular for estimates of the ages, where having the individual frequency data is most important.

We have developed a method for finding dynamical resonances in disk galaxies using the change in sense of the radial component of the in-plane velocity at a resonance radius. Using simulations we show that we would expect to find these changes at corotation radii with a weaker effect at the Lindblad resonances. The method works well with observations at high spectral and angular resolutions, and is suited to the analysis of two-dimensional velocity fields in Hα from Fabry–Perot spectroscopy. We find clear indications of resonance effects in the disk velocity fields of virtually all of the 104 galaxies. The number of resonance radii detected ranges from one to seven, with a median of four. The frequency curves Ω, Ω ± κ/2, Ω ± κ/4 against radius for all the galaxies led us to discover a pattern in over 70% of the sample: given two pattern speeds, say Ω₁ and Ω₂, the OLR of Ω₁ coincides with the corotation of Ω₂, and the inner 4:1 resonance of Ω₂ coincides with the corotation of Ω₁. Although the second coincidence has been predicted, a prediction of this double coincidence is not found in the literature. This pattern is found once in 42 of the galaxies, twice in a further 26, three times in 5, and even four times in 1 galaxy. We also compute the ratio of corotation radius to bar length where we have sufficient image quality, finding a mean value of 1.3, and a shallow increase toward later type galaxies.

We present a catalog of bulge, disk, and total stellar mass estimates for ∼660,000 galaxies in the Legacy area of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data (SDSS) Release 7. These masses are based on a homogeneous catalog of g- and r-band photometry described by Simard et al., which we extend here with bulge+disk and Sérsic profile photometric decompositions in the SDSS u, i, and z bands. We discuss the methodology used to derive stellar masses from these data via fitting to broadband spectral energy distributions (SEDs), and show that the typical statistical uncertainty on total, bulge, and disk stellar mass is ∼0.15 dex. Despite relatively small formal uncertainties, we argue that SED modeling assumptions, including the choice of synthesis model, extinction law, initial mass function, and details of stellar evolution likely contribute an additional 60% systematic uncertainty in any mass estimate based on broadband SED fitting. We discuss several approaches for identifying genuine bulge+disk systems based on both their statistical likelihood and an analysis of their one-dimensional surface-brightness profiles, and include these metrics in the catalogs. Estimates of the total, bulge and disk stellar masses for both normal and dust-free models and their uncertainties are made publicly available here.

The NGVS-IR project (Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey–Infrared) is a contiguous, near-infrared imaging survey of the Virgo cluster of galaxies. It complements the optical wide-field survey of Virgo (NGVS). In its current state, NGVS-IR consists of K_s-band imaging of 4 deg² centered on M87 and J- and K_s-band imaging of ∼16 deg² covering the region between M49 and M87. We present observations of the central 4 deg² centered on Virgo's core region. The data were acquired with WIRCam on the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope, and the total integration time was 41 hr distributed over 34 contiguous tiles. A survey-specific strategy was designed to account for extended galaxies while still measuring accurate sky brightness within the survey area. The average 5σ limiting magnitude is K_s = 24.4 AB mag, and the 50% completeness limit is K_s = 23.75 AB mag for point-source detections, when using only images with better than 07 seeing (median seeing 054). Star clusters are marginally resolved in these image stacks, and Virgo galaxies with $\mu _{K_s} \simeq 24.4$ AB mag arcsec⁻² are detected. Combining the K_s data with optical and ultraviolet data, we build the uiK_s color–color diagram, which allows a very clean color-based selection of globular clusters in Virgo. This diagnostic plot will provide reliable globular cluster candidates for spectroscopic follow-up campaigns, needed to continue the exploration of Virgo's photometric and kinematic substructures, and will help the design of future searches for globular clusters in extragalactic systems. We show that the new uiK_s diagram displays significantly clearer substructure in the distribution of stars, globular clusters, and galaxies than the gzK_s diagram—the NGVS + NGVS-IR equivalent of the BzK diagram that is widely used in cosmological surveys. Equipped with this powerful new tool, future NGVS-IR investigations based on the uiK_s diagram will address the mapping and analysis of extended structures and compact stellar systems in and around Virgo galaxies.

The Lick Planet Search program began in 1987 when the first spectrum of τ Ceti was taken with an iodine cell and the Hamilton Spectrograph. Upgrades to the instrument improved the Doppler precision from about 10 m s⁻¹ in 1992 to about 3 m s⁻¹ in 1995. The project detected dozens of exoplanets with orbital periods ranging from a few days to several years. The Lick survey identified the first planet in an eccentric orbit (70 Virginis) and the first multi-planet system around a normal main sequence star (Upsilon Andromedae). These discoveries advanced our understanding of planet formation and orbital migration. Data from this project helped to quantify a correlation between host star metallicity and the occurrence rate of gas giant planets. The program also served as a test bed for innovation with testing of a tip-tilt system at the Coudé focus and fiber scrambler designs to stabilize illumination of the spectrometer optics. The Lick Planet Search with the Hamilton Spectrograph effectively ended when a heater malfunction compromised the integrity of the iodine cell. Here, we present more than 14,000 velocities for 386 stars that were surveyed between 1987 and 2011.

We present BV photometry for 54 variables in the metal-rich inner halo globular cluster NGC 6723. With the discovery of new RR Lyrae variables (RRLs), we obtain 〈P_ab〉 = 0.541 ± 0.066 and 〈P_c〉 = 0.292 ± 0.030 day, n(c)/n(ab+c) = 0.167, and 〈V(RR)〉_int = 15.459 ± 0.055. We carry out the Fourier decomposition analysis and obtain [Fe/H]_ZW = −1.23 ± 0.11 and E(B − V) = 0.063 ± 0.015 for NGC 6723. By calibrating the zero point from the recent absolute trigonometric parallax measurements for RR Lyr, we derive the revised M_V(RR)-[Fe/H] relation, providing M_V(RR) = 0.52 at [Fe/H] = −1.50 and (m − M)₀ = 18.54 for the Large Magellanic Cloud, in excellent agreement with others. We obtain (m − M)₀ = 14.65 ± 0.05, equivalent to a distance from the Sun of 8.47 ± 0.17 kpc, for NGC 6723 from various distance measurement methods using RRLs. We find that RRLs in NGC 6723 do not have magnitude dependency on the radial distance because there is not a severe degree of apparent crowdedness. Finally, we show that a relation exists between the degree of photometric contamination and the apparent crowdedness of the central region of globular cluster systems, $|\bar{\mu } - \mu _r| \propto \log \rho _c d^2$. The use of this relation can play a significant role in mitigating the discrepancy in establishing a cosmic distance scale using RRLs in resolved stellar populations in near-field cosmology.

We have assembled absorption systems by visually identifying C iv λλ1548, 1551 absorption doublets in the quasar spectra of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey one by one. This paper is the first of the series of work. In this paper, we focus on quasars with relatively low redshifts and high signal-to-noise ratio spectra, and hence we limit our analysis to quasars with z_em ⩽ 2.4 and to doublets with W_rλ1548 ⩾ 0.2 Å. Out of the more than 87,000 quasars in Data Release 9, we limit our search to 10,121 quasars that have the appropriate redshifts and spectra with high enough signal-to-noise ratios to identify narrow C iv absorption lines. Among them, 5442 quasars are detected to have at least one C iv λλ1548, 1551 absorption doublet. We obtain a catalog containing 8368 C iv λλ1548, 1551 absorption systems, whose redshifts are within z_abs = 1.4544–2.2805. In this catalog, about 33.7% absorbers have 0.2 Å ⩽W_rλ1548 < 0.5 Å, about 45.9% absorbers have 0.5 Å ⩽W_rλ1548 < 1.0 Å, about 19.2% absorbers have 1.0 Å ⩽W_rλ1548 < 2.0 Å, and about 1.2% absorbers have W_rλ1548 ⩾ 2.0 Å.

We present the 1SXPS (Swift-XRT point source) catalog of 151,524 X-ray point sources detected by the Swift-XRT in 8 yr of operation. The catalog covers 1905 deg² distributed approximately uniformly on the sky. We analyze the data in two ways. First we consider all observations individually, for which we have a typical sensitivity of ∼3 × 10⁻¹³ erg cm⁻² s⁻¹ (0.3–10 keV). Then we co-add all data covering the same location on the sky: these images have a typical sensitivity of ∼9 × 10⁻¹⁴ erg cm⁻² s⁻¹ (0.3–10 keV). Our sky coverage is nearly 2.5 times that of 3XMM-DR4, although the catalog is a factor of ∼1.5 less sensitive. The median position error is 55 (90% confidence), including systematics. Our source detection method improves on that used in previous X-ray Telescope (XRT) catalogs and we report >68, 000 new X-ray sources. The goals and observing strategy of the Swift satellite allow us to probe source variability on multiple timescales, and we find ∼30, 000 variable objects in our catalog. For every source we give positions, fluxes, time series (in four energy bands and two hardness ratios), estimates of the spectral properties, spectra and spectral fits for the brightest sources, and variability probabilities in multiple energy bands and timescales.

Key cosmological applications require the three-dimensional (3D) galaxy distribution on the entire celestial sphere. These include measuring the gravitational pull on the Local Group, estimating the large-scale bulk flow, and testing the Copernican principle. However, the largest all-sky redshift surveys—the 2MASS Redshift Survey and IRAS Point Source Catalog Redshift Survey—have median redshifts of only z = 0.03 and sample the very local universe. All-sky galaxy catalogs exist that reach much deeper—SuperCOSMOS in the optical, the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) in the near-IR, and WISE in the mid-IR—but these lack complete redshift information. At present, the only rapid way toward larger 3D catalogs covering the whole sky is through photometric redshift techniques. In this paper we present the 2MASS Photometric Redshift catalog (2MPZ) containing one million galaxies, constructed by cross-matching Two Micron All Sky Survey Extended Source Catalog (2MASS XSC), WISE, and SuperCOSMOS all-sky samples and employing the artificial neural network approach (the ANNz algorithm), trained on such redshift surveys as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, 6dFGS, and 2dFGRS. The derived photometric redshifts have errors nearly independent of distance, with an all-sky accuracy of σ_z = 0.015 and a very small percentage of outliers. In this way, we obtain redshift estimates with a typical precision of 12% for all the 2MASS XSC galaxies that lack spectroscopy. In addition, we have made an early effort toward probing the entire 3D sky beyond 2MASS, by pairing up WISE with SuperCOSMOS and training the ANNz on GAMA redshift data currently reaching to z_med ∼ 0.2. This has yielded photo-z accuracies comparable to those in the 2MPZ. These all-sky photo-z catalogs, with a median z ∼ 0.1 for the 2MPZ, and significantly deeper for future WISE-based samples, will be the largest and most complete of their kind for the foreseeable future.

We present an extensive literature compilation of age, metallicity, and chemical abundance pattern information for the 41 Galactic globular clusters (GGCs) studied by Schiavon et al. Our compilation constitutes a notable improvement over previous similar work, particularly in terms of chemical abundances. Its primary purpose is to enable detailed evaluations of and refinements to stellar population synthesis models designed to recover the above information for unresolved stellar systems based on their integrated spectra. However, since the Schiavon sample spans a wide range of the known GGC parameter space, our compilation may also benefit investigations related to a variety of astrophysical endeavors, such as the early formation of the Milky Way, the chemical evolution of GGCs, and stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis. For instance, we confirm with our compiled data that the GGC system has a bimodal metallicity distribution and is uniformly enhanced in the α elements. When paired with the ages of our clusters, we find evidence that supports a scenario whereby the Milky Way obtained its globular clusters through two channels: in situ formation and accretion of satellite galaxies. The distributions of C, N, O, and Na abundances and the dispersions thereof per cluster corroborate the known fact that all GGCs studied so far with respect to multiple stellar populations have been found to harbor them. Finally, using data on individual stars, we verify that stellar atmospheres become progressively polluted by CN(O)-processed material after they leave the main sequence. We also uncover evidence which suggests that the α elements Mg and Ca may originate from more than one nucleosynthetic production site. We estimate that our compilation incorporates all relevant analyses from the literature up to mid-2012. As an aid to investigators in the fields named above, we provide detailed electronic tables of the data upon which our work is based at http://www.astro.queensu.ca/people/Stephane_Courteau/roediger2013/index.html.

In the 20+ years of Doppler observations of stars, scientists have uncovered a diverse population of extrasolar multi-planet systems. A common technique for characterizing the orbital elements of these planets is the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), using a Keplerian model with random walk proposals and paired with the Metropolis–Hastings algorithm. For approximately a couple of dozen planetary systems with Doppler observations, there are strong planet–planet interactions due to the system being in or near a mean-motion resonance (MMR). An N-body model is often required to accurately describe these systems. Further computational difficulties arise from exploring a high-dimensional parameter space (∼7 × number of planets) that can have complex parameter correlations, particularly for systems near a MMR. To surmount these challenges, we introduce a differential evolution MCMC (DEMCMC) algorithm applied to radial velocity data while incorporating self-consistent N-body integrations. Our Radial velocity Using N-body DEMCMC (RUN DMC) algorithm improves upon the random walk proposal distribution of the traditional MCMC by using an ensemble of Markov chains to adaptively improve the proposal distribution. RUN DMC can sample more efficiently from high-dimensional parameter spaces that have strong correlations between model parameters. We describe the methodology behind the algorithm, along with results of tests for accuracy and performance. We find that most algorithm parameters have a modest effect on the rate of convergence. However, the size of the ensemble can have a strong effect on performance. We show that the optimal choice depends on the number of planets in a system, as well as the computer architecture used and the resulting extent of parallelization. While the exact choices of optimal algorithm parameters will inevitably vary due to the details of individual planetary systems (e.g., number of planets, number of observations, orbital periods, and signal-to-noise of each planet), we offer recommendations for choosing the DEMCMC algorithm's algorithmic parameters that result in excellent performance for a wide variety of planetary systems.

Extreme UV (EUV) spectra from the Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED)/Solar EUV Experiment are used to infer photoionization rates in the inner heliosphere. Relating these rates to various proxies describing the solar EUV radiation, we construct a multi-linear model which allows us to extrapolate ionization rates back to periods when no routine measurements of the solar EUV spectral distribution have been available. Such information is important, e.g., for comparing conditions of the interstellar neutral particles in the inner heliosphere at the time of Ulysses/GAS observations with conditions during the more recent observations of the Interstellar Boundary Explorer. From a period of 11 yr when detailed spectra from both TIMED and three proxies—Solar and Heliospheric Observatory/CELIAS/SEM-rates, F10.7 radio flux, and Mg ii core-to-wing indices—have been available, we conclude that the simple model is able to reproduce the photoionization rates with an uncertainty of typically 5%.

The accuracy of measuring the basic parameters of neutron stars is limited in particular by uncertainties in the chemical composition of their atmospheres. For example, the atmospheres of thermally emitting neutron stars in supernova remnants might have exotic chemical compositions, and for one of them, the neutron star in Cas A, a pure carbon atmosphere has recently been suggested by Ho & Heinke. To test this composition for other similar sources, a publicly available detailed grid of the carbon model atmosphere spectra is needed. We have computed this grid using the standard local thermodynamic equilibrium approximation and assuming that the magnetic field does not exceed 10⁸ G. The opacities and pressure ionization effects are calculated using the Opacity Project approach. We describe the properties of our models and investigate the impact of the adopted assumptions and approximations on the emergent spectra.

We introduce the Assembling Galaxies Of Resolved Anatomy (AGORA) project, a comprehensive numerical study of well-resolved galaxies within the ΛCDM cosmology. Cosmological hydrodynamic simulations with force resolutions of ∼100 proper pc or better will be run with a variety of code platforms to follow the hierarchical growth, star formation history, morphological transformation, and the cycle of baryons in and out of eight galaxies with halo masses M_vir ≃ 10¹⁰, 10¹¹, 10¹², and 10¹³ M_☉ at z = 0 and two different ("violent" and "quiescent") assembly histories. The numerical techniques and implementations used in this project include the smoothed particle hydrodynamics codes Gadget and Gasoline, and the adaptive mesh refinement codes Art, Enzo, and Ramses. The codes share common initial conditions and common astrophysics packages including UV background, metal-dependent radiative cooling, metal and energy yields of supernovae, and stellar initial mass function. These are described in detail in the present paper. Subgrid star formation and feedback prescriptions will be tuned to provide a realistic interstellar and circumgalactic medium using a non-cosmological disk galaxy simulation. Cosmological runs will be systematically compared with each other using a common analysis toolkit and validated against observations to verify that the solutions are robust—i.e., that the astrophysical assumptions are responsible for any success, rather than artifacts of particular implementations. The goals of the AGORA project are, broadly speaking, to raise the realism and predictive power of galaxy simulations and the understanding of the feedback processes that regulate galaxy "metabolism." The initial conditions for the AGORA galaxies as well as simulation outputs at various epochs will be made publicly available to the community. The proof-of-concept dark-matter-only test of the formation of a galactic halo with a z = 0 mass of M_vir ≃ 1.7 × 10¹¹ M_☉ by nine different versions of the participating codes is also presented to validate the infrastructure of the project.