- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/784/170
- Title:
- The SEGUE K giant survey. II. Distances of 6036 stars
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/784/170
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We present an online catalog of distance determinations for 6036 K giants, most of which are members of the Milky Way's stellar halo. Their medium-resolution spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey/Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration are used to derive metallicities and rough gravity estimates, along with radial velocities. Distance moduli are derived from a comparison of each star's apparent magnitude with the absolute magnitude of empirically calibrated color-luminosity fiducials, at the observed (g-r)_0_ color and spectroscopic [Fe/H]. We employ a probabilistic approach that makes it straightforward to properly propagate the errors in metallicities, magnitudes, and colors into distance uncertainties. We also fold in prior information about the giant-branch luminosity function and the different metallicity distributions of the SEGUE K-giant targeting sub-categories. We show that the metallicity prior plays a small role in the distance estimates, but that neglecting the luminosity prior could lead to a systematic distance modulus bias of up to 0.25mag, compared to the case of using the luminosity prior. We find a median distance precision of 16%, with distance estimates most precise for the least metal-poor stars near the tip of the red giant branch. The precision and accuracy of our distance estimates are validated with observations of globular and open clusters. The stars in our catalog are up to 125kpc from the Galactic center, with 283 stars beyond 50kpc, forming the largest available spectroscopic sample of distant tracers in the Galactic halo.
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- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/816/80
- Title:
- The SEGUE K giant survey. III. Galactic halo
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/816/80
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We statistically quantify the amount of substructure in the Milky Way stellar halo using a sample of 4568 halo K giant stars at Galactocentric distances ranging over 5-125kpc. These stars have been selected photometrically and confirmed spectroscopically as K giants from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey's Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration (SEGUE) project. Using a position-velocity clustering estimator (the 4distance) and a model of a smooth stellar halo, we quantify the amount of substructure in the halo, divided by distance and metallicity. Overall, we find that the halo as a whole is highly structured. We also confirm earlier work using blue horizontal branch (BHB) stars which showed that there is an increasing amount of substructure with increasing Galactocentric radius, and additionally find that the amount of substructure in the halo increases with increasing metallicity. Comparing to resampled BHB stars, we find that K giants and BHBs have similar amounts of substructure over equivalent ranges of Galactocentric radius. Using a friends-of-friends algorithm to identify members of individual groups, we find that a large fraction (~33%) of grouped stars are associated with Sgr, and identify stars belonging to other halo star streams: the Orphan Stream, the Cetus Polar Stream, and others, including previously unknown substructures. A large fraction of sample K giants (more than 50%) are not grouped into any substructure. We find also that the Sgr stream strongly dominates groups in the outer halo for all except the most metal-poor stars, and suggest that this is the source of the increase of substructure with Galactocentric radius and metallicity.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/187/64
- Title:
- The simultaneous optical-to-X-ray SED of AGNs
- Short Name:
- J/ApJS/187/64
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We report Swift observations of a sample of 92 bright soft X-ray selected active galactic nuclei (AGNs). This sample represents the largest number of AGNs observed to study the spectral energy distribution (SED) of AGNs with simultaneous optical/UV and X-ray data. The principal motivation of this study is to understand the SEDs of AGNs in the optical/UV to X-ray regime and to provide bolometric corrections which are important in determining the Eddington ratio L/L_Edd_. In particular, we rigorously explore the dependence of the UV-EUV contribution to the bolometric correction on the assumed EUV spectral shape. We find strong correlations of the spectral slopes {alpha}_X_ and {alpha}_UV_ with L/L_Edd_.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/705/1099
- Title:
- The Sloan Lens ACS (SLACS) Survey. IX.
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/705/1099
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We present the current photometric data set for the Sloan Lens ACS (SLACS) Survey, including Hubble Space Telescope (HST) photometry from Advanced Camera for Surveys, WFPC2, and NICMOS. These data have enabled the confirmation of an additional 15 grade "A" (certain) lens systems, bringing the number of SLACS grade "A" lenses to 85; including 13 grade "B" (likely) systems, SLACS has identified nearly 100 lenses and lens candidates. Approximately 80% of the grade "A" systems have elliptical morphologies while ~10% show spiral structure; the remaining lenses have lenticular morphologies. Spectroscopic redshifts for the lens and source are available for every system, making SLACS the largest homogeneous data set of galaxy-scale lenses to date. The ensemble properties of the SLACS lens galaxies, e.g., stellar masses and projected ellipticities, appear to be indistinguishable from other SDSS galaxies with similar stellar velocity dispersions. This further supports that SLACS lenses are representative of the overall population of massive early-type galaxies with M_*_>~10^11^M_{sun}_, and are therefore an ideal data set to investigate the kpc-scale distribution of luminous and dark matter in galaxies out to z~0.5.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/690/670
- Title:
- The Sloan lens ACS Survey. VIII.
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/690/670
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We study the relation between the internal structure of early-type galaxies and their environment using 70 strong gravitational lenses from the SLACS Survey. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) database is used to determine two measures of overdensity of galaxies around each lens - the projected number density of galaxies inside the tenth nearest neighbor ({Sigma}_10_) and within a cone of radius 1h^-1^Mpc (D1).
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/156/49
- Title:
- The solar neighborhood. XLIII. New nearby stars
- Short Name:
- J/AJ/156/49
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We have conducted a novel search of most of the southern sky for nearby red dwarfs having low proper motions, with specific emphasis on those with {mu}<0.18"/yr, the lower cutoff of Luyten's classic proper-motion catalog. We used a tightly constrained search of the SuperCOSMOS database and a suite of photometric distance relations for photographic BRI and 2MASS JHK_s_ magnitudes to estimate distances to more than 14 million red dwarf candidates. Here we discuss 29 stars in 26 systems estimated to be within 25 pc, all of which have {mu}<0.18"/yr, that we have investigated using milliarcsecond astrometry, VRI photometry, and low-resolution spectroscopy. In total, we present the first parallaxes of 20 star systems, 9 of which are within 25 pc. We have additionally identified 14 young M dwarfs, of which 3 are new members of the nearby young moving groups, and 72 new giants, including two new carbon stars. We also present the entire catalog of 1215 sources we have identified by this means.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/154/191
- Title:
- The solar neighborhood. XLII. New nearby subdwarfs
- Short Name:
- J/AJ/154/191
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- Parallaxes, proper motions, and optical photometry are presented for 51 systems consisting of 37 cool subdwarf and 14 additional high proper motion systems. Thirty-seven systems have parallaxes reported for the first time, 15 of which have proper motions of at least 1"/yr. The sample includes 22 newly identified cool subdwarfs within 100 pc, of which three are within 25 pc, and an additional five subdwarfs from 100 to 160 pc. Two systems-LSR 1610-0040 AB and LHS 440 AB-are close binaries exhibiting clear astrometric perturbations that will ultimately provide important masses for cool subdwarfs. We use the accurate parallaxes and proper motions provided here, combined with additional data from our program and others, to determine that effectively all nearby stars with tangential velocities greater than 200 km/s are subdwarfs. We compare a sample of 167 confirmed cool subdwarfs to nearby main sequence dwarfs and Pleiades members on an observational Hertzsprung-Russell diagram using M_V_ versus (V-K_s_) to map trends of age and metallicity. We find that subdwarfs are clearly separated for spectral types K5-M5, indicating that the low metallicities of subdwarfs set them apart in the H-R diagram for (V-K_s_)=3-6. We then apply the tangential velocity cutoff and the subdwarf region of the H-R diagram to stars with parallaxes from Gaia Data Release 1 and the MEarth Project to identify a total of 29 new nearby subdwarf candidates that fall clearly below the main sequence.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/155/265
- Title:
- The solar neighborhood. XLIV. RECONS discoveries
- Short Name:
- J/AJ/155/265
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We describe the 44 systems discovered to be within 10 pc of the Sun by the RECONS team, primarily via the long-term astrometry program at the CTIO/SMARTS 0.9 m that began in 1999. The systems-including 41 with red dwarf primaries, 2 white dwarfs, and 1 brown dwarf-have trigonometric parallaxes greater than 100 mas, with errors of 0.4-2.4 mas in all but one case. We provide updated astrometric, photometric (VRIJHK magnitudes), spectral type, and multiplicity information here. Among these are 14 systems that are new entries to the 10 pc sample, including the first parallaxes for 9 systems and new values for 5 systems that had previous parallaxes with errors greater than 10 mas or values placing them beyond 10 pc. We also provide new data for 22 systems known to lie within 10 pc and 9 systems reported to be closer than that horizon but for which new parallaxes place them further away, bringing the total to 75 systems. The 44 systems added by RECONS comprise one of every 7 systems known within 10 pc. We illustrate the evolution of the 10 pc sample from the 191 systems known when the final Yale Parallax Catalog was published in 1995 to the 317 systems known today. Even so close to the Sun, additional discoveries of white, red, and brown dwarfs are possible, both as primaries and secondaries, although we estimate that at least 90% of the stellar systems closer than 10 pc have now been identified.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/161/172
- Title:
- The Solar Neighborhood. XLVII. Mdwarfs with STIS
- Short Name:
- J/AJ/161/172
- Date:
- 18 Jan 2022
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We use HST/STIS optical spectroscopy of 10 M-dwarfs in five closely separated binary systems to test models of M-dwarf structure and evolution. Individual dynamical masses ranging from 0.083 to 0.405M{sun} for all stars are known from previous work. We first derive temperature, radius, luminosity, surface gravity, and metallicity by fitting the BT-Settl atmospheric models. We verify that our methodology agrees with empirical results from long-baseline optical interferometry for stars of similar spectral types. We then test whether or not evolutionary models can predict those quantities given the stars' known dynamical masses and the conditions of coevality and equal metallicity within each binary system. We apply this test to five different evolutionary model sets: the Dartmouth models, the MESA/MIST models, the models of Baraffe et al., the PARSEC models, and the YaPSI models. We find marginal agreement between evolutionary model predictions and observations, with few cases where the models respect the condition of coevality in a self-consistent manner. We discuss the pros and cons of each family of models and compare their predictive power.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/160/215
- Title:
- The solar neighborhood.XLVI. New M dwarf binaries
- Short Name:
- J/AJ/160/215
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We use 20yr of astrometric data from the REsearch Consortium On Nearby Stars (RECONS) program on the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory/SMARTS 0.9m telescope to provide new insight into multiple star systems in the solar neighborhood. We provide new and updated parallaxes for 210 systems and derive nine high-quality astrometric orbits with periods of 2.49-16.63yr. Using a total of 542 systems parallaxes from RECONS, we compare systems within 25pc to Gaia DR2 to define criteria for selecting unresolved astrometric multiples from the DR2 results. We find that three out of four unresolved multistar red dwarf systems within 25pc in DR2 have parallax_error >=0.32mas, astrometric_gof_al>=56, astrometric_excess-noise_sig>=108.0, ruwe>=2.0, and parallaxes more than ~10% different from the long-term RECONS results. These criteria have broad applications to any work targeting nearby stars, from studies seeking binary systems to efforts targeting single stars for planet searches.