- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/696/870
- Title:
- Catalina Real-time Transient Survey (CRTS)
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/696/870
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We report on the results from the first six months of the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey (CRTS). In order to search for optical transients (OTs) with timescales of minutes to years, the CRTS analyses data from the Catalina Sky Survey which repeatedly covers 26000 of square degrees on the sky. The CRTS provides a public stream of transients that are bright enough to be followed up using small telescopes. Since the beginning of the survey, all CRTS transients have been made available to astronomers around the world in real time using HTML tables, RSS feeds, and VOEvents. As part of our public outreach program, the detections are now also available in Keyhole Markup Language through Google Sky. The initial discoveries include over 350 unique OTs rising more than 2mag from past measurements. Sixty two of these are classified as supernovae (SNe), based on light curves, prior deep imaging and spectroscopic data. Seventy seven are due to cataclysmic variables (CVs; only 13 previously known), while an additional 100 transients were too infrequently sampled to distinguish between faint CVs and SNe. The remaining OTs include active galactic nucleus, blazars, high-proper-motions stars, highly variable stars (such as UV Ceti stars), and transients of an unknown nature.
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Search Results
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/213/9
- Title:
- Catalina Surveys periodic variable stars
- Short Name:
- J/ApJS/213/9
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We present ~47000 periodic variables found during the analysis of 5.4 million variable star candidates within a 20000deg^2^ region covered by the Catalina Surveys Data Release-1 (CSDR1). Combining these variables with type ab RR Lyrae from our previous work, we produce an online catalog containing periods, amplitudes, and classifications for ~61000 periodic variables. By cross-matching these variables with those from prior surveys, we find that >90% of the ~8000 known periodic variables in the survey region are recovered. For these sources, we find excellent agreement between our catalog and prior values of luminosity, period, and amplitude as well as classification. We investigate the rate of confusion between objects classified as contact binaries and type c RR Lyrae (RRc's) based on periods, colors, amplitudes, metallicities, radial velocities, and surface gravities. We find that no more than a few percent of the variables in these classes are misidentified. By deriving distances for this clean sample of ~5500 RRc's, we trace the path of the Sagittarius tidal streams within the Galactic halo. Selecting 146 outer-halo RRc's with SDSS radial velocities, we confirm the presence of a coherent halo structure that is inconsistent with current N-body simulations of the Sagittarius tidal stream. We also find numerous long-period variables that are very likely associated within the Sagittarius tidal stream system. Based on the examination of 31000 contact binary light curves we find evidence for two subgroups exhibiting irregular light curves. One subgroup presents significant variations in mean brightness that are likely due to chromospheric activity. The other subgroup shows stable modulations over more than a thousand days and thereby provides evidence that the O'Connell effect is not due to stellar spots.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/92/219
- Title:
- Catalog of recent supernovae
- Short Name:
- J/ApJS/92/219
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- A listing is given of all supernovae discovered between 1989 January 1 and 1993 April 1. The data show no evidence for a significant dependence of the discovery probability of supernovae on parent galaxy inclination to the line of sight. If no inclination corrections need to be applied, then the supernova rates in spirals are only about half as large as previously believed. The mean linear separation of supernovae of type II (SNe II) from the center of their parent galaxy increases with increasing distance (Shaw effect). The Shaw effect appears less evident, or absent, for (more luminous) supernovae of type Ia. The data are consistent with, but do not prove, the hypothesis that (presumably reddened) SNe II are more likely to be discovered in the red than in the blue. Due to intensive surveillance, most bright SNe Ia tend to be found before maximum, whereas the majority of faint SNe Ia are discovered after maximum light.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/699/539
- Title:
- Cepheids in SN-Ia host galaxies
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/699/539
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- This is the second of two papers reporting results from a program to determine the Hubble constant to ~5% precision from a refurbished distance ladder based on extensive use of differential measurements. Here we report observations of 240 Cepheid variables obtained with the Near-Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) Camera 2 through the F160W filter on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The Cepheids are distributed across six recent hosts of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) and the "maser galaxy" NGC 4258, allowing us to directly calibrate the peak luminosities of the SNe Ia from the precise, geometric distance measurements provided by the masers. New features of our measurement include the use of the same instrument for all Cepheid measurements across the distance ladder and homogeneity of the Cepheid periods and metallicities, thus necessitating only a differential measurement of Cepheid fluxes and reducing the largest systematic uncertainties in the determination of the fiducial SN Ia luminosity. In addition, the NICMOS measurements reduce the effects of differential extinction in the host galaxies by a factor of ~5 over past optical data. Combined with a greatly expanded set of 240 SNe Ia at z<0.1 which define their magnitude-redshift relation, we find H_0_=74.2+/-3.6km/s/Mpc, a 4.8% uncertainty including both statistical and systematic errors.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/882/120
- Title:
- CfA, CSP, BSP and LOSS spec. & phot. of SNe Ia
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/882/120
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- SNe Ia play key roles in revealing the accelerating expansion of the universe, but our knowledge of their progenitors is still very limited. Here we report the discovery of a rigid dichotomy in circumstellar (CS) environments around two subclasses of SNe Ia as defined by their distinct photospheric velocities. For the SNe Ia with high photospheric velocities (HVs), we found a significant excess flux in blue light 60-100 days past maximum, while this phenomenon is absent for SNe with normal photospheric velocity. This blue excess can be attributed to light echoes by circumstellar dust located at a distance of about (1-2)x10^17^cm from the HV subclass. Moreover, we also found that the HV SNe Ia show systematically evolving NaI absorption line by performing a systematic search of variable NaI absorption lines in spectra of all SNe Ia, whereas this evolution is rarely seen in normal ones. The evolving NaI absorption can be modeled in terms of photoionization model, with the location of the gas clouds at a distance of about 2x10^17^cm, in striking agreement with the location of CS dust inferred from B-band light-curve excess. These observations show clearly that the progenitors of HV subclass are likely from single-degenerate progenitor system (i.e., symbiotic binary), while the NV subclass may arise from double-degenerate system.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/220/9
- Title:
- CfAIR2: NIR light curves of Type Ia SNe
- Short Name:
- J/ApJS/220/9
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- CfAIR2 is a large, homogeneously reduced set of near-infrared (NIR) light curves (LCs) for Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) obtained with the 1.3m Peters Automated InfraRed Imaging TELescope. This data set includes 4637 measurements of 94 SNe Ia and 4 additional SNe Iax observed from 2005 to 2011 at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory on Mount Hopkins, Arizona. CfAIR2 includes JHKs photometric measurements for 88 normal and 6 spectroscopically peculiar SN Ia in the nearby universe, with a median redshift of z~0.021 for the normal SN Ia. CfAIR2 data span the range from -13 days to +127 days from B-band maximum. More than half of the LCs begin before the time of maximum, and the coverage typically contains ~13-18 epochs of observation, depending on the filter. We present extensive tests that verify the fidelity of the CfAIR2 data pipeline, including comparison to the excellent data of the Carnegie Supernova Project. CfAIR2 contributes to a firm local anchor for SN cosmology studies in the NIR. Because SN Ia are more nearly standard candles in the NIR and are less vulnerable to the vexing problems of extinction by dust, CfAIR2 will help the SN cosmology community develop more precise and accurate extragalactic distance probes to improve our knowledge of cosmological parameters, including dark energy and its potential time variation.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/200/12
- Title:
- CfA4: light curves for 94 type Ia SNe
- Short Name:
- J/ApJS/200/12
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We present multi-band optical photometry of 94 spectroscopically confirmed Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) in the redshift range 0.0055-0.073, obtained between 2006 and 2011. There are a total of 5522 light-curve points. We show that our natural-system SN photometry has a precision of <~0.03mag in BVr'i', <~0.06mag in u', and <~0.07mag in U for points brighter than 17.5mag and estimate that it has a systematic uncertainty of 0.014, 0.010, 0.012, 0.014, 0.046, and 0.073mag in BVr'i'u'U, respectively. Comparisons of our standard-system photometry with published SN Ia light curves and comparison stars reveal mean agreement across samples in the range of ~0.00-0.03mag. The current sample of low-z SNe Ia is now sufficiently large to remove most of the statistical sampling error from the dark-energy error budget.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/879/112
- Title:
- Chandra multi-epoch study of the spiral gal. NGC7331
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/879/112
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- X-ray point sources in galaxies are dominated by X-ray binaries (XRBs) that are variables or transients, and whether their variability would alter the X-ray luminosity functions (XLFs) is still in debate. Here we report on NGC 7331 as an example to test this with seven Chandra observations. Their detection limit is 7x10^37^erg/s in the energy range 0.3-8.0keV by assuming a power-law (PL) spectral model with a photon index of 1.7. We detected 55 X-ray sources. Thirteen of them are variables, of which three are transients, and some of the sources possess a bimodal feature in their luminosity-hardness ratio, which is often observed among XRBs. Nine more ultraluminous X-ray sources are found in comparison with previous studies and eight are likely to be low-mass or high-mass XRBs. Twenty-one optical counterpart candidates are found based on the Hubble Space Telescope images, but we cannot rule out the possibility of positional coincidence. The spectral analysis of SN 2014C shows a trend of increasing soft photons and decreasing hydrogen column densities as its outer shell expands. We fit the seven incompleteness-corrected XLFs to both a PL and a PL with an exponential cut-off (PLC) model using the Bayesian method, which is used for the first time in XLF fitting. The hierarchical PLC model can describe the XLF of NGC 7331 best with a slope of ~0.5 and a luminosity cut-off around 8x10^38^erg/s. This study proves that multi-epoch observations decrease the deviation due to the variable luminous sources in XLFs.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/580/A131
- Title:
- Circumstellar-interacting supernovae
- Short Name:
- J/A+A/580/A131
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- Some circumstellar-interacting (CSI) supernovae (SNe) are produced by the explosions of massive stars that have lost mass shortly before the SN explosion. There is evidence that the precursors of some SNe IIn were luminous blue variable (LBV) stars. For a small number of CSI SNe, outbursts have been observed before the SN explosion. Eruptive events of massive stars are named SN impostors (SN IMs) and whether they herald a forthcoming SN or not is still unclear. The large variety of observational properties of CSI SNe suggests the existence of other progenitors, such as red supergiant (RSG) stars with superwinds. Furthermore, the role of metallicity in the mass loss of CSI SN progenitors is still largely unexplored. Our goal is to gain insight into the nature of the progenitor stars of CSI SNe by studying their environments, in particular the metallicity at their locations. We obtain metallicity measurements at the location of 60 transients (including SNe IIn, SNe Ibn, and SN IMs) via emission-line diagnostic on optical spectra obtained at the Nordic Optical Telescope and through public archives. Metallicity values from the literature complement our sample. We compare the metallicity distributions among the different CSI SN subtypes, and to those of other core-collapse SN types. We also search for possible correlations between metallicity and CSI SN observational properties. We find that SN IMs tend to occur in environments with lower metallicity than those of SNe IIn. Among SNe IIn, SN IIn-L(1998S-like) SNe show higher metallicities, similar to those of SNe IIL/P, whereas long-lasting SNe IIn (1988Z-like) show lower metallicities, similar to those of SN IMs. The metallicity distribution of SNe IIn can be reproduced by combining the metallicity distributions of SN IMs (which may be produced by major outbursts of massive stars like LBVs) and SNe IIP (produced by RSGs). The same applies to the distributions of the normalized cumulative rank (NCR) values, which quantifies the SN association to HII regions. For SNe IIn, we find larger mass-loss rates and higher CSM velocities at higher metallicities. The luminosity increment in the optical bands during SN IM outbursts tend to be larger at higher metallicity, whereas the SN IM quiescent optical luminosities tend to be lower. The difference in metallicity between SNe IIn and SN IMs indicates that LBVs are only one of the progenitor channels for SNe IIn, with 1988Z-like and 1998S-like SNe possibly arising from LBVs and RSGs, respectively. Finally, even though line-driven winds likely do not primarily drive the late mass-loss of CSI SN progenitors, metallicity has some impact on the observational properties of these transients.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/MNRAS/414/1617
- Title:
- Classification of type Ia supernovae
- Short Name:
- J/MNRAS/414/1617
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) spectra are compared using the coefficient of the largest wavelet scale in their decomposition. Two distinct subgroups have been identified, and their occurrence is discussed with regards to the use of SNe Ia as cosmological probes. Apart from the group of normal SNe, another trend characterized by intrinsically redder colours consists of many different SN events, which exhibit diverse properties. These include the interaction with the circumstellar material and the existence of a specific shell structure in or surrounding the SN ejecta or super-Chandrasekhar mass progenitors. Compared with normal objects, these SNe may violate the standard width-luminosity correction. This could influence the cosmological results if these are all calibrated equally, as their fraction among SNe Ia is not negligible when performing precision cosmology. Using the largest wavelet scale coefficient in combination with long-baseline B-I colours, we show how to disentangle the SN intrinsic colour from the part that corresponds to the reddening as a result of dust extinction in the host galaxy in the SALT2 colour parameter c.
