Messier 8 (M8) is one of the brightest HII regions in the sky. We collected an extensive dataset comprising multiple submillimeter spectral lines from neutral and ionized carbon and from CO. Based on this dataset, we aim to understand the morphology of M8 and that of its associated photodissociation region (PDR) and to carry out a quantitative analysis of the physical conditions of these regions such as kinetic temperatures and volume densities. We used the Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) 12m, and the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimetrique (IRAM) 30m telescopes to perform a comprehensive imaging survey of the emission from the fine structure lines of CII and CI and multiple rotational transitions of carbon monoxide (CO) isotopologs within 1.3x1.3pc around the dominant Herschel 36 (Her 36) system, which is composed of at least three massive stars. To further explore the morphology of the region, we compared archival infrared, optical, and radio images of the nebula with our newly obtained fine structure line and CO data, and in particular with the velocity information these data provide. We performed a quantitative analysis, using both LTE and non-LTE methods to determine the abundances of some of the observed species, kinetic temperatures, and volume densities. Bright CO, CII and CI emission have been found toward the HII region and the PDR in M8. Our analysis places the bulk of the molecular material in the background of the nebulosity illuminated by the bright stellar systems Her 36 and 9 Sagitarii. Since the emission from all observed atomic and molecular tracers peaks at or close to the position of Her 36, we conclude that the star is still physically close to its natal dense cloud core and heats it. A veil of warm gas moves away from Her 36 toward the Sun and its associated dust contributes to the foreground extinction in the region. One of the most prominent star forming regions in M8, the Hourglass Nebula, is particularly bright due to cracks in this veil close to Her 36. We obtain H_2_ densities ranging from ~10^4^-10^6^cm^-3^ and kinetic temperatures of 100-150K in the bright PDR caused by Her 36 using radiative transfer modeling of various transitions of CO isotopologs.
While thousands of exoplanets have been confirmed, the known properties about individual discoveries remain sparse and depend on detection technique. To utilize more than a small section of the exoplanet data set, tools need to be developed to estimate missing values based on the known measurements. Here, we demonstrate the use of a neural network that models the density of planets in a space of six properties that is then used to impute a probability distribution for missing values. Our results focus on planetary mass, which neither the radial velocity nor transit techniques for planet identification can provide alone. The neural network can impute mass across the four orders of magnitude in the exoplanet archive, and return a distribution of masses for each planet that can inform us about trends in the underlying data set. The average error on this mass estimate from a radial velocity detection is a factor of 1.5 of the observed value, and 2.7 for a transit observation. The mass of Proxima Centauri b found by this method is 1.6_-0.36_^+0.46^M{Earth}, where the upper and lower bounds are derived from the root mean square deviation from the log mass probability distribution. The network can similarly impute the other potentially missing properties, and we use this to predict planet radius for radial velocity measurements, with an average error of a factor 1.4 of the observed value. The ability of neural networks to search for patterns in multidimensional data means that such techniques have the potential to greatly expand the use of the exoplanet catalog.
The "Data Inventory of Space-Based Celestial Observations Version 1.0" (DISCO) is a directory to data contained in sixteen catalogs dealing with observations from space. (Sounding rocket, solar, and planetary observations have been excluded.) The information extracted from the catalogs includes names of objects observed, 1950 equatorial coordinates, and the name of the catalog or instrument. A second file contains full references to the source catalogs and other pertinent information. The purpose of creating DISCO is (1) to unify astronomical observations from space, which are at present scattered and hard to locate, and then (2) to provide a machine-readable index to these observations, thus enabling easy access by computer. Such a directory will permit an astronomer to find out what objects have been observed from space, which spacecraft and instruments made the observations, and where to go to find the data themselves.