The LF program was initiated at the Warner and Swasey Observatory by S.W. McCuskey for studies of the variations of the stellar luminosity function (LF) in the Milky Way. The program originally presented in a paper of July 1947 (1947ApJ...106....1M), proposes an observation of selected Milky Way regions with the 24-36-inch Schmidt telescope of the Warner and Swasey Observatory down to mpg=12.25; the observations result in spectral classification, photographic and photored magnitudes of a large number of stars. The original catalogues contain annotated charts of the studied regions, and tables with the spectral types and magnitudes. The catalog included here is a compilation of 13 publications of this program corresponding to the fields LF1 to LF9 (detailed references in the "References" section below). It was prepared by Brian Skiff (Lowell Observatory) over the period 1994-2003, and includes the original data (with the exception of the "red index" colors too noisy to be of use), with cross-identifications to modern catalogues like the GSC (I/254) that give accurate J2000 positions; he also added extensive notes.
The Lick AGN Monitoring Project targeted 13 nearby Seyfert 1 galaxies with the intent of measuring the masses of their central black holes using reverberation mapping. The sample includes 12 galaxies selected to have black holes with masses roughly in the range 10^6^-10^7^M_{sun}_, as well as the well-studied active galactic nucleus (AGN) NGC 5548. In conjunction with a spectroscopic monitoring campaign, we obtained broadband B and V images on most nights from 2008 February through 2008 May. The imaging observations were carried out by four telescopes: the 0.76m Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope, the 2m Multicolor Active Galactic Nuclei Monitoring telescope, the Palomar 60 inch (1.5m) telescope, and the 0.80m Tenagra II telescope. Having well-sampled light curves over the course of a few months is useful for obtaining the broad-line reverberation lag and black hole mass, and also allows us to examine the characteristics of the continuum variability. In this paper, we discuss the observational methods and the photometric measurements, and present the AGN continuum light curves. We measure various variability characteristics of each of the light curves. We do not detect any evidence for a time lag between the B- and V-band variations, and we do not find significant color variations for the AGNs in our sample.
The Massive Compact Halo Object (MACHO) Project Data Archive
Short Name:
MACHO
Date:
18 Jun 2019 20:15:24
Publisher:
ivo://anusf.anu.au
Description:
The MACHO Project was a collaboration between scientists at the Mt. Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories, the Center for Particle Astrophysics at the Santa Barbara, San Diego, and Berkeley campuses of the University of California, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Our primary aim was to test the hypothesis that a significant fraction of the dark matter in the halo of the Milky Way is made up of objects like brown dwarfs or planets: these objects have come to be known as MACHOs, for MAssive Compact Halo Objects. The signature of these objects is the occasional amplification of the light from extragalactic stars by the gravitational lens effect. The amplification can be large, but events are extremely rare: it was necessary to monitor photometrically several million stars for a period of 10 years in order to obtain a useful detection rate. For this purpose we built a two channel system that employed eight 2048*2048 CCDs, mounted on the 50 inch telescope at Mt. Stromlo. The MACHO project data archive consists of approximately 127,000 two-colour images of fields collected between 1992 and 2003 covering the large and small Magellanic clouds and the galactic bulge and two-colour light-curves for approximately 18 million stars in the LMC and galactic bulge.
The Massive Compact Halo Object (MACHO) Project Data Archive
Short Name:
MACHO
Date:
23 Jul 2015 02:55:45
Publisher:
ivo://nci.org.au
Description:
The MACHO Project was a collaboration between scientists at the Mt. Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories, the Center for Particle Astrophysics at the Santa Barbara, San Diego, and Berkeley campuses of the University of California, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Our primary aim was to test the hypothesis that a significant fraction of the dark matter in the halo of the Milky Way is made up of objects like brown dwarfs or planets: these objects have come to be known as MACHOs, for MAssive Compact Halo Objects. The signature of these objects is the occasional amplification of the light from extragalactic stars by the gravitational lens effect. The amplification can be large, but events are extremely rare: it was necessary to monitor photometrically several million stars for a period of 10 years in order to obtain a useful detection rate. For this purpose we built a two channel system that employed eight 2048*2048 CCDs, mounted on the 50 inch telescope at Mt. Stromlo. The MACHO project data archive consists of approximately 127,000 two-colour images of fields collected between 1992 and 2003 covering the large and small Magellanic clouds and the galactic bulge and two-colour light-curves for approximately 18 million stars in the LMC and galactic bulge.
We present a catalog of the 26 currently known magnetars and magnetar candidates. We tabulate astrometric and timing data for all catalog sources, as well as their observed radiative properties, particularly the spectral parameters of the quiescent X-ray emission. We show histograms of the spatial and timing properties of the magnetars, comparing them with the known pulsar population, and we investigate and plot possible correlations between their timing, X-ray, and multiwavelength properties. We find the scale height of magnetars to be in the range of 20-31pc, assuming they are exponentially distributed. This range is smaller than that measured for OB stars, providing evidence that magnetars are born from the most massive O stars. From the same fits, we find that the Sun lies ~13-22pc above the Galactic plane, consistent with previous measurements. We confirm previously identified correlations between quiescent X-ray luminosity, L_X_, and magnetic field, B, as well as X-ray spectral power-law indexes, {Gamma} and B, and show evidence for an excluded region in a plot of L_X_ versus {Gamma}. We also present an updated kT versus characteristic age plot, showing that magnetars and high-B radio pulsars are hotter than lower-B neutron stars of similar age. Finally, we observe a striking difference between magnetars detected in the hard X-ray and radio bands; there is a clear correlation between the hard and soft X-ray fluxes, whereas the radio-detected magnetars all have low, soft X-ray flux, suggesting, if anything, that the two bands are anticorrelated.
We present a catalog of hard X-ray sources detected in the first 105-months of observations with the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) coded-mask imager on board the Swift observatory. The 105-month Swift-BAT survey is a uniform hard X-ray all-sky survey with a sensitivity of 8.40x10^-12^erg/s/cm^2^ over 90% of the sky and 7.24x10^-12^erg/s/cm^2^ over 50% of the sky in the 14-195keV band. The Swift-BAT 105-month catalog provides 1632 (422 new detections) hard X-ray sources in the 14-195 keV band above the 4.8{sigma} significance level. Adding to the previously known hard X-ray sources, 34% (144/422) of the new detections are identified as Seyfert active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in nearby galaxies (z<0.2). The majority of the remaining identified sources are X-ray binaries (7%, 31) and blazars/BL Lac objects (10%, 43). As part of this new edition of the Swift-BAT catalog, we release eight-channel spectra and monthly sampled light curves for each object in the online journal and at the Swift-BAT 105-month website.
We have conducted a ground-based BVI synoptic survey of the Local Group galaxy M33 which covers most of its disk and spans a period of 7 years. The survey targets luminous, long-period variables such as Cepheids and Miras and combines images from the DIRECT project and follow-up observations at the WIYN 3.5m telescope. This paper, the first in a series, presents the discovery and characterization of 564 Cepheid variables, which represent a factor of two increase over previous samples with calibrated point-spread function (PSF) photometry. We also describe the details of the observations and analysis of the survey data, including the use of archival Hubble Space Telescope images to characterize biases in our ground-based PSF photometry.
The M33 Synoptic Stellar Survey. II. Mira variables
Short Name:
J/AJ/153/170
Date:
21 Oct 2021
Publisher:
CDS
Description:
We present the discovery of 1847 Mira candidates in the Local Group galaxy M33 using a novel semi-parametric periodogram technique coupled with a random forest classifier. The algorithms were applied to ~2.4*10^5^ I-band light curves previously obtained by the M33 Synoptic Stellar Survey. We derive preliminary period-luminosity relations at optical, near-infrared, and mid-infrared wavelengths and compare them to the corresponding relations in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
We present a 9deg^2^ map of the North American and Pelican Nebulae regions obtained in all four Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) channels with the Spitzer Space Telescope. The resulting photometry is merged with that at JHKs from Two Micron All Sky Survey and a more spatially limited BVI survey from previous ground-based work. We use a mixture of color-color diagrams to select a minimally contaminated set of more than 1600 objects that we claim are young stellar objects (YSOs) associated with the star-forming region. Because our selection technique uses infrared excess as a requirement, our sample is strongly biased against inclusion of Class III YSOs. The distribution of IRAC spectral slopes for our YSOs indicates that most of these objects are Class II, with a peak toward steeper spectral slopes but a substantial contribution from a tail of Flat spectrum and Class I type objects. By studying the small fraction of the sample that is optically visible, we infer a typical age of a few Myr for the low-mass population. The young stars are clustered, with about a third of them located in eight clusters that are located within or near the LDN 935 dark cloud. Half of the YSOs are located in regions with surface densities higher than 1000YSOs/deg^2^. The Class I objects are more clustered than the Class II stars.
We present a catalog of the 1525 most optically luminous galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey with r-band luminosity L_r_>8L* and redshift z<0.3, including 84 super spirals, 15 super lenticulars, 14 super post-merger galaxies, and 1400 giant ellipticals. With mass in stars of 10^11.3^-10^12^M_{sun}_, super spirals and lenticulars are the most massive disk galaxies currently known. The specific star formation rates of super spirals place them on or below the star-forming main sequence. They must have formed stars at a high rate throughout their history in order to grow their massive, gigantic stellar disks and maintain their blue u-r integrated colors. Their disks are red on the inside and blue on the outside, consistent with inside-out growth. They tend to have small bulge-to-total (B/T) r-band luminosity ratios, characteristic of disk building via minor mergers and cold accretion. A large percentage of super disk galaxies (41%) have double nuclei, double disks, or other signatures of ongoing mergers. Most (72%) are found in moderate- to low-density environments, while the rest are found at the outskirts of clusters. It is likely that super spirals survive in these environments because they continue to accrete cold gas and experience only minor mergers at late times, by virtue of their enormous masses and angular momenta. We suggest that super post-mergers are the product of super spiral major mergers and may be the precursors of some giant elliptical galaxies found in low-density environments.
