The primary goal of the VST Photometric H{alpha} Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+) is to collect single-epoch ugri broad-band and Ha narrow-band photometry across the southern Galactic Plane within the latitude range -5{deg}<b<+5{deg} down to point source magnitudes of ~21 or better. The VPHAS+ footprint also includes the inner Galactic Bulge, defined as a 20x20 deg^2^ box around the Galactic Centre: this assures optical coverage of the full VVV footprint. For all massive OBA stars this survey is deep enough to explore all but the most heavily obscured locations of the southern Plane, reaching to >4kpc from the Sun. These data will increase the number of known southern emission line stars by up to an order of magnitude, yielding much better statistics on important short-lived types of object. The wide-area uniform photometry obtained will also facilitate stellar population studies, capable of tracing structure over much of the southern Plane. VPHAS+ will trawl the star-formation history of the Galaxy as seen in stellar remnants of all types.
This paper presents the COP (CFHT optical PDCS; CFHT: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, PDCS: Palomar Distant Cluster Survey) survey data. We describe our photometric and spectroscopic observations with the multiobject spectrograph (MOS) at the CFHT. A comparison of the photometry from the PDCS catalogs and from the new images we have obtained at the CFHT shows that the different magnitude systems can be cross-calibrated. After identification between the PDCS catalogs and our new images, we built catalogs with redshift, coordinates, and V_PDCS_, I_PDCS_, and R_COP_ magnitudes. We have classified the galaxies along the lines of sight into field and structure galaxies using a gap technique from Katgert et al. In total we have observed 18 significant structures along the 10 lines of sight.
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has created a knowledge gap between the Northern and the Southern hemispheres, which is very marked for white dwarfs: Only ~15 per cent of the known white dwarfs are south of the equator. Here, we make use of the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) ATLAS survey, one of the first surveys obtaining deep, optical, multiband photometry over a large area of the southern skies, to remedy this situation. Applying the colour and proper-motion selection developed in our previous work on SDSS to the most recent internal data release (2016 April 25) of VST ATLAS, we created a catalogue of ~4200 moderately bright (g<=19), high-confidence southern white dwarf candidates, which can be followed up individually with both the large array of southern telescopes or in bulk with ESO's forthcoming multi-object spectrograph 4MOST.
Knowledge of the stellar content near the Sun is important for a broad range of topics ranging from the search for planets to the study of Milky Way (MW) structure. The most powerful method for identifying potentially nearby stars is proper motion (PM) surveys. All old optical surveys avoid, or are at least substantially incomplete, near the Galactic plane. The depth and breadth of the 'VISTA Variables in Via Lactea' (VVV) near-IR survey significantly improves this situation. Taking advantage of the VVV survey data base, we have measured PMs in the densest regions of the MW bulge and southern plane in order to complete the census of nearby objects. We have developed a custom PM pipeline based on VVV catalogues from the Cambridge Astronomy Survey Unit, by comparing the first epoch of JHKs with the multi-epoch Ks bands acquired later. Taking advantage of the large time baseline between the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) and the VVV observations, we also obtained 2MASS-VVV PMs. We present a near-IR PM catalogue for the whole area of the VVV survey, which includes 3003 moving stellar sources. All of these have been visually inspected and are real PM objects. Our catalogue is in very good agreement with the PM data supplied in IR catalogues outside the densest zone of the MW. The majority of the PM objects in our catalogue are nearby M-dwarfs, as expected. This new data base allows us to identify 57 common PM binary candidates, among which are two new systems within 30 pcof the Sun.
We search for microlensing events in the zero-latitude area of the Galactic Bulge using the VVV Survey near-IR data. We have discovered a total sample of N=630 events within an area covering 20.68deg^2^ between the years 2010 and 2015. In this paper, we describe the search and present the data for the final sample, including near-IR magnitudes, colors, and proper motions, as well as the standard microlensing parameters. We use the near-IR color-magnitude and color-color diagrams to select NRC=290 events with red-clump sources to analyze the extinction properties of the sample in the central region of the Galactic plane. The timescale distribution and its dependence in the longitude axis is presented. The mean timescale decreases as we approach the Galactic minor axis (b=0{deg}). Finally, we give examples of special microlensing events, such as binaries, short-timescale events, and events with a strong parallax effect.
The Vista Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) near-infrared (IR) variability survey explores some of the most complicated regions of the Milky Way bulge and disk in terms of high extinction and high crowding. We add a new wavelength dimension to the optical information available at the American Association of Variable Star Observers International Variable Star Index (VSX-AAVSO) catalogue to test the VVV survey near-IR photometry to better characterise these objects. We cross-match the VVV and the VSX-AAVSO catalogues along with Gaia Data Release 2 photometry and parallax. We present a catalogue that includes accurate individual coordinates, near-IR magnitudes (ZYJHKs), extinctions AKs, and distances based on Gaia parallaxes. We also show the near-IR CMDs and spatial distributions for the different VSX types of variable stars, including important distance indicators, such as RR Lyrae, Cepheids and Miras. By analysing the photometric flags in our catalogue, we found that around 20% of the stars with measured and verified variability are flagged as "non-stellar source", even when they are outside of the saturation and/or noise regimes. Additionally, we pair-matched our sample with the VIVA catalogue and found that more than half of our sources are missing from the VVV variability list, mostly due to low signal-to-noise observations or photometric problems with a small percentage due to failures in the selection process. Conclusions. Our results suggest that the current knowledge about variability in the Galaxy is biased to the nearby, low extincted stars. The present catalogue also provides the groundwork to characterise the results of future large variability surveys like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time in the heavily crowded and reddened regions of the Galactic plane, as wellas follow-up campaigns to characterise specific types of variables. The analysis of the miss-flagged stars can be used to improve the photometric classification of the VVV data allowing to expand the amount of data considered useful for science purposes. Besides, we provide an additional list of stars missed by the VIVA procedures for which the observations are actually good and they were missed due to some failure in the VIVA selection process.
VVV Survey RR Lyr stars in Southern Galactic plane
Short Name:
J/AJ/153/179
Date:
21 Oct 2021
Publisher:
CDS
Description:
Deep near-IR images from the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) Survey were used to search for RR Lyrae stars in the Southern Galactic plane. A sizable sample of 404 RR Lyrae of type ab stars was identified across a thin slice of the fourth Galactic quadrant (295{deg}<l<350{deg}, -2.24{deg}<b<-1.05{deg}). The sample's distance distribution exhibits a maximum density that occurs at the bulge tangent point, which implies that this primarily Oosterhoff type I population of RRab stars does not trace the bar delineated by their red clump counterparts. The bulge RR Lyrae population does not extend beyond l~340{deg}, and the sample's spatial distribution presents evidence of density enhancements and substructure that warrants further investigation. Indeed, the sample may be employed to evaluate Galactic evolution models, and is particularly lucrative since half of the discovered RR Lyrae are within reach of Gaia astrometric observations.
A large sample of white dwarfs is selected by both proper motion and colours from the Pan-STARRS 1 3{pi} Steradian Survey Processing Version 2 to construct the white dwarf luminosity functions of the discs and halo in the solar neighbourhood. Four-parameter astrometric solutions were recomputed from the epoch data. The generalized maximum volume method is then used to calculate the density of the populations. After removal of crowded areas near the Galactic plane and centre, the final sky area used by this work is 7.833sr, which is 83 per cent of the 3{pi} sky and 62 per cent of the whole sky. By dividing the sky using Voronoi tessellation, photometric and astrometric uncertainties are recomputed at each step of the integration to improve the accuracy of the maximum volume. Interstellar reddening is considered throughout the work. We find a disc-to-halo white dwarf ratio of about 100.
The Wisconsin H-Alpha Mapper has been designed to produce a survey of H-Alpha emission from the interstellar medium (ISM) over the entire northern sky. The instrument combines a 0.6 meter telescope and a dual-etalon 15cm Fabry-Perot spectrometer. In the primary spectral mode, an exposure captures a 200km/s spectral region with 8-12km/s velocity resolution from a one-degree beam on the sky. With a large-aperture design and modern CCD technology, WHAM can detect Galactic emission as faint as 0.05 Rayleighs in a 30 second exposure. For gas at 10000K, this observed intensity corresponds to an emission measure of about 0.1cm^-6^pc, more than 10 million times fainter than the Orion Nebula.
We present the first results from a minute cadence survey of a 3deg^2^ field obtained with the Dark Energy Camera. We imaged part of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey area over eight half-nights. We use the stacked images to identify 111 high proper motion white dwarf candidates with g<=24.5mag and search for eclipse-like events and other sources of variability. We find a new g=20.64mag pulsating ZZ Ceti star with pulsation periods of 11-13min. However, we do not find any transiting planetary companions in the habitable zone of our target white dwarfs. Given the probability of eclipses of 1 per cent and our observing window from the ground, the non-detection of such companions in this first field is not surprising. Minute cadence DECam observations of additional fields will provide stringent constraints on the frequency of planets in the white dwarf habitable zone.