The USNO-B1.0 is a catalog that presents positions, proper motions, magnitudes in various optical passbands, and star/galaxy estimators for 1,045,913,669 objects derived from 3,648,832,040 separate observations. The data were taken from scans of 7,435 Schmidt plates taken from various sky surveys during the last 50 years. The catalog is expected to be complete down to V=21; the estimated accuracies are 0.2arcsec for the positions at J2000, 0.3mag in up to 5 colors, and 85% accuracy for distinguishing stars from non-stellar objects.
The Carina Nebula is one of the most massive and active star-forming regions in our Galaxy and has been studied with numerous multiwavelength observations in the past five years. However, most of these studies were restricted to the inner parts (<=1 square-degree) of the nebula, and thus covered only a small fraction of the whole cloud complex. Our aim was to conduct a near-infrared survey that covers the full spatial extent (~5 square-degrees) of the Carina Nebula complex and is sensitive enough to detect all associated young stars through extinctions of up to A_V_~~6mag. We used the 4m Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) of ESO to map an area of 6.7 square-degrees around the Carina Nebula in the near-infrared J-, H-, Ks-bands.
This multi-band source catalogue provides aperture photometry in four near infrared broad-band filters: Y, J, H and Ks for almost 1.4 billion detections. The total coverage of the VHS survey is almost 17000 square degrees in the South Hemisphere.
The first Galactic and extragalactic results from the VISTA Hemisphere Survey (VHS) are presented. The aim of the VHS is to carry out a near-infrared survey which, when combined with other VISTA public surveys, will result in coverage of the whole southern celestial hemisphere (~20000deg^2^) to a depth 30 times fainter than the Two Micron All Sky Survey in at least two wavebands (J and Ks). The VHS vision includes a deep optical survey over the same area and this is now being realised with the VST surveys and the Dark Energy Survey, which has recently started. A summary of the survey progress is presented, with some follow-up results on low-mass stars and high-redshift quasars.
In the context of the VLA-COSMOS Deep project, additional VLA A array observations at 1.4GHz were obtained for the central degree of the COSMOS field and combined with the existing data from the VLA-COSMOS Large project. A newly constructed Deep mosaic with a resolution of 2.5" was used to search for sources down to 4{sigma} with 1{sigma}~12uJy/beam in the central 50'x50'. This new catalog is combined with the catalog from the Large project (obtained at 1.5"x1.4" resolution) to construct a new Joint catalog. All sources listed in the new Joint catalog have peak flux densities of >=5{sigma} at 1.5" and/or 2.5" resolution to account for the fact that a significant fraction of sources at these low flux levels are expected to be slightly resolved at 1.5" resolution. All properties listed in the Joint catalog, such as peak flux density, integrated flux density, and source size, are determined in the 2.5" resolution Deep image. In addition, the Joint catalog contains 43 newly identified multi-component sources.
The VLA Low-Frequency Sky Survey (VLSS) is a 74MHz (4m) continuum survey covering the entire sky north of -30{deg} declination. Using the VLA in B- and BnA-configurations, we will map the entire survey region at a resolution of 80" and with an average rms noise of 0.1 Jy/beam. For a detailed description of the survey and its scientific motivations, please see the original proposal to the NRAO skeptical review committee. The VLSS is being made as a service to the astronomical community, and the principal data products are being released to the public as soon as they are produced and verified. Details and access to the images can be found at http://lwa.nrl.navy.mil/VLSS/
We present the results of a survey of radio continuum sources near the Galactic plane using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). Our observations are designed to identify compact extragalactic sources of milliarcsecond size that can be used for parallax measurements in the Bar and Spiral Structure Legacy Survey. We selected point sources from the NVSS and CORNISH catalogs with flux densities above 30mJy and within 1.5{deg} of known maser targets. Of the 1529 sources observed, 199 were detected. For sources detected on three or more baselines, we determined accurate positions and evaluated their quality as potential calibrators. Most of the 1330 sources that were not detected with the VLBA are probably of extragalactic origin.
Due to inherent difficulties involved in observations and theoretical/numerical simulations of the formation of massive stars, an understanding of the early evolutionary phases of these objects remains elusive. In particular, observationally probing circumstellar material at distances <~100AU from the central star is exceedingly difficult, as such objects are rare (and thus, on average, far away) and typically deeply embedded. Long-baseline mid-infrared interferometry provides one way of obtaining the necessary spatial resolution at appropriate wavelengths to study this class of objects, however, interpreting such observations is often difficult due to sparse spatial-frequency coverage. We aim to characterize the distribution and composition of circumstellar material around young massive stars, and to investigate exactly which physical structures in these objects are probed by long-baseline mid-infrared interferometric observations. We use the two-telescope interferometric instrument MIDI of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer of the European Southern Observatory to observe a sample of 24 intermediate- and high-mass young stellar objects in the N band (8-13 micron). We had successful fringe detections for 20 objects, and present spectrally-resolved correlated fluxes and visibility levels for projected baselines of up to 128m. We fit the visibilities with geometric models to derive the sizes of the emitting regions, as well as the orientation and elongation of the circumstellar material. A subset of 14 objects show the 10 micron silicate feature in absorption in the total and correlated flux spectra. For 13 of these objects, we were able to fit the correlated flux spectra with a simple absorption model, allowing us to constrain the composition and absorptive properties of the circumstellar material.
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