This week on HST

HST Programs: December 26, 2011 - January 1, 2012

Selected highlights

GO 12072: A Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury

M31: the Andromeda spiral galaxy

M31, the Andromeda galaxy, is the nearest large spiral system to the Milky Way (d ~ 700 kpc), and, with the Milky Way, dominates the Local Group. The two galaxies are relatively similar, with M31 likely the larger system; thus, Andromeda provides the best opportunity for a comparative assessment of the structural properties of the Milky Way. Moreover, while M31 is (obviously) more distant, our external vantage point can provide crucial global information that complements the detailed data that we can acquire on individual members of the stellar populations of the Milky Way. With the advent on the ACS and, within the last 2 years, WFC3 on HST, it has become possible to resolve main sequence late-F and G dwarfs, permitting observations that extend to sub-solar masses in M31's halo and disk. Initially, most attention focused on the extended halo of M31 (eg the Cycle 15 program GO 10816 ), with deep imaging within a limited number of fields revealing the complex metallicity structure within that population. With the initiation of the present Multi-Cycle Treasury program, attention switches to the M31 disk. "PHAT" will conduct a multi-waveband survey of approximately one third of disk and bulge, focusing on the north-east quadrant. Observations will extend over the next three cycles, and will provide a thorough census of upper main-sequence stars and star forming regions, matching the stellar distribution against the dust and gas distribution.

The dwarf galaxy, Leo A, as imaged by the Subaru telescope

M31 and the Milky Way are the two largest members of the Local Group, with masses of ~4 x 1011 and ~1011 MSun, respectively. As such, they dominate the system dynamics; M33 and the LMC are the next largest systems, with masses lower by a factor of 10. Radial velocity measurement show that M31 and the Milky Way are converging at a velocity of ~125 km/sec; however, interpreting that result in cosmological terms requires a better understanding of the total mass of the Local Group. Using a variety of techniques, current estimates range over a factor of 5, from ~1.3 x 1012 MSun to ~5.6 x 1012 MSun. T%he present program aims to apply stronger constraints to this fundamental value by measuring proper motions for four dwarf galaxies that lie towards the edge of the local group: Cetus, Leo A, Tucana and the Sagittarius Dwarf Irregular. First epoch observations with the ACS/WFC are already available in the archive for these four systems. The present program will build on those, obtaining new I-band (F814W) observations with the ACS/WFC, while simulateously using the WFC3-UVIS camera in parallel to obtain deep B (F475W) and I (F814W) colour-magnitude data for these low-mass systems.

GO 10842 A Cepheid Distance to the Coma Cluster

NGC 4911, from DSS scans of POSS II IIIaJ plate material

Cepheid variable stars have been the prime extragalactic distance indicator since Henrietta Leavitt's discovery of the period-luminosity relation described by Cepheids in the Small Magellanic Cloud. It was Hubble's identification of Cepheids in NGC 6822 that finally established that at least some nebulae were island universes. Cepheids and the extragalactic distance scale figure largely in HST's history, notably through the Hubble Constant Program, one of the initial Key Projects. Hubble has accumulated WFPC2 and NICMOS observations of Cepheids in 31 galaxies. All of those galaxies lie within 25 Mpc; thus, both the Key Project's derivation of H0 = 72 +/- 8 km/sec/Mpc and the competing value, H0 = 56 +/- 7 km/sec/Mpc, (an offset of 1.5 sigma), rely on secondary indicators to take measurements to the far-field Hubble flow. The aim of the present project is to extnd covrage to Cepheids within the Coma cluster. The program had its genesis in a Cycle 15, which was designed to use the high sensitivity and high resolution of the Adnaced camera for Surveys to search for Cepheids in two spiral galaxies in the cluster, NGC 4911 and NGC 4921. If Coma lies at a distance of 100 Mpc ( (m-M)=35.0), then long-period Cepheids (P~50 days) have mean apparent magnitudes of V~29 - challenging observations even for ACS. Unfortunately, the ACS failure in January 2007 left the original program barely 40% complete. However, the initial dataset was sufficient to identify 50 long-period Cepheids candidates in NGC 8921. The present program aims to build on those incomplete results by using the UVIS channel on Wide-field Camera 3 to obtain cadenced observations in the F350LP and F606W filters, and determine periods for verified variable stars..

GO 12550: Physics and Chemistry of Condensate Clouds across the L/T Transition - A SNAP Spectral Mapping Survey

Brown dwarfs are likely to have complex atmospheric structures that resemble Jupiter

Brown dwarfs are failed stars - objects that form like stars, by gravitational collapse within giant molecular clouds, but which have insufficient mass to raise the central temperature above 107 K, and which therefore are unable to ignite hydrogran fusion and maintain a long-lived central energy source. As such, these objects reach a maximum surface temperature of perhaps 3,000K some tens of millions of years after their formation, and subsequently cool and fade into oblivion. As they cool, they move through spectral types M, L and T, with the oldest brown dwarfs now likely to have temperatures close to 300K and emergent spectra characterised by water and ammonia bands, the putative signatures of the spectral class Y. As these dwarfs cool from L to T (~1500 to ~1200K), the atmospheres undergo significant changes, with heavier elements condensing to form dust. That dust can form clouds, perhaps giving the dwarf's surface a banded appearance, similar to Jupiter. or leading to the generation of localised cloud features. Since the rotation periods for these obejcts are usually a matter of a few hours, the appearance and disappearance of asymmetric features might lead to periodic photometric or spectroscopic variability, and at least photometric variability has been detected for a handful of ultracool dwarfs. The clouds themselves may appear and disappear over relatively short timescales, leading to longer-term photometric variations at particular wavelengths. A Cycle 18 program (GO 12314) focuses on a handful of brown dwarfs near the L/T transition, using the WFC3 grism to obtain multi-orbit, high-accuracy monitoring of their spectral behaviour. That program succeeded in recovering significant variability, with periods from 5-10 hours. The present program builds on those results by extending coverage to a much larger sample of late-L/early-T dwarfs. As a SNAP prorgam, each will be observed for only ~40 minutes. insufficient to determine periodicities, but, given the high precision of HST, sufficient to identify new candidates and gain some insight into the frequenciy of the phenomenon.