| Program Number | Principal Investigator | Program Title |
|---|---|---|
| 12062 | Sandra M. Faber, University of California - Santa Cruz | Galaxy Assembly and the Evolution of Structure over the First Third of Cosmic Time - III |
| 12189 | Walter Jaffe, Sterrewacht Leiden | Do stars ionise the filaments in NGC 1275 ? |
| 12192 | James T. Lauroesch, University of Louisville Research Foundation, Inc. | A SNAPSHOT Survey of Interstellar Absorption Lines |
| 12210 | Adam S. Bolton, University of Utah | SLACS for the Masses: Extending Strong Lensing to Lower Masses and Smaller Radii |
| 12211 | Nuria Calvet, University of Michigan | Are Weak-Line T Tauri Stars Still Accreting? |
| 12450 | C. S. Kochanek, The Ohio State University | Understanding A New Class of Mid?IR Transients |
| 12454 | Marc Postman, Space Telescope Science Institute | Through a Lens, Darkly - New Constraints on the Fundamental Components of the Cosmos |
| 12460 | Marc Postman, Space Telescope Science Institute | Through a Lens, Darkly - New Constraints on the Fundamental Components of the Cosmos |
| 12468 | Keith S. Noll, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center | How Fast Did Neptune Migrate? A Search for Cold Red Resonant Binaries |
| 12472 | Claus Leitherer, Space Telescope Science Institute | CCC - The Cosmic Carbon Conundrum |
| 12488 | Mattia Negrello, Open University | SNAPshot observations of gravitational lens systems discovered via wide-field Herschel imaging |
| 12500 | Sugata Kaviraj, Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine | High-resolution UV studies of SAURON galaxies with WFC3: constraining recent star formation and its drivers in local early-type galaxies |
| 12507 | Adam L. Kraus, University of Hawaii | The Formation and Fundamental Properties of Wide Planetary-Mass Companions |
| 12514 | Karl Stapelfeldt, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center | Imaging of Newly-identified Edge-on Protoplanetary Disks in Nearby Star-Forming Regions |
| 12517 | Francesco R. Ferraro, Universita di Bologna | COSMIC-LAB: Hunting for optical companions to binary MSPs in Globular Clusters |
| 12528 | Philip Massey, Lowell Observatory | Probing the Nature of LBVs in M31 and M33: Blasts from the Past |
| 12531 | Alex V. Filippenko, University of California - Berkeley | Tracking the Continuing Evolution of SN 1993J with COS and WFC3 |
| 12541 | David P. Bennett, University of Notre Dame | Measuring the Exoplanet Mass Function Beyond the Snow-Line |
| 12549 | Thomas M. Brown, Space Telescope Science Institute | The Formation History of the Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxies |
| 12560 | Roderick M. Johnstone, University of Cambridge | COS spectra of a Filament in NGC1275 - Testing the Particle Heating Mechanism |
| 12568 | Matthew A. Malkan, University of California - Los Angeles | WFC3 Infrared Spectroscopic Parallel Survey WISP: A Survey of Star Formation Across Cosmic Time |
| 12580 | Alvio Renzini, Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova | A 'Rosetta Stone' to Interpret the UV-HST Photometry of Multiple Stellar Populations in Globular Clusters |
| 12593 | Daniel B. Nestor, University of California - Los Angeles | A Survey of Atomic Hydrogen at 0.2 < z < 0.4 |
| 12598 | Howard E. Bond, Space Telescope Science Institute | HST Observations of Astrophysically Important Visual Binaries: Calibrating Sirius and Procyon |
| 12661 | Michael C. Liu, University of Hawaii | Dynamical Masses of the Coolest Brown Dwarfs |
| 12684 | Bruce McCollum, Jet Propulsion Laboratory | Mapping the Physical Characteristics of the Pre-Merger Ejecta from the First Confirmed Stellar Merger |
| 12726 | Jane R. Rigby, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center | Dissecting star formation and extinction in the brightest lensed galaxy |
| 12746 | Albert Kong, National Tsing Hua University | Close binary populations in metal-rich globular clusters |
| 12754 | Julia Comerford, University of Texas at Austin | Identifying Analogs of NGC 6240: Galaxies with Dual Supermassive Black Holes |
GO 12189: Do stars ionise the filaments in NGC 1275?
A composite image of NGC 1275 |
NGC 1275 is the central galaxy in the relatively nearby (~80 Mpc) Perseus galaxy cluster. It has long been known as an unusual system: it is an original Seyfert galaxy (from Carl Seyfert's 1943 paper); in 1954, Baade & Minkowski identified it as the optical counterpart of Perseus A, one of the first extragalactic radio sources (it is also 3C 84); and it is the brightest extraglactic X-ray source, originally detected by Uhuru in 1971. Optically, NGC 1275 has a complex structure, with dust lanes superimposed on an elliptical-like structure. Baade & Minkowski originally suggested that we might be witnessing a galaxy collision, and subsequent observations generally support this hypothesis. There is evidence for substantial star formation, as well as a central black hole that is probably responsible for the strong radio and X-ray emission. Most recently, narrowband images have revealed an extensive network of gaseous filaments that extend more than 100 kpc from the nucleus (see the Hubble Heritage site ). HST mapped those filaments using ACS in Cycle 18 (GO 10546), using several filters that sample both continuum radiation and line emission from H-alpha and O II. Those observations were coupled with a deep (1 Megasecond) Chandra image, probing the physical mechanisms present in the filamentary structure. The present program proposes to use COS to obtain deep far-UV spectra of five filaments. The relative line intensities will provide discrimination between a variety of ionising sources, including a normal stellar population, ultrahot stars and nonthermal radiation. |
SN 1999bw in NGC 3198, one of the transients targeted by this proposal |
Searching for transient objects, particularly supernovae, novae, cataclysmic variables and flare stars, has factored prominently in astronomy since at least the cataloguing of "guest stars" by the Chinese over 2000 years ago. For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, this field was largely the pursuit of amateur astronomers, coupling visual scans of the heavens with pesonal encyclopaedic knowledge of star patterns. However, the development of large-format, highly-sensitive digital imaging devices oevr the past decade or more has opened the subject for investment by professional observatories. Several transient surveys are currently underway, notably the Berekeley Automated Supernova Survey, using the Leischner Observatory in Lafeyette, california; the Palomar Transient Factory, using the 48-inch Oschin Schmidt of Palomar Sky Survey fame, now equipped with multiple CCDs; and Pan-STARRS, a dedicated survey telescope operating on Haleakala. Further down the road lies LSST, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, the highest ground-based priority from the Astro2010 Decadal Survey. In the meantime, the increasingly extensive catalogues generated by the ongoing surveys have turned up a variety of unusual transients. The present program focuses on one such example, a set of luminous spernova-like transients, detected in external galaxies, where pre-outburst observations show no evidence for a progenitor. The hypothesis is that these originate in highly obscured AGB stars. This program couples WFC3-IR J and H observations with Chandra and Spitzer measurements to probe the underlying nature of these sources. |
Epsilon Indi Bab, the binary brown dwarf companion of the nearby K dwarf |
Brown dwarfs are objects that form like stars, but lack sufficient mass to drive the central temperature above a few million degrees, and therefore never succeed in igniting core hydrogen fusion. Discovered almost 15 years ago, these objects initially have surface temperatures of ~3,500K, but cool rapidly and move through spcetral types M, L and T. Following their discovery, considerable theoretical attention has focused on the evolution of their intrinsic properties, particularly the details of the atmospheric changes in the evolution from type L to type T and beyond. This transition marks the emergence of methane as a dominant absorber at near-infrared wavelengths. Current models suggest this transition occurs at ~1400-1200K, and that the spectral changes are at least correlated with, and perhaps driven by, the distribution and properties of dust layers ("clouds"). The overall timescales associated with this process remains unclear. Mass is a crucial factor in mapping those changes, but mass is also the most difficult quantity to measure in a reliable fashion. The present proposal aims to tackle this issue through astrometry of ultracool binary systems, deriving the orbits and hence dynamical masses. The initial observations for this program were obtained in Cycle 17 with follow-up observations in Cycle 18; the present observations extend the baseline to over 3 years. |
GO 12726: Dissecting star formation and extinction in the brightest lensed galaxy
HST WFC3 composite images of the galaxy cluster RCS2 0327-1326 |
Gravitational lensing supplies a powerful method of tracing the mass distribution in galaxy clusters; at the same time, the amplified the light from background galaxies provides a means of probing the early stages of galaxy formation. The present observations focus on one of the brightest, and most spectacular, lensed galaxies yet discovered, The target cluster is RCS2 a032727-132623, one of many identified as part of the Red sequence Cluster Survey 2, a deep imaging survey covering over 1000 square degrees undertaken using MegaCam on the Canada-France Hawaii Telescope. RCS2 0327 lies at a redshift of z~0.564, and, in itself, is a relatively unremarkable galaxy cluster with prominent central elliptical galaxies. The most striking feature, however, is a 38-arcsecond long arc, which spans close to 90 degrees in extent towards the otuskirts of the system. This arc has been produced by gravitational lensing within the cluster potential well, and spectroscopy shows that the light originates in a background galaxy at a redshift of 1.70. The HST images have been coupled with a mass model of the galaxy cluster, and used to reconstruct the overall structure of the background galaxy, providing significantly higher sensitivity and angular resolution than is possible through direct imaging with either SHT org round-based AO systems. |