HST this week: 107



This week on HST


HST Programs: April 17 - April 23, 2017

Program Number Principal Investigator Program Title
14079 Matthew James Hayes, Stockholm University Unveiling the Dark Baryons II: the First Sample of OVI Emission Imaging
14096 Dan Coe, Space Telescope Science Institute - ESA RELICS: Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey
14114 Pieter van Dokkum, Yale University A Wide-Field WFC3 Imaging Survey in the COSMOS Field
14164 Ata Sarajedini, Florida Atlantic University Exploring the nature and synchronicity of early cluster formation in the Local Group
14182 Thomas H. Puzia, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile The Coma Cluster Core Project
14251 Amy E. Reines, National Optical Astronomy Observatory, AURA The Structures of Dwarf Galaxies Hosting Massive Black Holes
14594 Rich Bielby, Durham Univ. QSAGE: QSO Sightline And Galaxy Evolution
14597 Jay Farihi, University College London An Ultraviolet Spectral Legacy of Polluted White Dwarfs
14606 Brooke Devlin Simmons, University of California - San Diego Secular Black Hole Growth and Feedback in Merger-Free Galaxies
14611 Or Graur, Harvard University Going gently into the night: constraining Type Ia supernova nucleosynthesis using late-time photometry
14618 Michael Shara, American Museum of Natural History Ultraviolet Flashers in M87: Rapidly Recurring Novae as SNIa Progenitors
14633 Kevin France, University of Colorado at Boulder A SNAP UV Spectroscopic Study of Star-Planet Interactions
14634 Denis C Grodent, Universite de Liege HST-Juno synergistic approach of Jupiter's magnetosphere and ultraviolet auroras
14636 Igor Dmitrievich Karachentsev, Russian Academy of Sciences, Special Astrophysical Obs. TRGB Distances to the Edge Between the Local Sheet and Virgo Infall: Last of the Low Hanging Fruit
14643 Pieter van Dokkum, Yale University Imaging of three Ultra Diffuse Galaxies with measured stellar kinematics
14649 Katherine Anne Alatalo, Carnegie Institution of Washington Opening a New Window into Galaxy Evolution Through the Lens of CO-detected Shocked Poststarburst Galaxies
14658 Eric W. Peng, Peking University Massive Star Clusters and the Origin of Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies
14677 Tim Schrabback, Universitat Bonn, Argelander Institute for Astronomy Probing the most distant high-mass galaxy clusters from SPT with HST weak lensing observations
14683 Jean-Claude Bouret, CNRS, Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille Before the Burst: The Properties of Rapidly Rotating, Massive Supergiants
14699 David Sobral, Lancaster University The hosts of the early ionized bubbles: the nature and diversity of the most luminous Lyman-alpha emitters at z~6-7
14704 Charlie Conroy, Harvard University A Year in the Whirlpool
14729 Rajib Ganguly, University of Michigan A New Twist in the Quasar Radio Dichotomy: The Case of the Missing Outflows
14746 Thomas Rauch, Eberhard Karls Universitat, Tubingen Stellar Laboratories: High-precision Atomic Physics with STIS
14758 Zach K. Berta-Thompson, University of Colorado at Boulder The Hydrogen Content of a Rocky Earth-Size Exoplanet
14762 Justyn Robert Maund, University of Sheffield A UV census of the sites of core-collapse supernovae
14772 Bart P. Wakker, University of Wisconsin - Madison Observing gas in Cosmic Web filaments to constrain simulations of cosmic structure formation
14779 Melissa Lynn Graham, University of Washington A NUV Imaging Survey for Circumstellar Material in Type Ia Supernovae
14797 Ian Crossfield, University of California - Santa Cruz Atmospheric Albedos, Alkalis, and Aerosols of Hot Jupiters
14811 Laurent Lamy, Observatoire de Paris - Section de Meudon The Grand Finale : probing the origin of Saturn s aurorae with HST observations simultaneous to Cassini polar measurements
14840 Andrea Bellini, Space Telescope Science Institute Schedule Gap Pilot
14848 Thomas R. Ayres, University of Colorado at Boulder Cracking the Conundrum of F Supergiant Coronae
14891 William B. Sparks, Space Telescope Science Institute Confirming the ice plumes of Europa
14894 Paul A. Wilson, CNRS, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris Observing the Beta Pic Hill sphere transit in the far-UV

Selected highlights

GO 14182: The Coma Cluster Core Project


Hubble image covering part of the central regions of the Coma cluster
The Coma cluster is the nearest rich galaxy cluster, lying at a distance of ~100 Mpc from the Milky Way. The cluster includes well over 1000 major galaxies, centred on two giant ellipticals, NGC 4874 and NGC 4889. Chandra observations show that the galaxies are embedded in very hot intracluster gas (see this site ). Cluster galaxies have also been surveyed at mid-infrared wavelengths by Spitzer, and in the ultraviolet by GALEX. Individual galaxies have been studied in the past using HST. In Cycle 15 the Advanced Camera for Surveys started a systematic imaging with ACS (with parallel observations with NICMOS) of the cluster core ( a 7x6 mosaic, covering approximately 400 sq. arcmin.), together with 40 fields at larger radii.That program was curtailed by the failure of ACS in January 27th. The present program builds on those observations, using Wide-Field Camera 3 to obtain complementary UV and IR data for the existing ACS images. ACS itself is being used in parallel to cover other regions with the cluster. Those observations will be capable of detecting dwarf galaxies with absolute magnitudes as faint as MB ~ -8, fainter than most of the Milky Way's dwarf spheroidal companions. Besides completing a detailed census of the low luminosity tail of the galaxian mass function, the observations will be used to probe colour gradients and internal chemical evolution.

GO 14704: A Year in the Whirlpool


The Whirlpool galaxy, M51
NGC 5194, the Whirlpool galaxy, is a grand design spiral galaxy with an interacting lower-mass companion, NGC 5195, lying at a distaince of ~7 Mpc from the Milky Way. Originally catalogued as the 51st obect in Charles Messier's list of non-comets, its spiral nature was first discerned by visual observations using the Earl of Rosse's Leviathan of Parsontown. With its clearly deefined spiral structure, M 51 is a prime target for star formation investigations. The present program aims to probe the star formation history by mapping the number and distribution of asymptotic giant branch long period variable (AGB LPV) stars. or miras. These LPV have periods ranging from ~150 days to more than 500 days, and there are well determined correlations between the periodicity and the mass (and hence age) of the individual stars. with such long periods, obervations need to be spaced over a correspondingly long time frame, and the present program schedules observations at 34 epochs over a full year.

GO 14677: Probing the most distant high-mass galaxy clusters from SPT with HST weak lensing observations


The South Pole Telescope at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station
The overwhelming majority of galaxies in the universe are found in clusters. As such, these systems offer an important means of tracing the development of large-scale structure through the history of the universe. Galaxy clusters can be identified at moderate redshifts by searching for signatures of the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect: high energy electrons in the hot intercluster medium interact with radiation from the cosmic microwave background to distort the microwave spectrum. The South Pole Telescope is a 10-metre microwave/millimetre telescope located at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station on the Antarctiva high plateau, close to the geographic South Pole. That telescope has been used to search for galaxy clusters. As intense mass concentrations, these systems are highly efficient gravitational lenses, capable of concentrating and magnifying light from background high redshift galaxies to allow detailed spectropic investigations of star formation in the early universe. Hubble imaging has already revealed lensed arcs and detailed sub-structure within a handful of rich clusters. At the same time, the lensing characteristics provide information on the mass distribution within the lensing cluster. The present program targets nine high-mass galaxy clusters that represent the strinbgest SZ detections. The Wide Field Camera on the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field Camera 3 near-IR camera will be used to image those systems to measure the shapes of background galaxies. Those observations will be combined with Chandra X-ray data and Spitzer infrared data with the goal using weak lensing to characterise the cluster mass distributions.

GO 14894: Observing the Beta Pic Hill sphere transit in the far-UV


Gemini Planet Imager observations of Beta Pic b; the linked image shows the extended disk
It is now well established that planet formation occurs within circumstellar disks. The past decade has seen the identification of many examples of such phenomena around young stars, notably through infrared observations by the Spitzer space telescope and ground-based data from millimetre-wave interferometers.One of the most prominent is the edge-on debris disk disk around beta Pictoris, an A star at a distance of ~ 19 parsecs and an estimated age of ~10-20 million years. Originally discovered in the early 1980s, the system has been since targeted extensively from both the ground and space, including coronagraphic observations with STIS and direct imaging with WFPC2, ACS and WFC3 on HST. High angular-resolution ground-based imaging in late 2008 with the NACO instrument on the ESO Very Large Telescope resulted in the detection of a planet in that system. The planet's orbit lies close to the star, inside the inner edge of the debris disk with a semi-major axis of ~9 AU and slightly inclined to the plane of the disk. Spectroscopic observations indicate that the exoplanet is a gas giant, with a radius approximately 1.65 times that of Jupiter and a mass ~sevenfold greater. The orbital period is only 21.6 years, and since its discovery Beta Pic b has circled behind the parent star and been recovered by high-resolution imagers such as Sphere and the Gemini Planet Finder. The planet will shortly start its pasage across the face of the parent star. It remains unclear whether the planet itself will transit, but there is a strong expectation that the Hill sphere - the spatial volume where the planet's gravity dominates, and where residual material from its formation may be trapped - will transit. The present program aims to test this hypothesis by using the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph to search for variable absorption features in the specrtum of the parent star.

Past weeks:
page by Neill Reid, updated 2 /1/2017
These pages are produced and updated on a best effort basis. Consequently, there may be periods when significant lags develop. we apologise in advance for any inconvenience to the reader.

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