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At least 811 records · Page 45

Does the Ultraviolet Imager on Polar Detect Cometesimals?

The Earth's dayglow images obtained by the Ultraviolet Imager (UVI) on Polar should show darkened pixels if cometesimals bombard Earth. This darkening occurs because the UV emissions are absorbed by water between the altitude where the dayglow emissions are produced and the Polar spacecraft. We have asked: (1) Does the UVI detect darkened pixels? (2) If so, what are their characteristics? (3) What can the UVI say about the presence/absence of cometesimals? The UVI does see dark pixels, which tend to be clustered. But the calibration data obtained from the same instrument just before the instrument was launched show similarly darkened pixel clusters. After a though statistical analysis of these images, we conclude that the darkened pixels are instrumental artifacts. Therefore, the UVI does not provide evidence for the existence of the cometesimals.

Parks, G. K.↗

DEEP NEAR-IR OBSERVATIONS OF THE GLOBULAR CLUSTER M4: HUNTING FOR BROWN DWARFS

We present an analysis of deep Hubble Space Telescope (HST)/Wide Field Camera 3 near-IR (NIR) imaging data of the globular cluster (GC) M4. The best-photometry NIR color–magnitude diagram (CMD) clearly shows the main sequence extending toward the expected end of the hydrogen-burning limit and going beyond this point toward fainter sources. The white dwarf (WD) sequence can be identified. As such, this is the deepest NIR CMD of a GC to date. Archival HST optical data were used for proper-motion cleaning of the CMD and for distinguishing the WDs from brown dwarf (BD) candidates. Detection limits in the NIR are around F110W ≈ 26.5 mag and F160W ≈ 27 mag, and in the optical around F775W ≈ 28 mag. Comparing our observed CMDs with theoretical models, we conclude that we have reached beyond the H-burning limit in our NIR CMD and are probably just above or around this limit in our optical–NIR CMDs. Thus, any faint NIR sources that have no optical counterpart are potential BD candidates, since the optical data are not deep enough to detect them. We visually inspected the positions of NIR sources that are fainter than the H-burning limit in F110W and for which the optical photometry did not return a counterpart. We found in total five sources for which we did not get an optical measurement. For four of these five sources, a faint optical counterpart could be visually identified, and an upper optical magnitude was estimated. Based on these upper optical magnitude limits, we conclude that one source is likely a WD, one source could be either a WD or BD candidate, and the remaining two sources agree with being BD candidates. No optical counterpart could be detected for just one source, which makes this source a good BD candidate. We conclude that we found in total four good BD candidates.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Cluster II Wideband (WBD) Plasma Wave Investigation Mission Operations and Data Analysis

This Summary of Research is being submitted to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. A summary of the significant accomplishments of the Cluster Wideband (WBD) Plasma Wave Investigation team achieved during the period of the grant, October 1,2000 through January 14, 2004, and a listing of all of the publications that resulted from work carried out under the grant is presented. Also included is a listing of the numerous public outreach activities that took place during the period of the grant in which the Cluster mission and Cluster WBD science were discussed.

Gurnett, Donald A.↗

The Evolution of Stellar Dynamos; Survey for Low Mass Members of NGC2232; An X-Ray Survey of the Open Cluster CR140; Towards a Better Understanding of the Rotation-Activity Relation for Solar-Type Members of the Pleiades

This grant was originally awarded to Dr. Charles Prosser, who died tragically in a car accident in Tucson in 1998. We had hoped to finish the work Charles had started, which involved analysis of ROSAT data for three programs (observations of the clusters NGC2232, Crl4O and the Pleiades) and also analysis of optical data for each cluster in order to allow interpretation of the ROSAT observations. The Pleiades portion of the program was completed during the past year, and a paper published. We have obtained optical imaging of the other two clusters, and those data are being analyzed. Dr. Brian Patten intends to complete analysis of the ROSAT observations and to combine those data with the optical photometry, but progress on those efforts has been slow due to the press of other work (Dr. Patten is responsible for the pipeline processing of data from SWAS). We intend to publish those results as soon as we can, but it will now be completed without further support from this grant.

Stauffer, John R.↗

47 Tuc in Rubin Data Preview 1. Exploring Early LSST Data and Science Potential

We present analyses of the early data from Rubin Observatory’s Data Preview 1 (DP1) for the field of the globular cluster 47 Tuc. The DP1 data set for 47 Tuc includes four nights of observations from the Rubin Commissioning Camera (LSSTComCam), covering multiple bands (ugriy). We address challenges of crowding in the inner region of the cluster and toward the SMC in DP1, and demonstrate improved star–galaxy separation by fitting fifth-degree polynomials to the stellar loci in color–color diagrams and applying multidimensional sigma clipping. We compile a catalog of 3576 probable 47 Tuc member stars selected via a combination of isochrone, Gaia proper-motion, and color–color space matched filtering. We explore the sources of photometric scatter in the 47 Tuc color–color sequence, evaluating contributions from various potential sources, including differential extinction within the cluster. Finally, of the 72 well-characterized variables in the field, we recover three known variable stars, including two RR Lyrae and one eclipsing binary, in the coadd-based object catalog, and identify 62 in the difference image-based object catalog. Although the DP1 lightcurves have sparse temporal sampling, they appear to follow the patterns of densely sampled literature lightcurves well. Despite some data limitations for crowded-field stellar analysis, DP1 demonstrates the promising scientific potential for future LSST data releases.

Choi, Yumi [NSF National Optical-Infrared Astronom↗

A hill-sliding strategy for initialization of Gaussian clusters in the multidimensional space

A hill sliding technique was devised to extract Gaussian clusters from the multivariate probability density estimate of sample data for the first step of iterative unsupervised classification. Each cluster was assumed to posses a unimodal normal distribution. A clustering function proposed distinguished elements of a cluster under formation from the rest in the feature space. Initial clusters were extracted one by one according to the hill sliding tactics. A dimensionless cluster compactness parameter was proposed as a universal measure of cluster goodness and used satisfactorily in test runs with LANDSAT multispectral scanner data. The normalized divergence, defined by the cluster divergence divided by the entropy of the entire sample data, was utilized as a general separability measure between clusters. An overall clustering objective function was set forth in terms of cluster covariance matrices, from which the cluster compactness measure could be deduced. Minimal improvement of initial data partitioning was evaluated by this objective function in eliminating scattered sparse data points. The hill sliding clustering technique developed herein has the potential applicability to decomposition any multivariate mixture distribution into a number of unimodal distributions when an appropriate distribution function to the data set is employed.

Park, J. K.↗

The growth of density perturbations in the last ~10 billion years from tomographic large-scale structure data

In order to investigate the origin of the ongoing tension between the amplitude of matter fluctuations measured by weak lensing experiments at low redshifts and the value inferred from the cosmic microwave background anisotropies, we reconstruct the evolution of this amplitude from z ~ 2 using existing large-scale structure data. To do so, we decouple the linear growth of density inhomogeneities from the background expansion, and constrain its redshift dependence making use of a combination of 6 different data sets, including cosmic shear, galaxy clustering and CMB lensing. We analyze these data under a consistent harmonic-space angular power spectrum-based pipeline. We show that current data constrain the amplitude of fluctuations mostly in the range 0.2 < z < 0.7, where it is lower than predicted by . This difference is mostly driven by current cosmic shear data, although the growth histories reconstructed from different data combinations are consistent with each other, and we find no evidence of systematic deviations in any particular experiment. In spite of the tension with , the data are well-described by the model, albeit with a lower value of S 8 ≡ σ 8 (Ω m /0.3) 0.5 . As part of our analysis, we find constraints on this parameter of S 8 = 0.7781 ± 0.0094 (68% confidence level), reaching almost percent-level errors comparable with CMB measurements, and 3.4σ away from the value found by .

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

WIYN Open Cluster Study. LXXXI. Caught in the Act? The Peculiar Red Giant NGC 2243-W2135

High-dispersion spectra for giants through turnoff stars in the Li 6708 Å region have been obtained and analyzed in the old, metal-deficient open cluster, NGC 2243. When combined with high-dispersion data from other surveys, the cluster is found to contain a uniquely peculiar star at the luminosity level of the red clump. The giant is the reddest star at its luminosity, exhibits variability at a minimum 0.1 mag level on a timescale of days, is a single-lined, radial-velocity variable, and has vsin i between 35 and 40 km s{sup −1}. In sharp contrast with the majority of the red giant cluster members, the star has a detectable Li abundance, potentially as high or higher than other giants observed to date while at or just below the boundary normally adopted for Li-rich giants. The observed anomalies may be indicators of the underlying process by which the giant has achieved its unusual Li abundance, with a recent mass transfer episode being the most probable within the currently limited constraints.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Determining the Optimal Number of Clusters with the Clustergram

Cluster analysis aids research in many different fields, from business to biology to aerospace. It consists of using statistical techniques to group objects in large sets of data into meaningful classes. However, this process of ordering data points presents much uncertainty because it involves several steps, many of which are subject to researcher judgment as well as inconsistencies depending on the specific data type and research goals. These steps include the method used to cluster the data, the variables on which the cluster analysis will be operating, the number of resulting clusters, and parts of the interpretation process. In most cases, the number of clusters must be guessed or estimated before employing the clustering method. Many remedies have been proposed, but none is unassailable and certainly not for all data types. Thus, the aim of current research for better techniques of determining the number of clusters is generally confined to demonstrating that the new technique excels other methods in performance for several disparate data types. Our research makes use of a new cluster-number-determination technique based on the clustergram: a graph that shows how the number of objects in the cluster and the cluster mean (the ordinate) change with the number of clusters (the abscissa). We use the features of the clustergram to make the best determination of the cluster-number.

Fluegemann, Joseph K.↗

Processor and method of weighted feature importance estimation

A method includes determining a feature importance ranking for each pair of clusters of a plurality of clusters to generate a first plurality of feature importance rankings. The method further includes determining a feature importance ranking between a particular data element and each cluster to generate a second plurality of feature importance rankings. A distance value associated with each pair of clusters of the plurality of clusters is determined to generate a plurality of distance values, and a probability value associated with each data element is determined to generate a plurality of probability values. The method further includes weighting the first plurality of feature importance rankings based on the plurality of distance values to determine a first plurality of weighted feature importance rankings and weighting the second plurality of feature importance rankings based on the plurality of probability values to determine a second plurality of weighted feature importance rankings.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Galaxies at the extremes: ultra-diffuse galaxies in the virgo cluster

We report the discovery of three large (R{sub 29} ≳ 1′) extremely low surface brightness (LSB; μ{sub V,0}≈27.0) galaxies identified using our deep, wide-field imaging of the Virgo Cluster from the Burrell Schmidt telescope. Complementary data from the Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey do not resolve red giant branch stars in these objects down to i = 24, yielding a lower distance limit of 2.5 Mpc. At the Virgo distance, these objects have half-light radii 3–10 kpc and luminosities L{sub V} = 2–9 × 10{sup 7} L{sub ⊙}. These galaxies are comparable in size but lower in surface brightness than the large ultradiffuse LSB galaxies recently identified in the Coma cluster, and are located well within Virgo’s virial radius; two are projected directly on the cluster core. One object appears to be a nucleated LSB in the process of being tidally stripped to form a new Virgo ultracompact dwarf galaxy. The others show no sign of tidal disruption, despite the fact that such objects should be most vulnerable to tidal destruction in the cluster environment. The relative proximity of Virgo makes these objects amenable to detailed studies of their structural properties and resolved stellar populations. They thus provide an important new window onto the connection between cluster environment and galaxy evolution at the extremes.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Use of LANDSAT imagery for wildlife habitat mapping in northeast and east central Alaska

The author has identified the following significant results. Two scenes were analyzed by applying an iterative cluster analysis to a 2% random data sample and then using the resulting clusters as a training set basis for maximum likelihood classification. Twenty-six and twenty-seven categorical classes, respectively resulted from this process. The majority of classes in each case were quite specific vegetation types; each of these types has specific value as moose habitat.

Lent, P. C.↗

XMM Cluster Abundances

I will present a review of the recent data on the chemical abundances in clusters of galaxies and groups based on X-ray spectroscopy. I will talk about class properties, correlations and the implications for galaxy evolution. In particular I will compare and contrast recent XMM results and those from previous observatories.

Mushotzky, Richard↗

DAAP (Data Analytics Application Profiling)

The Data Analytics Application Profiling (DAAP) utility is a software program comprised of a library and scripts to provide basic instrumenting of parallel scientific software applications while they are running on an HPC cluster, and transmit this data over a secure connection as individual records to aggregators. When used in conjunction with additional open source software components (Telegraf, FluentD, and RabbitMQ), the data collected by DAAP can be transmitted off-cluster to an analytics system of the user’s choice for further analysis.

Shereda, Charles↗