External Galaxies Commons^™

Analysis Of Autoguiding For Exoplanet Transit Research At The Unh Observatory, Anthony Cappuccio

Honors Theses and Capstones

This paper will discuss the proper calibration technique for an autoguider of a CCD camera and the results that follow from successful exoplanet transit observations. A brief background on exoplanets, the transit method, and the analysis of their parent stars through photometry will be examined. The results will be presented in a before and after framework that will visually represent the data improvements from autoguiding as graphical Light Curves (LC). The addition of being able to autoguide at the UNH observatory will work towards providing future students with the possibility of performing follow-up ground-based observations and archiving their work online …

Multiwavelength, Machine Learning, And Parallax Studies Of X-Ray Binaries In Three Local Group Galaxies, Robin Arnason

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

X-ray binary stars are rare systems consisting of a black hole or neutron star and a main-sequence companion star. They are useful probes of galaxy properties and interesting laboratories for extreme physical conditions. In this thesis, I investigated the X-ray binary population of three galaxies in the Local Group.

The Sculptor Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy offers the chance to study a primordial low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) population in an isolated, low-metallicity environment. Combining X-ray, optical, and infrared observations, I have studied nine previously-identified and discovered four additional LMXB candidates in this galaxy. Of these candidates, all but one are either background …

Mirach’S Goblin: Discovery Of A Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy Behind The Andromeda Galaxy, David Martínez-Delgado, Eva Grebel, Behnam Javanmardi, Walter Boschin, Nicolas Longeard, Julio Carballo-Bello, Dmitry Makarov, Michael Beasley, Giuseppe Donatiello, Martha Haynes, Duncan Forbes, Aaron Romanowsky

Faculty Publications

Context. It is of broad interest for galaxy formation theory to carry out a full inventory of the numbers and properties of dwarf galaxies, both satellite and isolated, in the Local Volume.Aims. Ultra-deep imaging in wide areas of the sky with small amateur telescopes can help to complete the census of these hitherto unknown low-surface-brightness galaxies, which cannot be detected by the current resolved stellar population and HI surveys. We report the discovery of Donatiello I, a dwarf spheroidal galaxy located one degree from the star Mirach (β And) in a deep image taken with an amateur telescope.Methods. The color-magnitude …

Angular Momentum And Galaxy Formation Revisited: Scaling Relations For Disks And Bulges, S. Michael Fall, Aaron Romanowsky

Faculty Publications

We show that the stellar specific angular momentum j, mass M, and bulge fraction of normal galaxies of all morphological types are consistent with a simple model based on a linear superposition of independent disks and bulges. In this model, disks and bulges follow scaling relations of the form and with but offset from each other by a factor of 8 ± 2 over the mass range . Separate fits for disks and bulges alone give and , respectively. This model correctly predicts that galaxies follow a curved 2D surface in the 3D space of , , and . We …

A Plausible Resolution To Hilbert’S Failed Attempt To Unify Gravitation & Electromagnetism, Florentin Smarandache, Victor Christianto, Robert Neil Boyd

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

In this paper, we explore the reasons why Hilbert’s axiomatic program to unify gravitation theory and electromagnetism failed and outline a plausible resolution of this problem. The latter is based on Gödel’s incompleteness theorem and Newton’s aether stream model.

The Dragonfly Nearby Galaxies Survey. V. Hst/Acs Observations Of 23 Low Surface Brightness Objects In The Fields Of Ngc 1052, Ngc 1084, M96, And Ngc 4258, Yotam Cohen, Pieter Van Dokkum, Shany Danieli, Aaron Romanowsky, Roberto Abraham, Allison Merritt, Jielai Zhang, Lamiya Mowla, J. Diederik Kruijssen, Charlie Conroy, Asher Wasserman

Faculty Publications

We present Hubble Space Telescope/Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) imaging of 23 very low surface brightness (μ e,V ~ 25–27.5) galaxies detected in the fields of four nearby galaxy groups. These objects were selected from deep optical imaging obtained with the Dragonfly Telephoto Array. Seven are newly identified, while most of the others had been seen previously in visual surveys of deep photographic plates and more recent surveys. Few have previously been studied in detail. From the ACS images, we measure distances to the galaxies using both the tip of the red giant branch method and the surface brightness fluctuations …

Dance Of Two Supermassive Binary Black Holes, Karishma Bansal

Shared Knowledge Conference

Black holes exist in a various range of masses ranging from stellar mass (~ 10 Solar Mass) to Supermassive black holes (SMBHs, million to billion Solar Mass). It is expected that as the separation between the black holes decreases, emission of gravitational waves will grow stronger, which makes binary black holes one of the most promising sources for gravitational radiation detection. Gravitational waves from merging stellar-mass black holes have recently been discovered by LIGO; however, we are yet to detect them from binary SMBHs. These massive black holes reside at the heart of most of the galaxies and when two …

Probing Galaxy Evolution Through Deep Radio Continuum Observations, Hansung Gim

Doctoral Dissertations

One of the most important questions in modern astrophysics is how galaxies form and evolve. There are numerous processes involved in galaxy evolution, but the stellar mass buildup and supermassive black hole growth are two main drivers in galaxy evolution. Those activities are heavily obscured by dust, so we need another tracer without dust attenuation: low-frequency radio continuum observation. We understand the galaxy evolution through the deep radio continuum observations on the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS)-North, -South, and the COSMOS HI Large Extragalactic Survey (CHILES) fields. Exploiting the multi-wavelength dataset, we define the radio populations such as star-formation …

Studying The Potential Of The [Oii] Emission Line As A Surrogate For Stellar Velocity Dispersion In Active Galactic Nuclei, Edward F. Donohue

Physics

We study the emission profiles of 80 active galaxies to find a surrogate for stellar velocity dispersion. We focus on the width of the emission line of once ionized oxygen, [OII], and compare our results to previous work that used [OIII]. In previous research, [OIII] was found to be a good candidate for a surrogate for stellar velocity dispersion, but analysis of the line was complicated by the presence of wings caused by gas infall and outflow in the region. Emission lines with lower ionization levels, like [OII], are known to have less artificial line-broadening from wings. The study of …

The Extended Planetary Nebula Spectrograph (Epn.S) Early-Type Galaxy Survey: The Kinematic Diversity Of Stellar Halos And The Relation Between Halo Transition Scale And Stellar Mass, C. Pulsoni, O. Gerhard, M. Arnaboldi, L. Coccato, A. Longobardi, N. Napolitano, E. Moylan, C. Narayan, V. Gupta, A. Burkert, M. Capaccioli, A. Chies-Santos, A. Cortesi, K. Freeman, K. Kuijken, M. Merrifield, Aaron Romanowsky, C. Tortora

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Context. In the hierarchical two-phase formation scenario, the halos of early type galaxies (ETGs) are expected to have different physical properties from the galaxies’ central regions.Aims. The ePN.S survey characterizes the kinematic properties of ETG halos using planetary nebulae (PNe) as tracers, overcoming the limitations of absorption line spectroscopy at low surface brightness.Methods. We present two-dimensional velocity and velocity dispersion fields for 33 ETGs, including fast (FRs) and slow rotators (SRs). The velocity fields were reconstructed from the measured PN velocities using an adaptive kernel procedure validated with simulations, and extend to a median of 5.6 effective radii (Re). We …

Wide-Field Kinematics Of Globular Clusters In The Leo I Group (Corrigendum), G. Bergond, S. Zepf, Aaron Romanowsky, R. Sharples, K. Rhode

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Veritas And Fermi-Lat Observations Of Tev Gamma-Ray Sources Discovered By Hawc In The 2hwc Catalog, P. T. Reynolds, Et Al

Physical Sciences Publications

The High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) collaboration recently published their 2HWC catalog, listing 39 very high energy (VHE; >100 GeV) gamma-ray sources based on 507 days of observation. Among these, 19 sources are not associated with previously known teraelectronvolt (TeV) gamma-ray sources. We have studied 14 of these sources without known counterparts with VERITAS and Fermi-LAT. VERITAS detected weak gamma-ray emission in the 1 TeV–30 TeV band in the region of DA 495, a pulsar wind nebula coinciding with 2HWC J1953+294, confirming the discovery of the source by HAWC. We did not find any counterpart for the selected 14 …

Origins Of Ultradiffuse Galaxies In The Coma Cluster – Ii. Constraints From Their Stellar Populations, Anna Ferre-Mateu, Adebusola Alabi, Duncan Forbes, Aaron Romanowsky, Jean Brodie, Viraj Pandya, Ignacio Mart´In-Navarro, Sabine Bellstedt, Asher Wasserman, Maria Stone, Nobuhiro Okabe

Faculty Publications

In this second paper of the series we study, with new Keck/DEIMOS spectra, the stellar populations of seven spectroscopically confirmed ultradiffuse galaxies (UDGs) in the Coma cluster. We find intermediate to old ages (∼7 Gyr), low metallicities ([Z/H] ∼ −0.7 dex) and mostly supersolar abundance patterns ([Mg/Fe] ∼ 0.13 dex). These properties are similar to those of low-luminosity (dwarf) galaxies inhabiting the same area in the cluster and are mostly consistent with being the continuity of the stellar mass scaling relations of more massive galaxies. These UDGs’ star formation histories imply a relatively recent infall into the Coma cluster, consistent …

How Many Points Are There In A Line Segment? A New Answer From Discrete Cellular Space Viewpoint, Florentin Smarandache, Victor Christianto

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

While it is known that Euclid’s five axioms include a proposition that a line consists at least of two points, modern geometry avoid consistently any discussion on the precise definition of point, line, etc. It is our aim to clarify one of notorious question in Euclidean geometry: how many points are there in a line segment? – from discrete-cellular space (DCS) viewpoint. In retrospect, it may offer an alternative of quantum gravity, i.e. by exploring discrete gravitational theories. To elucidate our propositions, in the last section we will discuss some implications of discrete cellular-space model in several areas of interest: …

Chromodynamical Analysis Of Lenticular Galaxies Using Globular Clusters And Planetary Nebulae, Emilio Zanatta, Arianna Cortesi, Ana Chies-Santos, Duncan Forbes, Aaron Romanowsky, Adebusola Alabi, Lodovico Coccato, Claudia Mendes De Oliveira, Jean Brodie, Michael Merrifield

Faculty Publications

Recovering the origins of lenticular galaxies can shed light on the understanding of galaxy and compare them with the kinematics of planetary nebulae (PNe). The PNe and GC data come from the Planetary Nebulae Spectrograph and the SLUGGS Surveys. Through photometric spheroid-disc decomposition and PNe kinematics. we find the probability for a given GC to belong to either the spheroid or the disc of its host galaxy or be rejected from the model. We find that there is no correlation between the components that the GCs are likely to belong to and their colours. Particularly, for NGC 2768, we find …

Origins Of Ultradiffuse Galaxies In The Coma Cluster – I. Constraints From Velocity Phase Space, Adebusola Alabi, Anna Ferré-Mateu, Aaron Romanowsky, Jean Brodie, Duncan Forbes, Asher Wasserman, Sabine Bellstedt, Ignacio Martín-Navarro, Viraj Pandya, Maria Stone, Nobuhiro Okabe

Faculty Publications

We use Keck/DEIMOS spectroscopy to confirm the cluster membership of 16 ultradiffuse galaxies (UDGs) in the Coma cluster, bringing the total number of spectroscopically confirmed UDGs from the Yagi et al. (Y16) catalogue to 25. We also identify a new cluster background UDG, confirming that most (∼95 per cent) of the UDGs in the Y16 catalogue belong to the Coma cluster. In this pilot study of Coma UDGs in velocity phase space, we find evidence of a diverse origin for Coma cluster UDGs, similar to normal dwarf galaxies. Some UDGs in our sample are consistent with being late infalls into …

The Distance Of The Dark Matter Deficient Galaxy Ngc 1052–Df2, Pieter Van Dokkum, Shany Danieli, Yotam Cohen, Aaron Romanowsky, Charlie Conroy

Faculty Publications

We recently inferred that the galaxy NGC 1052–DF2 has little or no dark matter and a rich system of unusual globular clusters. We assumed that the galaxy is a satellite of the luminous elliptical galaxy NGC 1052 at ≈20 Mpc, on the basis of its surface brightness fluctuations (SBFs) distance of 19.0 ± 1.7 Mpc, its radial velocity of ≈1800 km s−1, and its projected position. Here we analyze the color–magnitude diagram (CMD) of NGC 1052–DF2, following the suggestion by Trujillo et al. that the tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) can be detected in currently available Hubble Space …

The Sluggs Survey: The Inner Dark Matter Density Slope Of The Massive Elliptical Galaxy Ngc 1407, Asher Wasserman, Aaron Romanowsky, Jean Brodie, Pieter Van Dokkum, Charlie Conroy, Alexa Villaume, Duncan Forbes, Jay Strader, Adebusola Alabi, Sabine Bellstedt

Faculty Publications

We investigate the dark matter density profile of the massive elliptical galaxy, NGC 1407, by constructing spherically symmetric Jeans models of its field star and globular cluster systems. Two major challenges in such models are the degeneracy between the stellar mass and the dark matter halo profiles, and the degeneracy between the orbital anisotropy of the tracer population and the total mass causing the observed motions. We address the first issue by using new measurements of the mass-to-light ratio profile from stellar population constraints that include a radially varying initial mass function. To mitigate the mass–anisotropy degeneracy, we make use …

A Deficit Of Dark Matter From Jeans Modeling Of The Ultra-Diffuse Galaxy Ngc 1052-Df2, Asher Wasserman, Aaron Romanowsky, Jean Brodie, Pieter Van Dokkum, Charlie Conroy, Roberto Abraham, Yotam Cohen, Shany Danieli

Faculty Publications

The discovery of the ultra-diffuse galaxy NGC 1052-DF2 and its peculiar population of star clusters has raised new questions about the connections between galaxies and dark matter (DM) halos at the extremes of galaxy formation. In light of debates over the measured velocity dispersion of its star clusters and the associated mass estimate, we constrain mass models of DF2 using its observed kinematics with a range of priors on the halo mass. Models in which the galaxy obeys a standard stellar-halo mass relation are in tension with the data and also require a large central density core. Better fits are …

Erratum: The Sluggs Survey: A Comparison Of Total-Mass Profiles Of Early-Type Galaxies From Observations And Cosmological Simulations, To ∼4 Effective Radii, Sabine Bellstedt, Duncan Forbes, Aaron Romanowsky, Rhea-Silvia Remus, Adam Stevens, Jean Brodie, Adriano Poci, Richard Mcdermid, Adebusola Alabi, Leonie Chevalier, Caitlin Adams, Anna Ferré-Mateu, Asher Wasserman, Viraj Pandya

Faculty Publications

This is an erratum to the paper “The SLUGGS Survey: A comparison of total-mass profiles of early-type galaxies from observations and cosmological simulations, to ∼4 effective radii” that was published in 2018, MNRAS, 476, 4543, which we refer to as the original paper.