Astrophysics and Astronomy Commons^™

Engaging Adolescent Kyrgyzstani Efl Students In Digital Storytelling Projects About Astronomy, Nadezhda Chubko, Julia E. Morris, David H. Mckinnon, Eileen V. Slater, Geoffrey W. Lummis

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This research is based on the Journey through Space and Time (JTST) educational astronomy project for primary and junior high school science curricula in Australia, which seeks to improve students' astronomy content knowledge through science inquiry. The focus of the current project is on the learning needs of students for whom the language of instruction is a foreign or second language (EFL/ESL). This article reports the results of a pilot case study conducted in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan in December 2017. The research employed a Type II Case Study design. Data were collected through video and audio recordings of classroom interactions. The …

Table Of Contents

Journal of the South Carolina Academy of Science

No abstract provided.

The Disk Substructures At High Angular Resolution Project (Dsharp). X. Multiple Rings, A Misaligned Inner Disk, And A Bright Arc In The Disk Around The T Tauri Star Hd 143006, Laura M. Pérez, Myriam Benisty, Sean M. Andrews, Andrea Isella, Cornelis P. Dellemond, Jane Huang, Nicolás T. Kurtovic, Viviana V. Guzmán, Zhaohuan Zhu, Tilman Birnstiel, Shangjia Zhang, John M. Carpenter, David J. Wilner, Luca Ricci, Xue-Ning Bai, Erik Weaver, Karin I. Öberg

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Research

We present a detailed analysis of new Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations of the disk around the T-Tauri star HD 143006, which at 46 mas (7.6 au) resolution reveals new substructures in the 1.25 mm continuum emission. The disk resolves into a series of concentric rings and gaps, together with a bright arc exterior to the rings that resembles hydrodynamical simulations of a vortex and a bridge-like feature connecting the two innermost rings. Although our 12CO observations at similar spatial resolution do not show obvious substructure, they reveal an inner disk depleted of CO emission. From the continuum emission …

The Disk Substructures At High Angular Resolution Project (Dsharp). Ix. A High-Definition Study Of The Hd 163296 Planet-Forming Disk, Andrea Isella, Jane Huang, Sean M. Andrews, Cornelis P. Dellemond, Tilman Birnstiel, Shangjia Zhang, Zhaohuan Zhu, Viviana V. Guzmán, Laura M. Pérez, Xue-Ning Bai, Myriam Benisty, John M. Carpenter, Luca Ricci, David J. Wilner

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Research

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observations of protoplanetary disks acquired by the Disk Substructure at High Angular Resolution Project resolve the dust and gas emission on angular scales as small as 3 astronomical units, offering an unprecedented detailed view of the environment where planets form. In this Letter, we present and discuss observations of the HD 163296 protoplanetary disk that imaged the 1.25 mm dust continuum and 12CO J = 2–1 rotational line emission at a spatial resolution of 4 and 10 au, respectively. The continuum observations resolve and allow us to characterize the previously discovered dust rings at radii …

The Disk Substructures At High Angular Resolution Project (Dsharp). I. Motivation, Sample, Calibration, And Overview, Sean M. Andrews, Jane Huang, Laura M. Pérez, Andrea Isella, Cornelis P. Dullemond, Nicolás T. Kurtovic, Viviana V. Guzmán, John M. Carpenter, David J. Wilner, Shangjia Zhang, Zhaohuan Zhu, Tilman Birstiel, Xue-Ning Bai, Myriam Benisty, A. Meredith Hughes, Karin I. Öberg, Luca Ricci

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Research

We introduce the Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP), one of the initial Large Programs conducted with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The primary goal of DSHARP is to find and characterize substructures in the spatial distributions of solid particles for a sample of 20 nearby protoplanetary disks, using very high resolution (~0 035, or 5 au, FWHM) observations of their 240 GHz (1.25 mm) continuum emission. These data provide a first homogeneous look at the small-scale features in disks that are directly relevant to the planet formation process, quantifying their prevalence, morphologies, spatial scales, spacings, symmetry, …

The Disk Substructures At High Angular Resolution Project (Dsharp). Iii. Spiral Structures In The Millimeter Continuum Of The Elias 27, Im Lup, And Waoph 6 Disks, Jane Huang, Sean M. Andrews, Laura M. Pérez, Zhaohuan Zhu, Cornelis P. Dullemond, Andrea Isella, Myriam Benisty, Xue-Ning Bai, Tilman Birnstiel, John M. Carpenter, Viviana V. Guzmán, A. Meredith Hughes, Karin I. Öberg, Luca Ricci, David J. Wilner, Shangjia Zhang

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Research

We present an analysis of Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array 1.25 mm continuum observations of spiral structures in three protoplanetary disks from the Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project. See full text for full abstract.

The Disk Substructures At High Angular Resolution Project (Dsharp). Ii. Characteristics Of Annular Substructures, Jane Huang, Sean M. Andrews, Cornelis P. Dellemond, Andrea Isella, Laura M. Pérez, Viviana V. Guzmán, Karin I. Öberg, Zhaohuan Zhu, Shangjia Zhang, Xue-Ning Bai, Myriam Benisty, Tilman Birstiel, John M. Carpenter, A. Meredith Hughes, Luca Ricci, Erik Weaver, David J. Wilner

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Research

The Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP) used ALMA to map the 1.25 mm continuum of protoplanetary disks at a spatial resolution of ~5 au. We present a systematic analysis of annular substructures in the 18 single-disk systems targeted in this survey. No dominant architecture emerges from this sample; instead, remarkably diverse morphologies are observed. Annular substructures can occur at virtually any radius where millimeter continuum emission is detected and range in widths from a few astronomical units to tens of astronomical units. Intensity ratios between gaps and adjacent rings range from near-unity to just a few percent. …

The Disk Substructures At High Angular Resolution Project (Dsharp). Vi. Dust Trapping In Thin-Ringed Protoplanetary Disks, Cornelis P. Dullemond, Tilman Birnstiel, Jane Huang, Nicolás T. Kurtovic, Sean M. Andrews, Viviana V. Guzmán, Laura M. Pérez, Andrea Isella, Zhaohuan Zhu, Myriam Benisty, David J. Wilner, Xue-Ning Bai, John M. Carpenter, Shangjia Zhang, Luca Ricci

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Research

A large fraction of the protoplanetary disks observed with ALMA display multiple well-defined and nearly perfectly circular rings in the continuum, in many cases with substantial peak-to-valley contrast. The DSHARP campaign shows that several of these rings are very narrow in radial extent. In this Letter we test the hypothesis that these dust rings are caused by dust trapping in radial pressure bumps, and if confirmed, put constraints on the physics of the dust trapping mechanism. We model this process analytically in 1D, assuming axisymmetry. By comparing this model to the data, we find that all rings are consistent with …

The Disk Substructures At High Angular Resolution Project (Dsharp). Vii. The Planet–Disk Interactions Interpretation, Shangjia Zhang, Zhaohuan Zhu, Jane Huang, Viviana V. Guzmán, Sean M. Andrews, Tilman Birnstiel, Cornelis P. Dullemond, John M. Carpenter, Andrea Isella, Laura M. Pérez, Myriam Benisty, David J. Wilner, Clément Baruteau, Xue-Ning Bai, Luca Ricci

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Research

The Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP) provides a large sample of protoplanetary disks with substructures that could be induced by young forming planets. To explore the properties of planets that may be responsible for these substructures, we systematically carry out a grid of 2D hydrodynamical simulations, including both gas and dust components. We present the resulting gas structures, including the relationship between the planet mass, as well as (1) the gaseous gap depth/width and (2) the sub/super-Keplerian motion across the gap. We then compute dust continuum intensity maps at the frequency of the DSHARP observations. We provide …

The Disk Substructures At High Angular Resolution Program (Dsharp). Viii. The Rich Ringed Substructures In The As 209 Disk, Viviana V. Guzmán, Jane Huang, Sean M. Andrews, Andrea Isella, Laura M. Pérez, John M. Carpenter, Cornelis P. Dullemond, Luca Ricci, Tilman Birnstiel, Shangjia Zhang, Zhaohuan Zhu, Xue-Ning Bai, Myriam Benisty, Karin I. Öberg, David J. Wilner

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Research

The Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Program (DSHARP). VIII. The Rich Ringed Substructures in the AS 209 Disk

The Disk Substructures At High Angular Resolution Project (Dsharp). Iv. Characterizing Substructures And Interactions In Disks Around Multiple Star Systems, Nicolás T. Kurtovic, Laura M. Pérez, Myriam Benisty, Zhaohuan Zhu, Shangjia Zhang, Jane Huang, Sean M. Andrews, Cornelis P. Dullemond, Andrea Isella, Xue-Ning Bai, John M. Carpenter, Viviana V. Guzmán, Luca Ricci, David J. Wilner

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Research

To characterize the substructures induced in protoplanetary disks by the interaction between stars in multiple systems, we study the 1.25 mm continuum and the 12CO(J = 2–1) spectral line emission of the triple systems HT Lup and AS 205, at scales of ≈5 au, as part of the "Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project" (DSHARP). In the continuum emission, we find two symmetric spiral arms in the disk around AS 205 N, with a pitch angle of 14°, while the southern component AS 205 S, itself a spectroscopic binary, is surrounded by a compact inner disk and a bright …

The Disk Substructures At High Angular Resolution Project (Dsharp). V. Interpreting Alma Maps Of Protoplanetary Disks In Terms Of A Dust Model, Tilman Birnstiel, Cornelis P. Dullemond, Zhaohuan Zhu, Sean M. Andrews, Xue-Ning Bai, David J. Wilner, John M. Carpenter, Jane Huang, Andrea Isella, Myriam Benisty, Laura M. Pérez, Shangjia Zhang

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Research

The Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP) is the largest homogeneous high-resolution (~0 035, or ~5 au) disk continuum imaging survey with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) so far. In the coming years, many more disks will be mapped with ALMA at similar resolution. Interpreting the results in terms of the properties and quantities of the emitting dusty material is, however, a very non-trivial task. This is in part due to the uncertainty in the dust opacities, an uncertainty that is not likely to be resolved any time soon. It is also partly due to the fact …

A Tree-Based Multiscale Regression Method, Haiyan Cai, Qingtang Jiang

Educator Preparation & Leadership Faculty Works

A tree-based method for regression is proposed. In a high dimensional feature space, the method has the ability to adapt to the lower intrinsic dimension of data if the data possess such a property so that reliable statistical estimates can be performed without being hindered by the “curse of dimensionality.” The method is also capable of producing a smoother estimate for a regression function than those from standard tree methods in the region where the function is smooth and also being more sensitive to discontinuities of the function than smoothing splines or other kernel methods. The estimation process in this …

Studying Galaxy Troughs And Ridges Using Weak Gravitational Lensing With The Kilo-Degree Survey, Margot M. Brouwer, Vasiliy Demchenko, Joachim Harnois-Déraps, Maciej Bilicki, Catherine Heymans, Henk Hoekstra, Konrad Kuijken, Mehmet Alpaslan, Sarah Brough, Yan Chuan Cai, Marcus V. Costa-Duarte, Andrej Dvornik, Thomas Erben, Hendrik Hildebrandt, Benne W. Holwerda, Peter Schneider, Cristóbal Sifón, Edo Van Uitert

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

We study projected underdensities in the cosmic galaxy density field known as 'troughs', and their overdense counterparts, which we call 'ridges'. We identify these regions using a bright sample of foreground galaxies from the photometric Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS), specifically selected to mimic the spectroscopic Galaxy And Mass Assembly survey. Using background galaxies from KiDS, we measure the weak gravitational lensing profiles of the troughs/ridges. We quantify the amplitude of their lensing strength A as a function of galaxy density percentile rank P and galaxy overdensity δ, and find that the skewness in the galaxy density distribution is reflected in the …

Detecting Radio Agn Signatures In Red Geysers, Namrata Roy, Kevin Bundy, Wiphu Rujopakarn, Michele Cappellari, Francesco Belfiore, Renbin Yan, Tim Heckman, Matthew Bershady, Jenny Greene, Kyle Westfall, Niv Drory, Kate Rubin, David Law, Kai Zhang, Joseph Gelfand, Dmitry Bizyaev, David Wake, Karen Masters, Daniel Thomas, Cheng Li, Rogemar A. Riffel

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

A new class of quiescent galaxies harboring possible AGN-driven winds has been discovered using spatially resolved optical spectroscopy from the ongoing SDSS-IV MaNGA survey. These galaxies, termed "red geysers," constitute 5%–10% of the local quiescent population and are characterized by narrow bisymmetric patterns in ionized gas emission features. Cheung et al. argued that these galaxies host large-scale AGN-driven winds that may play a role in suppressing star formation at late times. In this work, we test the hypothesis that AGN activity is ultimately responsible for the red geyser phenomenon. We compare the nuclear radio activity of the red geysers to …

Improve The Low Energy Sensitivity Of The Hawc Observatory, Zhixiang Ren

Optical Science and Engineering ETDs

The high altitude water cherenkov gamma-ray observatory (HAWC) has been fully operational since March of 2015 in Mexico at 4,100 meters above sea level on the hillside of the Sierra Negra Volcano. It consists of an array of 300 water cherenkov detectors, each equipped with four photo-multiplier tubes. HAWC operates 24-hours per day with a wide field-of-view (FOV, ∼ 2 sr) and a high duty cycle (∼ 95%). These make it a powerful survey and monitoring experiment for mapping the gamma ray sky at very high energies (VHE, 100 GeV to 100 TeV) and to study sources with varying intensities. …

Bayesian Model Comparisons In Planetary Science, John Henry Boisvert

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Model comparison in the modern era allows us to use statistical methods that were previously difficult with older machines. I present a state-of-the-art model comparison code that uses modern Bayesian statistics to measure the Bayes factor between two competing models. The Bayes factor is the ratio of the probability of the data given one model to the probability of the data given another model. My code was used to compare models in five problems in planetary science. The first three pertain to radial velocity exoplanet data. There is a degeneracy in the radial velocity exoplanet signal between a single planet …

Extreme Hbl Behavior Of Markarian 501 During 2012, P. T. Reynolds, Et. Al.

Physical Sciences Publications

Aims. We aim to characterize the multiwavelength emission from Markarian 501 (Mrk 501), quantify the energy-dependent variability, study the potential multiband correlations, and describe the temporal evolution of the broadband emission within leptonic theoretical scenarios.

Methods. We organized a multiwavelength campaign to take place between March and July of 2012. Excellent temporal coverage was obtained with more than 25 instruments, including the MAGIC, FACT and VERITAS Cherenkov telescopes, the instruments on board the Swift and Fermi spacecraft, and the telescopes operated by the GASP-WEBT collaboration.

Results. Mrk 501 showed a very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray flux above 0.2 TeV of …

Toward An Understanding Of Grb Prompt Emission Mechanism. Ii. Patterns Of Peak Energy Evolution And Their Connection To Spectral Lags, Z. Lucas Uhm, Bing Zhang, Judith Racusin

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Research

The prompt emission phase of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) exhibits two distinct patterns of the peak energy (E p ) evolution, i.e., time-resolved spectral analyses of νF ν spectra of broad pulses reveal (1) "hard-to-soft" and (2) "flux-tracking" patterns of E p evolution in time, the physical origin of which still remains not well understood. We show here that these two patterns can be successfully reproduced within a simple physical model invoking synchrotron radiation in a bulk-accelerating emission region. We show further that the evolution patterns of the peak energy have, in fact, direct connections to the existence of two different …

Hubble Pancet: An Extended Upper Atmosphere Of Neutral Hydrogen Around The Warm Neptune Gj 3470b, Vincent Bourrier, Alain Lecavelier Des Etangs, David Ehrenreich, Jorge Sanz-Forcada, Romain Allart, Gilda E. Ballester, Lars A. Buchhave, Ofer Cohen, Drake Deming, Thomas M. Evans, Antonio García Muñoz, Gregory W. Henry, Tiffany Kataria, Panayotis Lavvas, Nikole K. Lewis, Mercedes López-Morales, Mark S. Marley, David K. Sing, Hannah R. Wakeford

Information Systems and Engineering Management Research Publications

GJ 3470b is a warm Neptune transiting an M-dwarf star at the edge of the evaporation desert. It offers the possibility of investigating how low-mass, close-in exoplanets evolve under the irradiation from their host stars. We observed three transits of GJ 3470b in the Lyman-α line with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) as part of the Panchromatic Comparative Exoplanet Treasury (PanCET) program. Absorption signatures are detected with similar properties in all three independent epochs, with absorption depths of 35 ± 7% in the blue wing of the line, and 23 ± 5% in the red wing. The repeatability of these …