European Southern Observatory

About: European Southern Observatory is a facility organization based out in Garching bei München, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Galaxy & Stars. The organization has 3594 authors who have published 16157 publications receiving 823095 citations. The organization is also known as: The European Southern Observatory，ESO & ESO.

The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment

Abstract: The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in operation since 2014 July. This paper describes the second data release from this phase, and the 14th from SDSS overall (making this Data Release Fourteen or DR14). This release makes the data taken by SDSS-IV in its first two years of operation (2014-2016 July) public. Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14 is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14 is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey; the first data from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2), including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data-driven machine-learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of the publicly available data from the SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS web site (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release and provides links to data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020 and will be followed by SDSS-V.

A continuum from clear to cloudy hot-Jupiter exoplanets without primordial water depletion

Abstract: Thousands of transiting exoplanets have been discovered, but spectral analysis of their atmospheres has so far been dominated by a small number of exoplanets and data spanning relatively narrow wavelength ranges (such as 1.1-1.7 micrometres). Recent studies show that some hot-Jupiter exoplanets have much weaker water absorption features in their near-infrared spectra than predicted. The low amplitude of water signatures could be explained by very low water abundances, which may be a sign that water was depleted in the protoplanetary disk at the planet's formation location, but it is unclear whether this level of depletion can actually occur. Alternatively, these weak signals could be the result of obscuration by clouds or hazes, as found in some optical spectra. Here we report results from a comparative study of ten hot Jupiters covering the wavelength range 0.3-5 micrometres, which allows us to resolve both the optical scattering and infrared molecular absorption spectroscopically. Our results reveal a diverse group of hot Jupiters that exhibit a continuum from clear to cloudy atmospheres. We find that the difference between the planetary radius measured at optical and infrared wavelengths is an effective metric for distinguishing different atmosphere types. The difference correlates with the spectral strength of water, so that strong water absorption lines are seen in clear-atmosphere planets and the weakest features are associated with clouds and hazes. This result strongly suggests that primordial water depletion during formation is unlikely and that clouds and hazes are the cause of weaker spectral signatures.

The ATLAS3D project – I. A volume-limited sample of 260 nearby early-type galaxies: science goals and selection criteria

Abstract: The ATLAS3D project is a multiwavelength survey combined with a theoretical modelling effort. The observations span from the radio to the millimetre and optical, and provide multicolour imaging, two-dimensional kinematics of the atomic (H i), molecular (CO) and ionized gas (H beta, [O iii] and [N i]), together with the kinematics and population of the stars (H beta, Fe5015 and Mg b), for a carefully selected, volume-limited (1.16 x 105 Mpc3) sample of 260 early-type (elliptical E and lenticular S0) galaxies (ETGs). The models include semi-analytic, N-body binary mergers and cosmological simulations of galaxy formation. Here we present the science goals for the project and introduce the galaxy sample and the selection criteria. The sample consists of nearby (D 15 degrees) morphologically selected ETGs extracted from a parent sample of 871 galaxies (8 per cent E, 22 per cent S0 and 70 per cent spirals) brighter than M-K <-21.5 mag (stellar mass M-star greater than or similar to 6 x109 M-circle dot). We analyse possible selection biases and we conclude that the parent sample is essentially complete and statistically representative of the nearby galaxy population. We present the size-luminosity relation for the spirals and ETGs and show that the ETGs in the ATLAS3D sample define a tight red sequence in a colour-magnitude diagram, with few objects in the transition from the blue cloud. We describe the strategy of the SAURON integral field observations and the extraction of the stellar kinematics with the ppxf method. We find typical 1 Sigma errors of delta V approximate to 6 km s-1, delta Sigma approximate to 7 km s-1, delta h(3) approximate to delta h(4) approximate to 0.03 in the mean velocity, the velocity dispersion and Gauss-Hermite (GH) moments for galaxies with effective dispersion Sigma(e) greater than or similar to 120 km s-1. For galaxies with lower Sigma(e) (approximate to 40 per cent of the sample) the GH moments are gradually penalized by ppxf towards zero to suppress the noise produced by the spectral undersampling and only V and Sigma can be measured. We give an overview of the characteristics of the other main data sets already available for our sample and of the ongoing modelling projects.

The MACHO Project: Microlensing Results from 5.7 Years of Large Magellanic Cloud Observations

Abstract: We report on our search for microlensing toward the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Analysis of 5.7 yr of photometry on 11.9 million stars in the LMC reveals 13-17 microlensing events. A detailed treatment of our detection efficiency shows that this is significantly more than the ~2-4 events expected from lensing by known stellar populations. The timescales () of the events range from 34 to 230 days. We estimate the microlensing optical depth toward the LMC from events with 2 < < 400 days to be τ = 1.2 × 10-7, with an additional 20% to 30% of systematic error. The spatial distribution of events is mildly inconsistent with LMC/LMC disk self-lensing, but is consistent with an extended lens distribution such as a Milky Way or LMC halo. Interpreted in the context of a Galactic dark matter halo, consisting partially of compact objects, a maximum-likelihood analysis gives a MACHO halo fraction of 20% for a typical halo model with a 95% confidence interval of 8%-50%. A 100% MACHO halo is ruled out at the 95% confidence level for all except our most extreme halo model. Interpreted as a Galactic halo population, the most likely MACHO mass is between 0.15 and 0.9 M☉, depending on the halo model, and the total mass in MACHOs out to 50 kpc is found to be 9 × 1010 M☉, independent of the halo model. These results are marginally consistent with our previous results, but are lower by about a factor of 2. This is mostly due to Poisson noise, because with 3.4 times more exposure and increased sensitivity to long-timescale events, we did not find the expected factor of ~4 more events. In addition to a larger data set, this work also includes an improved efficiency determination, improved likelihood analysis, and more thorough testing of systematic errors, especially with respect to the treatment of potential backgrounds to microlensing. We note that an important source of background are supernovae (SNe) in galaxies behind the LMC.

The Lesser Role of Starbursts in Star Formation at z = 2

Abstract: Two main modes of star formation are know to control the growth of galaxies: a relatively steady one in disk-like galaxies, defining a tight star formation rate (SFR)-stellar mass sequence, and a starburst mode in outliers to such a sequence which is generally interpreted as driven by merging. Such starburst galaxies are rare but have much higher SFRs, and it is of interest to establish the relative importance of these two modes. PACS/Herschel observations over the whole COSMOS and GOODS-South fields, in conjunction with previous optical/near-IR data, have allowed us to accurately quantify for the first time the relative contribution of the two modes to the global SFR density in the redshift interval 1.5 1000 M ☉ yr-1, off-sequence sources significantly contribute to the SFR density (46% ± 20%). We conclude that merger-driven starbursts play a relatively minor role in the formation of stars in galaxies, whereas they may represent a critical phase toward the quenching of star formation and morphological transformation in galaxies.