Understanding stellar evolution and its effect on planetary systems is crucial for correctly interpreting the chemical constraints of exo-planetary material that can be given to us by white dwarfs. This article will describe how asteroids, moons, and comets, as well as boulders, pebbles and dust, evolve into eventual targets for chemical spectroscopy, and how planets and companion stars play a vital role in reshaping system architectures for this purpose.
The detection of Type I X-ray bursts is attributed to those seen by the Astronomical Netherlands Satellite (ANS) in September 1975 from the globular cluster NGC6624 containing the X-ray source 4U1820-303. I revisit these X-ray bursts, by re-analysing data from the Soft X-ray Experiment (SXX) onboard ANS, which were stored on microfiche. Earlier accounts of X-ray bursts had been reported; the first Type I X-ray burst recorded is the one observed by Vela 5B from Cen X-4 in July 1969.
Jean-Marie Malherbe, Florence Cornu, Isabelle Bualé
Systematic observations of the chromosphere and the photosphere started in Meudon Observatory 115 years ago with Deslandres spectroheliograph. An exceptional collection of more than 100 000 monochromatic images in CaII K and H$α$ spanning more than 10 solar cycles is proposed to the international community by the BASS2000 solar database. We started in 2023 a ''PRO-AM'' collaboration between professional and amateur astronomers with the Solar Explorer (SOLEX), a compact and high quality spectroheliograph designed by Christian Buil, in order to record images every day, and several times per day, owing to tens of observing stations in various places. This paper summarizes the scientific objectives and provides practical and technical information to amateurs willing to join the observing network.
In this conference proceeding, we review important theoretical developments related to the production of strangeness in astrophysics. This includes its effects in supernova explosions, neutron stars, and compact-star mergers. We also discuss in detail how the presence of net strangeness affects the deconfinement to quark matter, expected to take place at large densities and/or temperatures. We conclude that a complete description of dense matter containing hyperons and strange quarks is fundamental for the understanding of modern high-energy astrophysics.
As it has already done for Earth, the sun, and the stars, seismology has the potential to radically change the way the interiors of giant planets are studied. In a sequence of events foreseen by only a few, observations of Saturn's rings by the Cassini spacecraft have rapidly broken ground on giant planet seismology. Gravity directly couples the planet's normal mode oscillations to the orbits of ring particles, generating spiral waves whose frequencies encode Saturn's internal structure and rotation. These modes have revealed a stably stratified region near Saturn's center, and provided a new constraint on Saturn's rotation.
To cope with the telemetry limitations, the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager on Solar Orbiter does full on-board data processing. Metadata are central to the autonomous processing flow, crucial for providing science ready data sets to the community, as well as important in the blind debugging process that will occur in the commissioning phase. We designed a custom metadata logging system for SO/PHI. This paper shows how the logged information is used in the blind debugging scenario.
Carl L. Gardner, Jeremiah R. Jones, Perry B. Vargas
We outline a general procedure for simulating the surface brightness of astrophysical jets (and other astronomical objects) by post-processing gas dynamical simulations of densities and temperatures using spectral line emission data from the astrophysical spectral synthesis package {\em Cloudy}. Then we validate the procedure by comparing the simulated surface brightness of the HH~30 astrophysical jet in the forbidden [O~I], [N~II], and [S~II] doublets with {\em Hubble Space Telescope}\/ observations of Hartigan and Morse and multiple-ion magnetohydrodynamic simulations of Tesileanu et al. The general trend of our simulated surface brightness in each doublet using the gas dynamical/{\em Cloudy}\/ approach is in excellent agreement with the observational data.
Magnetic interactions between a planet and its environment are known to lead to phenomena such as aurorae and shocks in the solar system. The large number of close-in exoplanets that were discovered triggered a renewed interest in magnetic interactions in star-planet systems. Multiple other magnetic effects were then unveiled, such as planet inflation or heating, planet migration, planetary material escape, and even modification of the host star properties. We review here the recent efforts in modelling and understanding magnetic interactions between stars and planets in the context of compact systems. We first provide simple estimates of the effects of magnetic interactions and then detail analytical and numerical models for different representative scenarii. We finally lay out a series of future developments that are needed today to better understand and constrain these fascinating interactions.
We aim at finding the value of an explanatory variable, through its expression in a large data-vector, without knowing the link function between the explanatory variable and the data-space. Sliced Inverse Regression (SIR) method allows for the projection of a data-vector onto a subspace consistent with the explanatory variable variation. We suggest a method based on the SIR subspace, that gives the most efficient estimation of an unknown explanatory variable.
Mark Veyette, Philip Muirhead, Zachary Hall
et al.
We present an updated optical and mechanical design of NEWS: the Near-infrared Echelle for Wide-band Spectroscopy (formerly called HiJaK: the High-resolution J, H and K spectrometer), a compact, high-resolution, near-infrared spectrometer for 5-meter class telescopes. NEWS provides a spectral resolution of 60,000 and covers the full 0.8-2.5 micron range in 5 modes. We adopt a compact, lightweight, monolithic design and developed NEWS to be mounted to the instrument cube at the Cassegrain focus of the the new 4.3-meter Discovery Channel Telescope.
We provide a general analysis on the properties of emitting material of some rapidly evolving and luminous transients discovered recently with the Pan-STARRS1 Medium Deep Survey. It is found that these transients are probably produced by a low-mass non-relativistic outflow that is continuously powered by a newly born, rapidly spinning, and highly magnetized neutron star. Such a system could originate from an accretion-induced collapse of a white dwarf or a merger of a neutron star-neutron star binary. Therefore, observations to these transients would be helpful for constraining white dwarf and neutron star physics and/or for searching and identifying gravitational wave signals from the mergers.
A circumstellar corona is proposed for a strange quark-cluster star during an accretion phase, that could be essential to understand the observations of the puzzling symbiotic X-ray system, 4U 1700+24. The state of cold matter at supranuclear density is still an important matter of debate, and one of the certain consequences of strange star as the nature of pulsars is the self-bound on surface which makes extremely low-mass compact objects unavoidable. In principle, both the redshifted O VIII Ly-$α$ emission line and the change of the black-body radiation area could be understood naturally if 4U 1700+24 is a low-mass quark-cluster star in case of wind-accretion.
We demonstrate that stability of r-modes in young rapidly rotating pulsars might be explained if one takes into account strong medium modifications of the nucleon-nucleon interaction because of the softening of pionic degrees of freedom in dense nucleon matter. Presence of the efficient direct Urca processes is not required. Within our model the most rapidly rotating observed young pulsar PSR J0537-6910 should have the mass $\geq 1.8M_{\odot}$.
We consider the problem of convergence in stratified isothermal shearing boxes with zero net magnetic flux. We present results with the highest resolution to-date--up to 200 grid-point per pressure scale height--that show no clear evidence of convergence. Rather, the Maxwell stresses continue to decrease with increasing resolution. We propose some possible scenarios to explain the lack of convergence based on multi-layer dynamo systems.
J. -F. Desmurs, V. Bujarrabal, M. Lindqvist
et al.
We present the results of SiO maser observations at 43GHz toward two AGB stars using the VLBA. Our preliminary results on the relative positions of the different J=1-0 SiO masers (v=1,2 and 3) indicate that the current ideas on SiO maser pumping could be wrong at some fundamental level. A deep revision of the SiO pumping models could be necessary.
Abstract The differential operator of the monochromatic polarized radiative transfer equation is studied in case of statistically homogeneous turbid medium in Euclidean three-dimensional space, with arbitrary curvilinear coordinate system defined in it. An apparent rotation of the polarization plane along the light ray with respect to the chosen polarization reference plane generally takes place, due to purely geometric reasons. Using methods of tensor analysis, analytic expressions for the differential operator of the transfer equation depending on the components of the metric tensor and their derivatives are found. Considerable simplifications take place if the coordinate system is orthogonal. As an example, the differential operator of the vector radiative transfer equation in both elliptical conical coordinate system and oblate spheroidal coordinate system is written down. Nonstandard parameterization of standard elliptical conical coordinate system is proposed.
Up to now, planet search programs have concentrated on main sequence stars later than spectral type F5. However, identifying planets of early type stars would be interesting. For example, the mass loss of planets orbiting early and late type stars is different because of the differences of the EUV and X-ray radiation of the host stars. As an initial step, we carried out a program to identify suitable A-stars in the CoRoT fields using spectra taken with the AAOmega spectrograph. In total we identified 562 A-stars in IRa01, LRa01, and LRa02.
One of the challenges for stellar astrophysics is to reach the point at which we can undertake reliable spectral synthesis of unresolved populations in young, star-forming galaxies at high redshift. Here I summarise recent studies of massive stars in the Galaxy and Magellanic Clouds, which span a range of metallicities commensurate with those in high-redshift systems, thus providing an excellent laboratory in which to study the role of environment on stellar evolution. I also give an overview of observations of luminous supergiants in external galaxies out to a remarkable 6.7 Mpc, in which we can exploit our understanding of stellar evolution to study the chemistry and dynamics of the host systems.