The X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) is a joint mission between the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA). In addition to the three space agencies, universities and research institutes from Japan, North America, and Europe have joined to contribute to developing satellite and onboard instruments, data-processing software, and the scientific observation program. XRISM is the successor to the ASTRO-H (Hitomi) mission, which ended prematurely in 2016. Its primary science goal is to examine astrophysical problems with precise, high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy. XRISM promises to discover new horizons in X-ray astronomy. It carries a 6 × 6 pixelized X-ray microcalorimeter on the focal plane of an X-ray mirror assembly (Resolve) and a co-aligned X-ray CCD camera (Xtend) that covers the same energy band over a large field of view. XRISM utilizes the Hitomi heritage, but all designs were reviewed. The attitude and orbit control system was improved in hardware and software. The spacecraft was launched from the JAXA Tanegashima Space Center on 2023 September 6 (UTC). During the in-orbit commissioning phase, the onboard components were activated. Although the gate valve protecting the Resolve sensor with a thin beryllium X-ray entrance window was not yet opened, scientific observation started in 2024 February with the planned performance verification observation program. The nominal observation program commenced with the following guest observation program beginning in 2024 September.
We present the first public data release (DR1) of the KMTNet Synoptic Survey of Southern Sky (KS4). This deep, wide-field imaging survey covers a southern footprint of -85$^{\circ}$ < Decl. < -28.8$^{\circ}$ in the $B$, $V$, $R$, and $I$ bands using a network of three 1.6-m telescopes. Although primarily designed to secure reference imaging for gravitational wave counterpart identification, DR1 delivers science-ready data for $\sim$4,000 deg$^{2}$ to enable a broad range of astrophysical research. The release includes deep co-added images reaching median 5$σ$ depths of 22.0-23.5 AB mag. It is accompanied by two source catalogs containing over 200 million sources with SNR $>5$: an $I$-band-selected forced-photometry catalog optimized for consistent colors, and a band-merged catalog offering enhanced completeness. Validation demonstrates robust data quality, characterized by mean astrometric offsets of $+0.054 \pm 0.129$ arcsec in RA and $-0.015 \pm 0.120$ arcsec in Dec relative to Gaia DR3. {\refbf Photometric uniformity for point sources is maintained within $\pm 0.03$ mag relative to Gaia XP for 97.5--99.8\% of the footprint across all four bands.} A key advantage of KS4 is its uniform and contiguous spatial coverage. It extends to fainter magnitudes than other uniform surveys while filling irregular gaps in existing deep datasets. All data products are publicly available via the CDS and NOIRLab's Astro Data Lab.
Abstract. The Resolve instrument onboard the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) consists of an array of 6×6 silicon-thermistor microcalorimeters cooled down to 50 mK and a high-throughput X-ray mirror assembly (XMA) with a focal length of 5.6 m. XRISM is a recovery mission of ASTRO-H/Hitomi, and the Resolve instrument is a rebuild of the ASTRO-H Soft X-ray spectrometer (SXS) and the Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT) that achieved energy resolution of ∼5 eV FWHM on orbit, with several important changes based on lessons learned from ASTRO-H. The flight models of the Dewar and the electronics boxes were fabricated, and the instrument test and calibration were conducted in 2021. By tuning the cryocooler frequencies, energy resolution better than 4.9 eV FWHM at 6 keV was demonstrated for all 36 pixels and high-resolution grade events, as well as energy-scale accuracy better than 2 eV up to 30 keV. The immunity of the detectors to microvibration, electrical conduction, and radiation was evaluated. The instrument was delivered to the spacecraft system in April 2022. The XMA was tested and calibrated separately. Its angular resolution is 1.27′, and the effective area of the mirror itself is 570 cm2 at 1 keV and 424 cm2 at 6 keV. We report the design and the major changes from the ASTRO-H SXS, the integration, and the results of the instrument test.
Alexis L. Quintana, Nicholas J. Wright, Juan Martínez García
OB stars are crucial for our understanding of Galactic structure, star formation, stellar feedback and multiplicity. In this paper we have compiled a census of all OB stars within 1 kpc of the Sun. We performed evolutionary and atmospheric model fits to observed spectral energy distributions (SEDs) compiled from astro-photometric survey data. We have characterized and mapped 24,706 O- and B-type stars ($T_{\rm eff} > 10,000$ K) within 1 kpc of the Sun, whose overdensities correspond to well-studied OB associations and massive star-forming regions such as Sco-Cen, Orion OB1, Vela OB2, Cepheus and Circinus. We have assessed the quality of our catalogue by comparing it with spectroscopic samples and similar catalogues of OB(A) stars, as well as catalogues of OB associations, star-forming regions and young open clusters. Finally, we have also exploited our list of OB stars to estimate their scale height (76 $\pm$ 1 pc), a local star formation rate of $2896^{+417}_{-1}$ M$_{\odot}$ Myr$^{-1}$ and a local core-collapse supernova rate of $\sim$15--30 per Myr. We extrapolate these rates to the entire Milky Way to derive a Galactic SFR of $0.67^{+0.09}_{-0.01}$ M$_{\odot}$ yr$^{-1}$ and a core-collapse supernova rate of 0.4--0.5 per century. These are slightly lower than previous estimates, which we attribute to improvements in our census of OB stars and changes to evolutionary models. We calculate a near-Earth core collapse supernova rate of $\sim$2.5 per Gyr that supports the view that nearby supernova explosions could have caused one or more of the recorded mass extinction events on Earth.
Philipp Denzel, Yann Billeter, Frank-Peter Schilling
et al.
We present the first systematic study of multi-domain map-to-map translation in galaxy formation simulations, leveraging deep generative models to predict diverse galactic properties. Using high-resolution magneto-hydrodynamical simulation data, we compare conditional generative adversarial networks and diffusion models under unified preprocessing and evaluation, optimizing architectures and attention mechanisms for physical fidelity on galactic scales. Our approach jointly addresses seven astrophysical domains - including dark matter, gas, neutral hydrogen, stellar mass, temperature, and magnetic field strength - while introducing physics-aware evaluation metrics that quantify structural realism beyond standard computer vision measures. We demonstrate that translation difficulty correlates with physical coupling, achieving near-perfect fidelity for mappings from gas to dark matter and mappings involving astro-chemical components such as total gas to HI content, while identifying fundamental challenges in weakly constrained tasks such as gas to stellar mass mappings. Our results establish GAN-based models as competitive counterparts to state-of-the-art diffusion approaches at a fraction of the computational cost (in training and inference), paving the way for scalable, physics-aware generative frameworks for forward modelling and observational reconstruction in the SKA era.
We report on the first measurement of the astrophysical neutrino flux using particle showers (cascades) in IceCube data from 2010 -- 2015. Assuming standard oscillations, the astrophysical neutrinos in this dedicated cascade sample are dominated ($\sim 90 \%$) by electron and tau flavors. The flux, observed in the energy range from $16\,\mathrm{TeV} $ to $2.6\,\mathrm{PeV}$, is consistent with a single power-law as expected from Fermi-type acceleration of high energy particles at astrophysical sources. We find the flux spectral index to be $\gamma=2.53\pm0.07$ and a flux normalization for each neutrino flavor of $\phi_{astro} = 1.66^{+0.25}_{-0.27}$ at $E_{0} = 100\, \mathrm{TeV}$. This flux of electron and tau neutrinos is in agreement with IceCube muon neutrino results and with all-neutrino flavor results. Results from fits assuming more complex neutrino flux models suggest a flux softening at high energies and a flux hardening at low energies (p-value $\ge 0.06$).
SPectra Analysis and Retrievable Catalog Lab (SPARCL) at NOIRLab's Astro Data Lab was created to efficiently serve large optical and infrared spectroscopic datasets. It consists of services, tools, example workflows and currently contains spectra for over 7.5 million stars, galaxies and quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey. We aim to eventually support the broad range of spectroscopic datasets that will be hosted at NOIRLab and beyond. Major elements of SPARCL include capabilities to discover and query for spectra based on parameters of interest, a fast web service that delivers desired spectra either individually or in bulk as well as documentation and example Jupyter Notebooks to empower users in their research. More information is available on the SPARCL website (https://astrosparcl.datalab.noirlab.edu).
The resolve instrument onboard the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) consists of an array of 6 × 6 silicon-thermistor microcalorimeters cooled down to 50 mK and a high-throughput x-ray mirror assembly (XMA) with a focal length of 5.6 m. XRISM is a recovery mission of ASTRO-H/Hitomi, and the Resolve instrument is a rebuild of the ASTRO-H soft x-ray spectrometer (SXS) and the Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT) that achieved energy resolution of ∼5 eV FWHM on orbit, with several important changes based on lessons learned from ASTRO-H. The flight models of the Dewar and the electronics boxes were fabricated and the instrument test and calibration were conducted in 2021. By tuning the cryocooler frequencies, energy resolution better than 4.9 eV FWHM at 6 keV was demonstrated for all 36 pixels and high resolution grade events, as well as energy-scale accuracy better than 2 eV up to 30 keV. The immunity of the detectors to microvibration, electrical conduction, and radiation was evaluated. The instrument was delivered to the spacecraft system in 2022-04 and is under the spacecraft system testing as of writing. The XMA was tested and calibrated separately. Its angular resolution is 1.27′ and the effective area of the mirror itself is 570 cm2 at 1 keV and 424 cm2 at 6 keV. We report the design and the major changes from the ASTRO-H SXS, the integration, and the results of the instrument test.
The aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the role of intraoperative radiation therapy with electrons (IOERT) in breast conserving therapy (BCT), both as partial breast irradiation (PBI) as well as anticipated boost ("IOERT-Boost"). For both applications, the criteria for patient selection, technical details/requirements, physical aspects and outcome data are presented. IOERT as PBI The largest evidence comes from Italian studies, especially the ELIOT randomized trial. Investigators showed that the rate of in-breast relapses (IBR) in the IOERT group was significantly greater than with whole breast irradiation (WBI), even when within the pre-specified equivalence margin. Tumour sizes > 2 cm, involved axillary nodes, Grade 3 and triple negative molecular subtypes emerged as statistically significant predictors of IBR. For patients at low risk for in-breast recurrence (ASTRO/ESTRO recommendations), full dose IOERT was isoeffective with standard WBI. Hence, several national guidelines now include this treatment strategy as one of the standard techniques for PBI in carefully selected patients. IOERT Boost The largest evidence for boost IOERT preceding WBI comes from pooled analyses performed by the European Group of the International Society of Intraoperative Radiation Therapy (ISIORT Europe), where single boost doses (mostly around 10 Gy) preceded whole-breast irradiation (WBI) with 50 Gy (conventional fractionation). At median follow-up periods up to ten years, local recurrence rates around 1% were observed for low risk tumours. Higher local relapse rates were described for grade 3 tumours, triple negative breast cancer as well as for patients treated after primary systemic therapy for locally advanced tumours. Even in this settings, long-term (> 5y) local tumour control rates beyond 95% were achieved. These encouraging results are interpreted as being attributable to utmost precision in dose delivery (by avoiding a "geographic and/or temporal miss"), and the possible radiobiological superiority of a single high dose fraction, compared to the conventionally fractionated boost. IOERT also showed favourable results in terms of cosmetic outcome, assumedly thanks to the small treated volumes combined with complete skin sparing.
Mattia Libralato, Daniel J. Lennon, Andrea Bellini
et al.
The presence of massive stars (MSs) in the region close to the Galactic Center (GC) poses several questions about their origin. The harsh environment of the GC favors specific formation scenarios, each of which should imprint characteristic kinematic features on the MSs. We present a 2D kinematic analysis of MSs in a GC region surrounding Sgr A* based on high-precision proper motions obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope. Thanks to a careful data reduction, well-measured bright stars in our proper-motion catalogs have errors better than 0.5 mas yr$^{-1}$. We discuss the absolute motion of the MSs in the field and their motion relative to Sgr A*, the Arches and the Quintuplet. For the majority of the MSs, we rule out any distance further than 3-4 kpc from Sgr A* using only kinematic arguments. If their membership to the GC is confirmed, most of the isolated MSs are likely not associated with either the Arches or Quintuplet clusters or Sgr A*. Only a few MSs have proper motions suggesting they are likely members of the Arches cluster, in agreement with previous spectroscopic results. Line-of-sight radial velocities and distances are required to shed further light on the origin of most of these massive objects. We also present an analysis of other fast-moving objects in the GC region, finding no clear excess of high-velocity escaping stars. We make our astro-photometric catalogs publicly available.
A. J. Tetarenko, E. W. Rosolowsky, J. C. A Miller-Jones
et al.
We present Atacama Large Millimeter/Sub-millimeter Array observations of the candidate jet-ISM interaction zones near the black hole X-ray binaries GRS 1758$-$258 and 1E 1740.7$-$2942. Using these data, we map the molecular line emission in the regions, detecting emission from the HCN [$J=1-0$], HCO$^+$ [$J=1-0$], SiO [$J=2-1$], CS [$J=2-1$], $^{13}$CO [$J=1-0$], C$^{18}$O [$J=1-0$], HNCO [$J=4_{0,4}-3_{0,3}$], HNCO [$J=5_{0,5}-4_{0,4}$], and CH$_3$OH [$J=2_{1,1}-1_{1,0}$] molecular transitions. Through examining the morphological, spectral, and kinematic properties of this emission, we identify molecular structures that may trace jet-driven cavities in the gas surrounding these systems. Our results from the GRS 1758$-$258 region in particular, are consistent with recent work, which postulated the presence of a jet-blown cocoon structure in deep radio continuum maps of the region. Using these newly discovered molecular structures as calorimeters, we estimate the time averaged jet power from these systems, finding $(1.1-5.7)\times10^{36}{\rm erg\,s}^{-1}$ over $0.12-0.31$ Myr for GRS 1758$-$258 and $(0.7-3.5)\times10^{37}{\rm erg\,s}^{-1}$ over $0.10-0.26$ Myr for 1E 1740.7$-$2942. Additionally, the spectral line characteristics of the detected emission place these molecular structures in the central molecular zone of our Galaxy, thereby constraining the distances to the black hole X-ray binaries to be $8.0\pm1.0$ kpc. Overall, our analysis solidifies the diagnostic capacity of molecular lines, and highlights how astro-chemistry can both identify jet-ISM interaction zones and probe jet feedback from Galactic X-ray binaries.
Dark sectors, consisting of new, light, weakly-coupled particles that do not interact with the known strong, weak, or electromagnetic forces, are a particularly compelling possibility for new physics. Nature may contain numerous dark sectors, each with their own beautiful structure, distinct particles, and forces. This review summarizes the physics motivation for dark sectors and the exciting opportunities for experimental exploration. It is the summary of the Intensity Frontier subgroup "New, Light, Weakly-coupled Particles" of the Community Summer Study 2013 (Snowmass). We discuss axions, which solve the strong CP problem and are an excellent dark matter candidate, and their generalization to axion-like particles. We also review dark photons and other dark-sector particles, including sub-GeV dark matter, which are theoretically natural, provide for dark matter candidates or new dark matter interactions, and could resolve outstanding puzzles in particle and astro-particle physics. In many cases, the exploration of dark sectors can proceed with existing facilities and comparatively modest experiments. A rich, diverse, and low-cost experimental program has been identified that has the potential for one or more game-changing discoveries. These physics opportunities should be vigorously pursued in the US and elsewhere.
Context. Ruprecht 147 is the oldest (2.5 Gyr) open cluster in the solar vicinity (< 300 pc), making it an important target for stellar evolution studies and exoplanet searches. Aims. Derive a census of members and the luminosity, mass, and spatial distributions of the cluster. Methods. We use an astro-photometric data set including all available information from the literature together with our own observations. We process the data with an updated version of an existent membership selection methodology. Results. We identify 259 high-probability candidate members, including 58 previously unreported. All these candidates cover the luminosity interval between G > 6 mag to i< 21 mag. The cluster luminosity and mass distributions are derived with an unprecedented level of details allowing us to recognize, among other features, the Wielen dip. The mass distribution in the low-mass regime drops sharply at 0.4 $M_{\odot}$ even though our data are sensitive to stellar masses down to 0.1 $M_{\odot}$, suggesting that most very-low-mass members left the cluster as the result of its dynamical evolution. In addition, the cluster is highly elongated (ellipticity $\sim$ 0.5) towards the galactic plane, and mass segregated. Conclusions. Our combined Gaia+DANCe data set allows us to obtain an extended list of cluster candidate members, and to derive luminosity, mass and projected spatial distributions in the oldest open cluster of the solar vicinity.
We present Lampray: a multi-group long characteristics ray tracing method for adaptive mesh radiation hydrodynamics in the Ramses code. It avoids diffusion, captures shadows, and treats colliding beams correctly, and therefore complements existing moment-based ray tracing in Ramses. Lampray includes different options for interpolation between ray and cell domain, and use either integral, Fourier, or an implicit method for hydrogen ionization to solve the radiative transfer. The opacity can either be tabulated or computed through a coupling to the general non-equilibrium astro-chemistry framework Krome. We use an H-He-C-O network with 36 species and 240 reactions to track the photo-chemistry in the interstellar medium across 6 and 10 orders of magnitude in temperature and density. Self-shielding prescriptions for H$_2$ and CO are used together with a new model for the diffuse interstellar UV-field. We also track the dust temperature, formation of H$_2$ on grains, and H$_2$O and CO ices in detail. Lampray is tested against standard benchmarks for molecular cloud and star formation simulations, including the formation of a Strömgren sphere, the expansion of an ionization front, the photo-evaporation of a dense clump, and the H-He-C-O chemistry in a static photo-dissociation front. Efficient parallelisation is achieved with a separate domain decomposition for rays where points along a ray reside in the same memory space, and data movement from cell- to ray-domain is done with a direct hash-table lookup algorithm. Point sources are treated without splitting rays, and therefore the method currently only scales to a few point sources, while diffuse radiation has excellent scaling.
Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 000, 1–12 (2015) Printed 27 August 2015 (MN L A TEX style file v2.2) Taking Care of Business in a Flash E: Constraining the Timescale for Low-Mass Satellite Quenching with ELVIS arXiv:1503.06803v2 [astro-ph.GA] 25 Aug 2015 Sean P. Fillingham, 1? Michael C. Cooper, 1 † Coral Wheeler, 1 Shea Garrison-Kimmel, 1 Michael Boylan-Kolchin, 2 James S. Bullock 1 Center for Cosmology, Department of Physics and Astronomy, 4129 Reines Hall, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697 of Astronomy and Joint Space-Science Institute, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-2421 2 Department 27 August 2015 ABSTRACT The vast majority of dwarf satellites orbiting the Milky Way and M31 are quenched, while comparable galaxies in the field are gas-rich and star-forming. Assuming that this dichotomy is driven by environmental quenching, we use the ELVIS suite of N -body simulations to constrain the characteristic timescale upon which satellites must quench following infall into the virial volumes of their hosts. The high satellite quenched fraction observed in the Local Group demands an extremely short quenching timescale (∼ 2 Gyr) for dwarf satellites in the mass range M ? ∼ 10 6 − 10 8 M . This quenching timescale is significantly shorter than that required to explain the quenched fraction of more massive satellites (∼ 8 Gyr), both in the Local Group and in more massive host halos, suggesting a dramatic change in the dominant satellite quenching mechanism at M ? . 10 8 M . Combining our work with the results of complementary analyses in the literature, we conclude that the suppression of star formation in massive satellites (M ? ∼ 10 8 − 10 11 M ) is broadly consistent with being driven by starvation, such that the satellite quenching timescale corresponds to the cold gas depletion time. Below a critical stellar mass scale of ∼ 10 8 M , however, the required quenching times are much shorter than the expected cold gas depletion times. Instead, quenching must act on a timescale comparable to the dynamical time of the host halo. We posit that ram-pressure stripping can naturally explain this behavior, with the critical mass (of M ? ∼ 10 8 M ) corresponding to halos with gravitational restoring forces that are too weak to overcome the drag force encountered when moving through an extended, hot circumgalactic medium. Key words: Local Group – galaxies: formation – galaxies: evolution – galaxies: dwarf – galaxies: star formation INTRODUCTION Foremost among the results of galaxy surveys over the last decade has been the realization that the galaxy population at z . 2 is bimodal in nature (e.g. Strateva et al. 2001; Baldry et al. 2004; Bell et al. 2004; Cooper et al. 2006). That is, galaxies both locally and out to intermediate red- shift are effectively described as one of two distinct types: red, early-type galaxies lacking significant star formation and blue, late-type galaxies with active star formation. In color-magnitude space, the red galaxies populate a tight re- lation (often called the red sequence), while the distribu- tion of blue galaxies is more scattered (sometimes referred to as the blue cloud). While the red and blue populations ? e-mail: sfilling@uci.edu † e-mail: cooper@uci.edu c 2015 RAS comprise approximately equal portions of the cosmic stellar mass budget at z ∼ 1, galaxies on the red sequence domi- nate today, following a growth in stellar mass within the red population of roughly a factor of 2 over the past 7 Gyr (Bell et al. 2004; Bundy et al. 2006; Faber et al. 2007; Brown et al. 2007). Despite uncertainty regarding the particular physical process(es) at play, the suppression (or quenching) of star formation in blue galaxies, thereby making them red, is one of the principal drivers of this dramatic growth in the num- ber density of quiescent systems at late cosmic time. At both low and intermediate redshift, the local envi- ronment of a galaxy is known to be well-correlated with the suppression of star formation, such that passive or quies- cent galaxies preferentially live in higher-density environ- ments (Balogh et al. 2004; Kauffmann et al. 2004; Blanton et al. 2005; Cooper et al. 2006, 2007, 2010a). While the stel-
Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are complex phenomena. At the heart of an AGN is a relativistic accretion disk around a spinning supermassive black hole (SMBH) with an X-ray emitting corona and, sometimes, a relativistic jet. On larger scales, the outer accretion disk and molecular torus act as the reservoirs of gas for the continuing AGN activity. And on all scales from the black hole outwards, powerful winds are seen that probably affect the evolution of the host galaxy as well as regulate the feeding of the AGN itself. In this review article, we discuss how X-ray spectroscopy can be used to study each of these components. We highlight how recent measurements of the high-energy cutoff in the X-ray continuum by NuSTAR are pushing us to conclude that X-ray coronae are radiatively-compact and have electron temperatures regulated by electron-positron pair production. We show that the predominance of rapidly-rotating objects in current surveys of SMBH spin is entirely unsurprising once one accounts for the observational selection bias resulting from the spin-dependence of the radiative efficiency. We review recent progress in our understanding of fast (v~0.1-0.3c), highly-ionized (mainly visible in FeXXV and FeXXVI lines), high-column density winds that may dominate quasar-mode galactic feedback. Finally, we end with a brief look forward to the promise of Astro-H and future X-ray spectropolarimeters.