## astro-ph coffee suggested papers for Thu, Oct 06, 2011 at 03:00:00 PM

astro-ph coffee will be held at the date and time above in the PAB 3rd-floor reading room. Some suggested papers of interest are listed below.

4 Oct 2011

We report on the discovery of cool gas inflow toward six star-forming galaxies with redshifts z ~ 0.35 - 1. Analysis of MgII and FeII resonance-line absorption in Keck/LRIS spectroscopy of this sample reveals velocity shifts of 80 - 200 km/s and equivalent widths for inflowing gas of >~ 0.6 Ang in five of the six objects. The host galaxies exhibit a wide range in star formation rates (SFR ~ 1 - 40 M_sun/yr) and have stellar masses similar to that of the Milky Way (log M_*/M_sun ~ 9.6 - 10.5)...

3 Oct 2011

Theoretical and numerical modeling of dark-matter halo assembly predicts that the most luminous galaxies at high redshift are surrounded by overdensities of fainter companions. We test this prediction with HST observations acquired by our Brightest of Reionizing Galaxies (BoRG) survey, which identified four very bright z~8 candidates as Y-dropout sources in four of the 23 non-contiguous WFC3 fields observed. We extend here the search for Y-dropouts to fainter luminosities (M_* galaxies with M_A...

3 Oct 2011

We present measurements of the intergalactic medium (IGM) temperature within ~5 proper Mpc of seven luminous quasars at z~6. The constraints are obtained from the Doppler widths of Lyman-alpha absorption lines in the quasar near-zones and build upon our previous measurement for the z=6.02 quasar SDSS J0818+1722. The expanded data set, combined with an improved treatment of systematic uncertainties, yields an average temperature at the mean density of log (T_0/K) = 4.21 \pm 0.03 (\pm^0.06_0.07) ...

3 Oct 2011

We analyze subhalos in the Via Lactea II (VL2) cosmological simulation to look for correlations among their infall times and z = 0 dynamical properties. We find that the present day orbital energy is tightly correlated with the time at which subhalos last crossed into the virial radius. This energy-infall correlation provides a means to infer infall times for Milky Way satellite galaxies. Assuming that the Milky Way's assembly can be modeled by VL2, we show that the infall times of some satelli...

4 Oct 2011

We report the first-ever discovery of an extragalactic Wolf-Rayet (WR)star with Spitzer. A new WR star in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) was revealed via detection of its circumstellar shell using 24 {\mu}m images obtained in the framework of the Spitzer Survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud (SAGE-LMC). Subsequent spectroscopic bservations with the Gemini South resolved the central star in two components, one of which is a WN3b+abs star, while the second one is a B0V star. We consider the lops...

Web Article:

3 Oct 2011

We present the preliminary analysis of over 1739 known and 349 candidate Jovian Trojans observed by the NEOWISE component of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). With this survey the available diameters, albedos and beaming parameters for the Jovian Trojans have been increased by more than an order of magnitude compared to previous surveys. We find that the Jovian Trojan population is very homogenous for sizes larger than $\sim10$km (close to the detection limit of WISE for these obj...

30 Sep 2011

Modeling molecular absorption by Earth's atmosphere is important for a wide range of astronomical observations, including broadband NIR photometry and high-resolution NIR spectroscopy. Using a line-by-line radiative transfer approach, we calculate theoretical transmission spectra in the deep red optical (700 to 1050 nm) for Apache Point Observatory. In this region the spectrum is dominated by H2O, which is known to be highly variable in concentration on short timescales. We fit our telluric mod...

2 Oct 2011

We show that OPERA recent results showing an apparent superluminal velocity of muonic neutrinos can find a very simple explanation without any measurement error or any strange physics. Namely, it is enough that the beam composition varies during the leading and the trailing edges to explain an apparent time shift in the detected neutrinos. The order of magnitude of the shift will be the relative variation of the average cross-section times the rising/decaying time, and even a modest change in t...

30 Sep 2011

The Baldwin, Phillips, and Terlevich emission-line ratio diagnostic ([OIII]/H{\beta} versus [NII]/H{\alpha}, hereafter BPT diagram) efficiently separates galaxies whose signal is dominated by star formation <BPT-SF> from those dominated by AGN activity (BPT-AGN). Yet this BPT diagram is limited to z < 0.5, the redshift at which [NII]{\lambda}6584 leaves the optical spectral window. Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), we construct a new diagnostic, or TBT diagram, that is based o...

29 Sep 2011

The NEOWISE dataset offers the opportunity to study the variations in albedo for asteroid classification schemes based on visible and near-infrared observations for a large sample of minor planets. We have determined the albedos for nearly 1900 asteroids classified by the Tholen, Bus and Bus-DeMeo taxonomic classification schemes. We find that the S-complex spans a broad range of bright albedos, partially overlapping the low albedo C-complex at small sizes. As expected, the X-complex covers a w...

29 Sep 2011

With the NEOWISE portion of the \emph{Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer} (WISE) project, we have carried out a highly uniform survey of the near-Earth object (NEO) population at thermal infrared wavelengths ranging from 3 to 22 $\mu$m, allowing us to refine estimates of their numbers, sizes, and albedos. The NEOWISE survey detected NEOs the same way whether they were previously known or not, subject to the availability of ground-based follow-up observations, resulting in the discovery of more...

28 Sep 2011

The Pan-STARRS 1 (PS1) survey of M31 (PAndromeda) is designed to identify gravitational microlensing events, caused by bulge and disk stars (self-lensing) and by compact matter in the halos of M31 and the Milky Way (halo lensing, or lensing by MACHOs). With the 7 deg2 FOV of PS1, the entire disk of M31 can be imaged with one single pointing. Our aim is to monitor M31 with this wide FOV with daily sampling (20 mins/day). In the 2010 season we acquired in total 91 nights towards M31, with 90 nigh...

astroph.py v0.91ijc based on the original astroph.py. Updated 2011/10/06 10:36:41