| 1. |
- Calamida, Annalisa, et al.
(författare)
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The Not so Simple Stellar System ω Cen. II. Evidence in Support of a Merging Scenario
- 2020
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal. - : American Astronomical Society. - 0004-637X .- 1538-4357. ; 891:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present multiband photometry covering ∼5° × 5° across ω Cen collected with the Dark Energy Camera on the 4 m Blanco telescope, combined with Hubble Space Telescope and Wide Field Imager data for the central regions. The unprecedented photometric accuracy and field coverage allows us to confirm the different spatial distribution of blue and red main-sequence stars, and of red giant branch (RGB) stars with different metallicities. The ratio of the number of blue to red main-sequence stars shows that the blue main-sequence stellar subpopulation has a more extended spatial distribution compared to the red main-sequence one, with the frequency of blue main-sequence stars increasing at a distance of ∼20′ from ω Cen's center. Similarly, the more metal-rich RGB stars show a more extended spatial distribution compared to the more metal-poor ones in the outskirts of the cluster. Moreover, the centers of the distributions of metal-rich and metal-poor RGB stars are shifted in different directions with respect to the geometrical center of ω Cen. We constructed stellar density profiles for the blue and red main-sequence stars; they show that the blue main-sequence stellar subpopulation has a more extended spatial distribution compared to the red main-sequence one in the outskirts of ω Cen, confirming the results based on the number ratio. We also computed the ellipticity profile of ω Cen, which has a maximum value of 0.16 at a distance of ∼8′ from the center, and a minimum of 0.05 at ∼30′; the average ellipticity is ∼0.10. The circumstantial evidence presented in this work suggests a merging scenario for the formation of the peculiar stellar system ω Cen.
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| 2. |
- Robberto, Massimo, et al.
(författare)
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An HST Study of the Substellar Population of NGC 2024
- 2024
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal. - 1538-4357 .- 0004-637X. ; 960:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We performed an HST/WFC3-IR imaging survey of the young stellar cluster NGC 2024 in three filters probing the 1.4 mu m H2O absorption feature, characteristic of the population of low-mass and substellar-mass objects down to a few Jupiter masses. We detect 812 point sources, 550 of them in all three filters with signal-to-noise ratio greater than 5. Using a distance-independent two-color diagram, we determine extinction values as high as A V similar or equal to 40. We also find that the change of effective wavelengths in our filters results in higher A V values as the reddening increases. Reconstructing a dereddened color-magnitude diagram, we derive a luminosity histogram both for the full sample of candidate cluster members and for an extinction-limited subsample containing the 50% of sources with A V less than or similar to 15. Assuming a standard extinction law like Cardelli et al. with a nominal R V = 3.1, we produce a luminosity function in good agreement with the one resulting from a Salpeter-like initial mass function for a 1 Myr isochrone. There is some evidence of an excess of luminous stars in the most embedded region. We posit that the correlation may be due to those sources being younger, and therefore overluminous, than the more evolved and less extincted cluster's stars. We compare our classification scheme based on the depth of the 1.4 mu m photometric feature with the results from the spectroscopic survey of Levine et al., and we report a few peculiar sources and morphological features typical of the rich phenomenology commonly encountered in young star-forming regions.
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| 3. |
- Robberto, Massimo, et al.
(författare)
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HST Survey of the Orion Nebula Cluster in the H2O 1.4 μm Absorption Band. I. A Census of Substellar and Planetary-mass Objects
- 2020
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal. - : American Astronomical Society. - 1538-4357 .- 0004-637X. ; 896:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In order to obtain a complete census of the stellar and substellar population, down to a few MJup in the ∼1 Myr old Orion Nebula Cluster, we used the infrared channel of the Wide Field Camera 3 of the Hubble Space Telescope with the F139M and F130N filters. These bandpasses correspond to the 1.4 μm H2O absorption feature and an adjacent line-free continuum region. Out of 4504 detected sources, 3352 (about 75%) appear fainter than m 130 = 14 (Vega mag) in the F130N filter, a brightness corresponding to the hydrogen-burning limit mass (M ≃ 0.072 M⊙) at ∼1 Myr. Of these, however, only 742 sources have a negative F130M-F139N color index, indicative of the presence of H2O vapor in absorption, and can therefore be classified as bona fide M and L dwarfs, with effective temperatures T ≲ 2850 K at an assumed 1 Myr cluster age. On our color-magnitude diagram (CMD), this population of sources with H2O absorption appears clearly distinct from the larger background population of highly reddened stars and galaxies with positive F130M-F139N color index and can be traced down to the sensitivity limit of our survey, m 130 ≃ 21.5, corresponding to a 1 Myr old ≃3 MJup planetary-mass object under about 2 mag of visual extinction. Theoretical models of the BT-Settl family predicting substellar isochrones of 1, 2, and 3 Myr down to ∼1 MJup fail to reproduce the observed H2O color index at M ≲ 20 MJup. We perform a Bayesian analysis to determine extinction, mass, and effective temperature of each substellar member of our sample, together with its membership probability.
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