| 1. |
- Kessler, R., et al.
(author)
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Models and Simulations for the Photometric LSST Astronomical Time Series Classification Challenge (PLAsTiCC)
- 2019
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In: Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. - : IOP Publishing. - 0004-6280 .- 1538-3873. ; 131:1003
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We describe the simulated data sample for the Photometric Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) Astronomical Time Series Classification Challenge (PLAsTiCC), a publicly available challenge to classify transient and variable events that will be observed by the LSST, a new facility expected to start in the early 2020s. The challenge was hosted by Kaggle, ran from 2018 September 28 to December 17, and included 1094 teams competing for prizes. Here we provide details of the 18 transient and variable source models, which were not revealed until after the challenge, and release the model libraries at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2612896. We describe the LSST Operations Simulator used to predict realistic observing conditions, and we describe the publicly available SNANA simulation code used to transform the models into observed fluxes and uncertainties in the LSST passbands (ugrizy). Although PLAsTiCC has finished, the publicly available models and simulation tools are being used within the astronomy community to further improve classification, and to study contamination in photometrically identified samples of SN Ia used to measure properties of dark energy. Our simulation framework will continue serving as a platform to improve the PLAsTiCC models, and to develop new models.
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| 2. |
- Gromadzki, M., et al.
(author)
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Discovery and follow-up of the unusual nuclear transient OGLE17aaj
- 2019
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In: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 622
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Aims. We report on the discovery and follow-up of a peculiar transient, OGLE17aaj, which occurred in the nucleus of a weakly active galaxy. We investigate whether it can be interpreted as a new candidate for a tidal disruption event (TDE).Methods. We present the OGLE-IV light curve that covers the slow 60-day-long rise to maximum along with photometric, spectro-scopic, and X-ray follow-up during the first year.Results. OGLE17aaj is a nuclear transient exhibiting some properties similar to previously found TDEs, including a long rise time, lack of colour-temperature evolution, and high black-body temperature. On the other hand, its narrow emission lines and slow post-peak evolution are different from previously observed TDEs. Its spectrum and light-curve evolution is similar to F01004-2237 and AT 2017bgt. Signatures of historical low-level nuclear variability suggest that OGLE17aaj may instead be related to a new type of accretion event in active super-massive black holes.
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| 3. |
- Dan, M., et al.
(author)
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Thermonuclear detonations ensuing white dwarf mergers
- 2015
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In: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 454:4, s. 4411-4428
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The merger of two white dwarfs (WDs) has for many years not been considered as the favoured model for the progenitor system of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). But recent years have seen a change of opinion as a number of studies, both observational and theoretical, have concluded that they should contribute significantly to the observed SN Ia rate. In this paper, we study the ignition and propagation of detonation through post-merger remnants and we follow the resulting nucleosynthesis up to the point where a homologous expansion is reached. In our study we cover the entire range of WD masses and compositions. For the emergence of a detonation we study three different setups. The first two are guided by the merger remnants from our earlier simulations, while for the third one the ignitions were set by placing hotspots with properties determined by spatially resolved calculations taken from the literature. There are some caveats to our approach which we investigate. We carefully compare the nucleosynthetic yields of successful explosions with SN Ia observations. Only three of our models are consistent with all the imposed constraints and potentially lead to a standard Type Ia event. The first one, a 0.45 M-circle dot helium (He) + 0.9 M-circle dot carbon-oxygen (CO) WD system produces a sub-luminous, SN 1991bg-like event while the other two, a 0.45M(circle dot) He+1.1 M-circle dot oxygen-neon WD system and a 1.05 + 1.05 M-circle dot system with two CO WDs, are good candidates for common SNe Ia.
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| 4. |
- Gafton, Emanuel, et al.
(author)
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Relativistic effects on tidal disruption kicks of solitary stars
- 2015
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In: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 449:1, s. 771-780
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Solitary stars that wander too close to their galactic centres can become tidally disrupted, if the tidal forces due to the supermassive black hole residing there overcome the self-gravity of the star. If the star is only partially disrupted, so that a fraction survives as a self-bound object, this remaining core will experience a net gain in specific orbital energy, which translates into a velocity 'kick' of up to similar to 10(3) km s(-1). In this paper, we present the result of smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of such partial disruptions, and analyse the velocity kick imparted on the surviving core. We compare gamma = 5/3 and gamma = 4/3 polytropes disrupted in both a Newtonian potential, and a generalized potential that reproduces most relativistic effects around a Schwarzschild black hole either exactly or to excellent precision. For the Newtonian case, we confirm the results of previous studies that the kick velocity of the surviving core is virtually independent of the ratio of the black hole to stellar mass, and is a function of the impact parameter beta alone, reaching at most the escape velocity of the original star. For a given beta, relativistic effects become increasingly important for larger black holemasses. In particular, we find that the kick velocity increases with the black hole mass, making larger kicks more common than in the Newtonian case, as low-beta encounters are statistically more likely than high-beta encounters. The analysis of the tidal tensor for the generalized potential shows that our results are robust lower limits on the true relativistic kick velocities, and are generally in very good agreement with the exact results.
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| 5. |
- Ginsburg, Adam, et al.
(author)
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astroquery: An Astronomical Web-querying Package in Python
- 2019
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In: Astronomical Journal. - : American Astronomical Society. - 1538-3881 .- 0004-6256. ; 157:3
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Astroquery is a collection of tools for requesting data from databases hosted on remote servers with interfaces exposed on the Internet, including those with web pages but without formal application program interfaces. These tools are built on the Python requests package, which is used to make HTTP requests, and astropy, which provides most of the data parsing functionality. astroquery modules generally attempt to replicate the web page interface provided by a given service as closely as possible, making the transition from browser-based to command-line interaction easy. astroquery has received significant contributions from throughout the astronomical community, including several from telescope archives. astroquery enables the creation of fully reproducible workflows from data acquisition through publication. This paper describes the philosophy, basic structure, and development model of the astroquery package. The complete documentation for astroquery can be found at http://astroquery.readthedocs.io/.
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