0000000000379923
AUTHOR
Nicholas A. Walton
The VST Photometric Hα Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+)
The VST Photometric Halpha Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+) is surveying the southern Milky Way in u, g, r, i and Halpha at 1 arcsec angular resolution. Its footprint spans the Galactic latitude range -5 < b < +5 at all longitudes south of the celestial equator. Extensions around the Galactic Centre to Galactic latitudes +/-10 bring in much of the Galactic Bulge. This ESO public survey, begun on 28th December 2011, reaches down to 20th magnitude (10-sigma) and will provide single-epoch digital optical photometry for around 300 million stars. The observing strategy and data pipelining is described, and an appraisal of the segmented narrowband Halpha filter in us…
Virtual atomic and molecular data centre
The Virtual Atomic and Molecular Data Centre (VAMDC, http://www.vamdc.eu) is a European Union funded collaboration between groups involved in the generation, evaluation, and use of atomic and molecular data. VAMDC aims to build a secure, documented, flexible and interoperable e-science environment-based interface to existing atomic and molecular data. The project will cover establishing the core consortium, the development and deployment of the infrastructure and the development of interfaces to the existing atomic and molecular databases. It will also provide a forum for training potential users and dissemination of expertise worldwide. This review describes the scope of the VAMDC project;…
A dust-enshrouded tidal disruption event with a resolved radio jet in a galaxy merger
Tidal disruption events (TDEs) are transient flares produced when a star is ripped apart by the gravitational field of a supermassive black hole (SMBH). We have observed a transient source in the western nucleus of the merging galaxy pair Arp 299 that radiated >1.5 × 10 erg at infrared and radio wavelengths but was not luminous at optical or x-ray wavelengths. We interpret this as a TDE with much of its emission reradiated at infrared wavelengths by dust. Efficient reprocessing by dense gas and dust may explain the difference between theoretical predictions and observed luminosities of TDEs. The radio observations resolve an expanding and decelerating jet, probing the jet formation and evol…