Search results for " Instrumentation."
showing 10 items of 712 documents
Recent GRBs observed with the 1.23m CAHA telescope and the status of its upgrade
2010
We report on optical observations of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) followed up by our collaboration with the 1.23m telescope located at the Calar Alto observatory. The 1.23m telescope is an old facility, currently undergoing upgrades to enable fully autonomous response to GRB alerts. We discuss the current status of the control system upgrade of the 1.23m telescope. The upgrade is being done by our group based on the Remote Telescope System, 2nd Version (RTS2), which controls the available instruments and interacts with the EPICS database of Calar Alto. (Our group is called ARAE (Robotic Astronomy & High-Energy Astrophysics) and is based on members of IAA (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía). …
Partial stellar tidal disruption events and their rates
2023
Tidal disruption events (TDEs) of stars operated by massive black holes (MBHs) will be detected in thousands by upcoming facilities such as the Vera Rubin Observatory. In this work, we assess the rates of standard total TDEs, destroying the entire star, and partial TDEs, in which a stellar remnant survives the interaction, by solving 1-D Fokker-Planck equations. Our rate estimates are based on a novel definition of the loss cone whose size is commensurate to the largest radius at which partial disruptions can occur, as motivated by relativistic hydrodynamical simulations. Our novel approach unveils two important results. First, partial TDEs can be more abundant than total disruptions by a f…
Classification of the core-collapse supernova explosion mechanism with learned dictionaries
2021
Core-collapse supernovae (CCSN) are a prime source of gravitational waves. Estimations of their typical frequencies make them perfect targets for the current network of advanced, ground-based detectors. A successful detection could potentially reveal the underlying explosion mechanism through the analysis of the waveform. This has been illustrated using the SupernovaModel Evidence Extractor (SMEE; Logue et al. (2012)), an algorithm based on principal-component analysis and Bayesian model selection. Here, we present a complementary approach to SMEE based on (supervised) dictionary-learning and show that it is able to reconstruct and classify CCSN signals according to their morphology. Our wa…
A note on some discrepancies in convolution models in X-ray spectral analysis
2021
Convolution models are powerful tools in many fields of spectral and image analysis owing to their wide applicability, and X-ray astrophysical spectral analysis is no exception. We found that relativistically broadened Fe K${\alpha}$ line profiles obtained through many convolution models both within and without Xspec show deviations from the profiles produced by their non-convolution counterparts. These discrepancies depend on the energy grid considered and on the shape of both the kernel and the underlying spectrum, but can reach as high as 10% of the flux in certain energy bins. We believe that this effect should be taken into consideration, considering how often these models are used to …
Validation of high voltage power supplies for the 1-inch photomultipliers of AugerPrime, the Pierre Auger Observatory upgrade
2022
In the framework of the upgrade of the Pierre Auger Observatory, a new high voltage module is being employed for the power supply of the 1-inch photomultiplier added to each water-Cherenkov detector of the surface array with the aim of increasing the dynamic range of the measurements. This module is located in a dedicated box near the electronics and comprises a low consumption DC-DC converter hosted inside an aluminum box. All the modules have undergone specific tests to verify their reliability in the extreme environmental conditions of the Argentinian pampa. In this paper, we describe the validation procedure and the facility developed to this aim. The successful results of the tests on …
Four Years of Real-Time GRB Followup by BOOTES-1B (2005–2008)
2010
Four years of BOOTES-1B GRB follow-up history are summarised for the first time in the form of a table. The successfully followed events are described case by case. Further, the data are used to show the GRB trigger rate in Spain on a per-year basis, resulting in an estimate of 18 triggers and about 51 hours of telescope time per year for real-time triggers. These numbers grow to about 22 triggers and 77 hours per year if we include also the GRBs observable within 2 hours after the trigger. Copyright © 2010 Martin Jelínek et al.
Computational general relativistic force-free electrodynamics
2021
Scientific codes are an indispensable link between theory and experiment; in (astro-)plasma physics, such numerical tools are one window into the universe's most extreme flows of energy. The discretization of Maxwell's equations - needed to make highly magnetized (astro)physical plasma amenable to its numerical modeling - introduces numerical diffusion. It acts as a source of dissipation independent of the system's physical constituents. Understanding the numerical diffusion of scientific codes is the key to classify their reliability. It gives specific limits in which the results of numerical experiments are physical. We aim at quantifying and characterizing the numerical diffusion propert…
XMM-Newton Large Program on SN1006 - I: Methods and Initial Results of Spatially-Resolved Spectroscopy
2015
Based on our newly developed methods and the XMM-Newton large program of SN1006, we extract and analyze the spectra from 3596 tessellated regions of this SNR each with 0.3-8 keV counts $>10^4$. For the first time, we map out multiple physical parameters, such as the temperature ($kT$), electron density ($n_e$), ionization parameter ($n_et$), ionization age ($t_{ion}$), metal abundances, as well as the radio-to-X-ray slope ($\alpha$) and cutoff frequency ($\nu_{cutoff}$) of the synchrotron emission. We construct probability distribution functions of $kT$ and $n_et$, and model them with several Gaussians, in order to characterize the average thermal and ionization states of such an extended s…
Computational general relativistic force-free electrodynamics
2020
General relativistic force-free electrodynamics is one possible plasma-limit employed to analyze energetic outflows in which strong magnetic fields are dominant over all inertial phenomena. The amazing images of black hole shadows from the galactic center and the M87 galaxy provide a first direct glimpse into the physics of accretion flows in the most extreme environments of the universe. The efficient extraction of energy in the form of collimated outflows or jets from a rotating BH is directly linked to the topology of the surrounding magnetic field. We aim at providing a tool to numerically model the dynamics of such fields in magnetospheres around compact objects, such as black holes an…
An HLLC Riemann solver for resistive relativistic magnetohydrodynamics
2017
We present a new approximate Riemann solver for the augmented system of equations of resistive relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (RRMHD) that belongs to the family of Harten-Lax-van Leer contact wave (HLLC) solvers. In HLLC solvers, the solution is approximated by two constant states flanked by two shocks separated by a contact wave. The accuracy of the new approximate solver is calibrated through one- and two-dimensional test problems.