Search results for "galaxy"
showing 10 items of 1505 documents
Black hole lightning due to particle acceleration at subhorizon scales
2015
Supermassive black holes with masses of millions to billions of solar masses are commonly found in the centers of galaxies. Astronomers seek to image jet formation using radio interferometry, but still suffer from insufficient angular resolution. An alternative method to resolve small structures is to measure the time variability of their emission. Here, we report on gamma-ray observations of the radio galaxy IC 310 obtained with the MAGIC telescopes revealing variability with doubling time scales faster than 4.8 min. Causality constrains the size of the emission region to be smaller than 20\% of the gravitational radius of its central black hole. We suggest that the emission is associated …
Spectroscopic Observations of the Delta Scorpii Binary during Its Recent Periastron Passage
2001
The bright star delta Sco has been considered a typical B0-type object for many years. Spectra of the star published prior to 1990 showed no evidence of emission, but only of short-term line profile variations attributed to nonradial pulsations. Speckle interferometric observations show that delta Sco is a binary system with a highly-eccentric orbit and a period of 10.6 years. Weak emission in the H-alpha line was detected in its spectrum for the first time during a periastron passage in 1990. Shortly before the next periastron passage in the summer of 2000, the binary entered a strong H-alpha emission and enhanced mass loss phase. We monitored the spectroscopic development of the Be outbur…
ARES I: WASP-76 b, A Tale of Two HST Spectra
2020
We analyse the transmission and emission spectra of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-76b, observed with the G141 grism of the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). We reduce and fit the raw data for each observation using the open-source software Iraclis before performing a fully Bayesian retrieval using the publicly available analysis suite TauRex 3. Previous studies of the WFC3 transmission spectra of WASP-76 b found hints of titanium oxide (TiO) and vanadium oxide (VO) or non-grey clouds. Accounting for a fainter stellar companion to WASP-76, we reanalyse this data and show that removing the effects of this background star changes the slope of the spectrum, resulting in these vi…
Monitoring the Morphology of M87* in 2009-2017 with the Event Horizon Telescope
2020
All authors: Wielgus, Maciek; Akiyama, Kazunori; Blackburn, Lindy; Chan, Chi-kwan; Dexter, Jason; Doeleman, Sheperd S.; Fish, Vincent L.; Issaoun, Sara; Johnson, Michael D.; Krichbaum, Thomas P.; Lu, Ru-Sen; Pesce, Dominic W.; Wong, George N.; Bower, Geoffrey C.; Broderick, Avery E.; Chael, Andrew; Chatterjee, Koushik; Gammie, Charles F.; Georgiev, Boris; Hada, Kazuhiro Loinard, Laurent; Markoff, Sera; Marrone, Daniel P.; Plambeck, Richard; Weintroub, Jonathan; Dexter, Matthew; MacMahon, David H. E.; Wright, Melvyn; Alberdi, Antxon; Alef, Walter; Asada, Keiichi; Azulay, Rebecca; Baczko, Anne-Kathrin; Ball, David; Baloković, Mislav; Barausse, Enrico; Barrett, John; Bintley, Dan; Boland, Wilf…
Detection of Intrinsic Source Structure at ~3 Schwarzschild Radii with Millimeter-VLBI Observations of SAGITTARIUS A*
2018
We report results from very long baseline interferometric (VLBI) observations of the supermassive black hole in the Galactic center, Sgr A*, at 1.3 mm (230 GHz). The observations were performed in 2013 March using six VLBI stations in Hawaii, California, Arizona, and Chile. Compared to earlier observations, the addition of the APEX telescope in Chile almost doubles the longest baseline length in the array, provides additional {\it uv} coverage in the N-S direction, and leads to a spatial resolution of $\sim$30 $\mu$as ($\sim$3 Schwarzschild radii) for Sgr A*. The source is detected even at the longest baselines with visibility amplitudes of $\sim$4-13% of the total flux density. We argue th…
Long-term optical and X-ray variability of the Be/X-ray binary H 1145-619: Discovery of an ongoing retrograde density wave
2017
Multiwavelength monitoring of Be/X-ray binaries is crucial to understand the mechanisms producing their outbursts. H 1145-619 is one of these systems, which has recently displayed X-ray activity. We investigate the correlation between the optical emission and the X-ray activity to predict the occurrence of new X-ray outbursts from the inferred state of the circumstellar disc. We have performed a multiwavelength study of H 1145-619 from 1973 to 2017 and present here a global analysis of its variability over the last 40 years. We have used optical spectra from the SAAO, SMARTS and SALT telescopes and optical photometry from INTEGRAL/OMC and ASAS. We also used X-ray observations from INTEGRAL/…
Revealing the structure of the lensed quasar Q 0957+561. I. Accretion disk size
2021
We thank the anonymous referee for the helpful comments, and constructive remarks on this manuscript. We thank the GLENDAMA project for making publicly available the monitoring data of Q 0957+561. C.F. gratefully acknowledges the financial support from Tel Aviv University and University of Haifa through a DFG grant HA3555-14/1. E.M. and J.A.M are supported by the Spanish MINECO with the grants AYA2016- 79104-C3-1-P and AYA2016-79104-C3-3-P. J.A.M. is also supported from the Generalitat Valenciana project of excellence Prometeo/2020/085. J.J.V. is supported by the project AYA2017-84897-P financed by the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competividad and by the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regi…
Determination of Cl/C and Br/C ratios in pure organic solids using laser-induced plasma spectroscopy in near vacuum ultraviolet
2004
Several solid organic compounds containing bromine and chlorine were analyzed with laser-induced plasma spectroscopy. Emission lines were detected in the near vacuum ultraviolet spectral region by using a gas-purged spectrograph and an intensified charge-coupled device detector. The performance of this setup in the determination of the halides in the organic samples was evaluated. Carbon emission lines in the near vacuum ultraviolet were used as internal standards for the measurement of chlorine and bromine. Linear correlation was found between the carbon and halogen emission signal ratio and the corresponding atomic ratio of the compound.
Laser-induced plasma spectroscopy in near vacuum ultraviolet using ordinary spectrograph and ICCD
2002
An experimental setup to measure laser-induced plasma emission spectra with an ordinary Czerny-Turner spectrograph and intensified charge-coupled device in the near vacuum ultraviolet down to 130 nm is described. Spectra of bromine, chlorine and iodine were recorded to demonstrate the performance of the setup.
A brown dwarf orbiting an M-dwarf:MOA 2009-BLG-411L
2012
Context. Caustic crossing is the clearest signature of binary lenses in microlensing. In the present context, this signature is diluted by the large source star but a detailed analysis has allowed the companion signal to be extracted.Aims. MOA 2009-BLG-411 was detected on August 5, 2009 by the MOA-Collaboration. Alerted as a high-magnification event, it was sensitive to planets. Suspected anomalies in the light curve were not confirmed by a real-time model, but further analysis revealed small deviations from a single lens extended source fit.Methods. Thanks to observations by all the collaborations, this event was well monitored. We first decided to characterize the source star properties b…