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Lestrade, J. -F.

Publications and source records attributed to Lestrade, J. -F..

Multi-probe analysis of the galaxy cluster CL J1226.9+3332: Hydrostatic mass and hydrostatic-to-lensing bias

The precise estimation of the mass of galaxy clusters is a major issue for cosmology. Large galaxy cluster surveys rely on scaling laws that relate cluster observables to their masses. From the high-resolution observations of ~45 galaxy clusters with the NIKA2 and XMM-Newton instruments, the NIKA2 Sunyaev-Zel’dovich Large Program should provide an accurate scaling relation between the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect and the hydrostatic mass. In this paper we present an exhaustive analysis of the hydrostatic mass of the well-known galaxy cluster CL J1226.9+3332, the highest-redshift cluster in the NIKA2 Sunyaev-Zel’dovich Large Program at z = 0.89. We combined the NIKA2 observations with thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich data from the NIKA, Bolocam, and MUSTANG instruments and XMM-Newton X-ray observations, and tested the impact of the systematic effects on the mass reconstruction. We conclude that slight differences in the shape of the mass profile can be crucial when defining the integrated mass at R 500 , which demonstrates the importance of the modelling in the mass determination. We prove the robustness of our hydrostatic mass estimates by showing the agreement with all the results found in the literature. Another key factor for cosmology is the bias of the masses estimated assuming the hydrostatic equilibrium hypothesis. Based on the lensing convergence maps from the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH) data, we obtain the lensing mass estimate for CL J1226.9+3332. From this we are able to measure the hydrostatic-to-lensing mass bias for this cluster, which spans from 1–b HSE/lens ~0.7 to 1, presenting the impact of data sets and mass reconstruction models on the bias.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Sub-Milliarcsecond Astrometry with Phase-Referenced VLBI

Astrometric VLBI observations of radio stars are being made to connect the Hipparcos optical reference frame and the extragalactic radio reference frame. The antennas are switched between a star and a strong, compact reference source a few degrees away every 2-3 minutes. After correlation, the strong reference source fringes are used to determine the exact delay and rate of the weak radio star fringes, allowing the visibilities to be measured and coherently integrated for the duration of the experiment. As a result accurate astrometry has been possible on radio stars with flux densities as low as 2 mJy. All five astrometric parameters (two positions, two proper motions, and one parallax) have been obtained for several stars, with formal errors and epoch-to-epoch residuals less than 1 milliarcsecond.

Jones, D. L.↗

Prospects for VLBI Detection of Planets

The precision of astrometric VLBI measurements of radio-emitting stars has improved significantly during the past several years. For some stars whose radio flux density is only a few mJy the formal error and epoch-to-epoch scatter in position is approximately 200 - 600 micro-arcsec. The intrinsic signal/noise ratio in the data should allow a further order of magnitude improvement in astrometric precision as sources of systematic error are better understood and corrected. Wider bandwidth VLBI data recording systems currently under development will allow precisions of approximately 3 microarcsec if the measurements are limited by thermal noise. At this level planets with mass greater than or equal to 0.1 x M_(JUPITER) could be detected for the nearest radio-emitting stars.

Jones, D. L.↗