Engineering topics

Strader, Jay

Publications and source records attributed to Strader, Jay.

8 records

DOE OSTI2023

PSTN-055: Survey Cadence Optimization Committee's Phase 2 Recommendations

This document describes the recommendations formulated by the Survey Cadence Optimization Committee (SCOC) of Vera C. Rubin Observatory for the observing strategy of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). These "Phase 2" recommendations follow the initial "Phase 1" recommendations released in December 2021 as PSTN-053, and convey the current recommendations for the initial implementation of the LSST. These recommendations are based on the SCOC analysis of LSST simulations generated according to PSTN-053 and the feedback received from the scientific community on those simulations. These recommendations should be considered as the current guidance for implementing the LSST observing survey at the start of the survey, a strategy to be reviewed regularly over the survey lifetime, and are accompanied by a simulation, baseline_v3.0, which represents a specific implementation of these recommendations. While these recommendations dramatically narrow the possible LSST observing parameter choices, we emphasize that at this stage they do not yet represent a final or complete set of recommendations for the survey strategy, and several details are still to be refined. Furthermore, the strategy should be considered "living" and subject to evolution throughout the survey. The SCOC continues to engage with the community to finalize its recommendations. At the time of the release of this document, the final phases of construction of Rubin Observatory are ongoing with an expected first light in mid-2024. We expect the SCOC recommendations to be revised as needed, as knowledge of the system as built and the outcome of commissioning and Science Verification mature. This document describes the Phase 2 SCOC recommendations —highlighting elements that can be considered final and elements that remain to be finalized—, the process through which the SCOC has converged on these recommendations, and the working plan for the SCOC starting in January 2023 through the start of the survey to finalize the initial implementation of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2023

Multiwavelength Observations of a New Redback Millisecond Pulsar 4FGL J1910.7-5320

We present the study of multiwavelength observations of an unidentified Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) source, 4FGL J1910.7-5320, a new candidate redback millisecond pulsar binary. In the 4FGL 95% error region of 4FGL J1910.7-5320, we find a possible binary with a 8.36 hr orbital period from the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey, confirmed by optical spectroscopy using the SOAR telescope. This optical source was recently independently discovered as a redback pulsar by the TRAPUM project, confirming our prediction. We fit the optical spectral energy distributions of 4FGL J1910.7-5320 with a blackbody model, inferring a maximum distance of 4.1 kpc by assuming that the companion fills its Roche lobe with a radius of R = 0.7 R ⊙ . Using a 12.6 ks Chandra X-ray observation, we identified an X-ray counterpart for 4FGL J1910.7-5320, with a spectrum that can be described by an absorbed power law with a photon index of 1.0 ± 0.4. The spectrally hard X-ray emission shows tentative evidence for orbital variability. Using more than 12 yr of Fermi-LAT data, we refined the position of the γ-ray source, and the optical candidate still lies within the 68% positional error circle. In addition to 4FGL J1910.7-5320, we find a variable optical source with a periodic signal of 4.28 hr inside the 4FGL catalog 95% error region of another unidentified Fermi source, 4FGL J2029.5-4237. However, the γ-ray source does not have a significant X-ray counterpart in an 11.7 ks Chandra observation, with a 3σ flux upper limit of 2.4 × 10 -14 erg cm -2 s -1 (0.3–7 keV). Moreover, the optical source is outside our updated Fermi-LAT 95% error circle. These observational facts all suggest that this new redback millisecond pulsar powers the gamma-ray source 4FGL J1910.7-5320 while 4FGL J2029.5-4237 is unlikely the γ-ray counterpart to the 4.28 hr variable.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2022

PSTN-053: Survey Cadence Optimization Committee's Phase 1 Recommendations

This document is authored by the Survey Cadence Optimization Committee (SCOC), guided by the community input, and it will serve as a roadmap for the concluding round of survey cadence simulations. These simulations, to be delivered during early calendar year 2022, will inform the phase 2 survey strategy recommendation which will define the baseline strategy for starting the Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). The phase 2 SCOC recommendation will be delivered to the Rubin Observatory Operations Director before the end of calendar year 2022.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2022

SOAR/Goodman Spectroscopic Assessment of Candidate Counterparts of the LIGO/Virgo Event GW190814*

On 2019 August 14 at 21:10:39 UTC, the LIGO/Virgo Collaboration (LVC) detected a possible neutron star–black hole merger (NSBH), the first ever identified. An extensive search for an optical counterpart of this event, designated GW190814, was undertaken using the Dark Energy Camera on the 4 m Victor M. Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. Target of Opportunity interrupts were issued on eight separate nights to observe 11 candidates using the 4.1 m Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope’s Goodman High Throughput Spectrograph in order to assess whether any of these transients was likely to be an optical counterpart of the possible NSBH merger. Here, we describe the process of observing with SOAR, the analysis of our spectra, our spectroscopic typing methodology, and our resultant conclusion that none of the candidates corresponded to the gravitational wave merger event but were all instead other transients. Finally, we describe the lessons learned from this effort. Application of these lessons will be critical for a successful community spectroscopic follow-up program for LVC observing run 4 (O4) and beyond.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2022

AGC 226178 and NGVS 3543: Two Deceptive Dwarfs toward Virgo

The two sources AGC 226178 and NGVS 3543, an extremely faint, clumpy, blue stellar system and a low surface brightness dwarf spheroidal, are adjacent systems in the direction of the Virgo cluster. Both have been studied in detail previously, with it being suggested that they are unrelated normal dwarf galaxies or that NGVS 3543 recently lost its gas through ram pressure stripping and AGC 226178 formed from this stripped gas. However, with Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys imaging, we demonstrate that the stellar population of NGVS 3543 is inconsistent with being at the distance of the Virgo cluster and that it is likely a foreground object at approximately 10 Mpc, whereas the stellar population of AGC 226178 is consistent with it being a very young (10–100 Myr) object in the Virgo cluster. Through a reanalysis of the original ALFALFA H i detection, we show that AGC 226178 likely formed from gas stripped from the nearby dwarf galaxy VCC 2034, a hypothesis strengthened by the high metallicity measured with MUSE VLT observations. However, it is unclear whether ram pressure or a tidal interaction is responsible for stripping the gas. Object AGC 226178 is one of at least five similar objects now known toward Virgo. These objects are all young and unlikely to remain visible for over ~500 Myr, suggesting that they are continually produced in the cluster.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2021

Resolved Dwarf Galaxy Searches within ~5 Mpc with the Vera Rubin Observatory and Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam*

We present a preview of the faint dwarf galaxy discoveries that will be possible with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam in the next decade. In this work, we combine deep ground-based images from the Panoramic Imaging Survey of Centaurus and Sculptor (PISCeS) and extensive image simulations to investigate the recovery of faint, resolved dwarf galaxies in the Local Volume with a matched-filter technique. We adopt three fiducial distances - 1.5, 3.5, 5 Mpc, and quantitatively evaluate the effects on dwarf detection of varied stellar backgrounds, ellipticity, and Milky Way foreground contamination and extinction. We show that our matched-filter method is powerful for identifying both compact and extended systems, and near-future surveys will be able to probe at least ~4.5 mag below the tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) for a distance of up to 1.5 Mpc, and ~2 mag below the TRGB at 5 Mpc. This will push the discovery frontier for resolved dwarf galaxies to fainter magnitudes, lower surface brightnesses, and larger distances. Our simulations show the secure census of dwarf galaxies down to $M_{V}$$\approx$-5, -7, -8, will be soon within reach, out to 1.5 Mpc, 3.5 Mpc, and 5 Mpc, respectively, allowing us to quantify the statistical fluctuations in satellite abundances around hosts, and parse environmental effects as a function of host properties.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2021

Eridanus II: A Fossil from Reionization with an Off-center Star Cluster

In this work, we present deep Hubble Space Telescope (HST) photometry of the ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Eridanus II (Eri II). Eri II, which has an absolute magnitude of M V = -7.1, is located at a distance of 339 kpc, just beyond the virial radius of the Milky Way. We determine the star formation history of Eri II and measure the structure of the galaxy and its star cluster. We find that a star formation history consisting of two bursts, constrained to match the spectroscopic metallicity distribution of the galaxy, accurately describes the Eri II stellar population. The best-fit model implies a rapid truncation of star formation at early times, with >80% of the stellar mass in place before z ~ 6. A small fraction of the stars could be as young as 8 Gyr, but this population is not statistically significant; Monte Carlo simulations recover a component younger than 9 Gyr only 15% of the time, where they represent an average of 7 ± 4% of the population. These results are consistent with theoretical expectations for quenching by reionization. The HST depth and angular resolution enable us to show that Eri II’s cluster is offset from the center of the galaxy by a projected distance of 23 ± 3 pc. This offset could be an indication of a small (~50–75 pc) dark matter core in Eri II. Moreover, we demonstrate that the cluster has a high ellipticity of and is aligned with the orientation of Eri II within 3° ± 6°, likely due to tides. The stellar population of the cluster is indistinguishable from that of Eri II itself.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

NASA NTRS2015

1FGL J1417.7-4407: A Likely Gamma-Ray Bright Binary with A Massive Neutron Star and A Giant Secondary

We present multiwavelength observations of the persistent Fermi-Large Area Telescope unidentified gamma-ray source 1FGL J1417.7-4407, showing it is likely to be associated with a newly discovered X-ray binary containing a massive neutron star (nearly 2 solar mass) and a approximately 0.35 solar mass giant secondary with a 5.4 day period. SOAR optical spectroscopy at a range of orbital phases reveals variable double-peaked H alpha emission, consistent with the presence of an accretion disk. The lack of radio emission and evidence for a disk suggests the gamma-ray emission is unlikely to originate in a pulsar magnetosphere, but could instead be associated with a pulsar wind, relativistic jet, or could be due to synchrotron self-Compton at the disk-magnetosphere boundary. Assuming a wind or jet, the high ratio of gamma- ray to X-ray luminosity (approximately 20) suggests efficient production of gamma-rays, perhaps due to the giant companion. The system appears to be a low-mass X-ray binary that has not yet completed the pulsar recycling process. This system is a good candidate to monitor for a future transition between accretion-powered and rotational-powered states, but in the context of a giant secondary.

binaries: spectroscopic aEuro" gamma rays: general↗