Browsing by Author "Strader, Jay"

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    Optimization of the Observing Cadence for the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time: A Pioneering Process of Community-focused Experimental Design
    (2022) Bianco, Federica B.; Ivezić, Željko; Jones, R. Lynne; Graham, Melissa L.; Marshall, Phil; Saha, Abhijit; Strauss, Michael A.; Yoachim, Peter; Ribeiro, Tiago; Anguita, Timo; Bauer, A. E.; Bauer, Franz E.; Bellm, Eric C.; Blum, Robert D.; Brandt, William N.; Brough, Sarah; Catelan, Márcio; Clarkson, William I.; Connolly, Andrew J.; Gawiser, Eric; Gizis, John E.; Hložek, Renée; Kaviraj, Sugata; Liu, Charles T.; Lochner, Michelle; Mahabal, Ashish A.; Mandelbaum, Rachel; McGehee, Peregrine; Neilsen, Eric H., Jr.; Olsen, Knut A. G.; Peiris, Hiranya V.; Rhodes, Jason; Richards, Gordon T.; Ridgway, Stephen; Schwamb, Megan E.; Scolnic, Dan; Shemmer, Ohad; Slater, Colin T.; Slosar, Anže; Smartt, Stephen J.; Strader, Jay; Street, Rachel; Trilling, David E.; Verma, Aprajita; Vivas, A. K.; Wechsler, Risa H.; Willman, Beth
    Vera C. Rubin Observatory is a ground-based astronomical facility under construction, a joint project of the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy, designed to conduct a multipurpose 10 yr optical survey of the Southern Hemisphere sky: the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Significant flexibility in survey strategy remains within the constraints imposed by the core science goals of probing dark energy and dark matter, cataloging the solar system, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. The survey's massive data throughput will be transformational for many other astrophysics domains and Rubin's data access policy sets the stage for a huge community of potential users. To ensure that the survey science potential is maximized while serving as broad a community as possible, Rubin Observatory has involved the scientific community at large in the process of setting and refining the details of the observing strategy. The motivation, history, and decision-making process of this strategy optimization are detailed in this paper, giving context to the science-driven proposals and recommendations for the survey strategy included in this Focus Issue....
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    Spectra of globular clusters in the Sombrero galaxy: evidence for spectroscopic metallicity bimodality
    (2011) Alves-Brito, Alan; Hau, George K. T.; Forbes, Duncan A.; Spitler, Lee R.; Strader, Jay; Brodie, Jean P.; Rhode, Katherine L.
    We present a large sample of over 200 integrated-light spectra of confirmed globular clusters (GCs) associated with the Sombrero (M104) galaxy taken with the Deep Imaging Multi-Object Spectrograph (DEIMOS) instrument on the Keck telescope. A significant fraction of the spectra have signal-to-noise ratio levels high enough to allow measurements of GC metallicities using the method of Brodie & Huchra. We find a distribution of spectroscopic metallicities in the range -2.2 < [Fe/H] < + 0.1 that is bimodal, with peaks at [Fe/H] similar to -1.4 and -0.6. Thus, the GC system of the Sombrero galaxy, like a few other galaxies now studied in detail, reveals a bimodal spectroscopic metallicity distribution supporting the long-held belief that colour bimodality reflects two metallicity subpopulations. This further suggests that the transformation from optical colour to metallicity for old stellar populations, such as GCs, is not strongly non-linear. We also explore the radial and magnitude distribution with metallicity for GC subpopulations but small number statistics prevent any clear trends in these distributions.
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    The Gravity Collective: A Search for the Electromagnetic Counterpart to the Neutron Star-Black Hole Merger GW190814
    (2021) Kilpatrick, Charles D.; Coulter, David A.; Arcavi, Iair; Brink, Thomas G.; Dimitriadis, Georgios; Filippenko, Alexei, V; Foley, Ryan J.; Howell, D. Andrew; Jones, David O.; Kasen, Daniel; Makler, Martin; Piro, Anthony L.; Rojas-Bravo, Cesar; Sand, David J.; Swift, Jonathan J.; Tucker, Douglas; Zheng, WeiKang; Allam, Sahar S.; Annis, James T.; Antilen, Juanita; Bachmann, Tristan G.; Bloom, Joshua S.; Bom, Clecio R.; Bostroem, K. Azalee; Brout, Dillon; Burke, Jamison; Butler, Robert E.; Butner, Melissa; Campillay, Abdo; Clever, Karoli E.; Conselice, Christopher J.; Cooke, Jeff; Dage, Kristen C.; de Carvalho, Reinaldo R.; de Jaeger, Thomas; Desai, Shantanu; Garcia, Alyssa; Garcia-Bellido, Juan; Gill, Mandeep S. S.; Girish, Nachiket; Hallakoun, Na'ama; Herner, Kenneth; Hiramatsu, Daichi; Holz, Daniel E.; Huber, Grace; Kawash, Adam M.; McCully, Curtis; Medallon, Sophia A.; Metzger, Brian D.; Modak, Shaunak; Morgan, Robert; Munoz, Ricardo R.; Munoz-Elgueta, Nahir; Murakami, Yukei S.; Felipe Olivares, E.; Palmese, Antonella; Patra, Kishore C.; Pereira, Maria E. S.; Pessi, Thallis L.; Pineda-Garcia, J.; Quirola-Vasquez, Jonathan; Ramirez-Ruiz, Enrico; Rembold, Sandro Barboza; Rest, Armin; Rodriguez, Osmar; Santana-Silva, Luidhy; Sherman, Nora F.; Siebert, Matthew R.; Smith, Carli; Smith, J. Allyn; Soares-Santos, Marcelle; Stacey, Holland; Stahl, Benjamin E.; Strader, Jay; Strasburger, Erika; Sunseri, James; Tinyanont, Samaporn; Tucker, Brad E.; Ulloa, Natalie; Valenti, Stefano; Vasylyev, Sergiy S.; Wiesner, Matthew P.; Zhang, Keto D.
    We present optical follow-up imaging obtained with the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope, Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, Nickel Telescope, Swope Telescope, and Thacher Telescope of the LIGO/Virgo gravitational wave (GW) signal from the neutron star-black hole (NSBH) merger GW190814. We searched the GW190814 localization region (19 deg(2) for the 90th percentile best localization), covering a total of 51 deg(2) and 94.6% of the two-dimensional localization region. Analyzing the properties of 189 transients that we consider as candidate counterparts to the NSBH merger, including their localizations, discovery times from merger, optical spectra, likely host galaxy redshifts, and photometric evolution, we conclude that none of these objects are likely to be associated with GW190814. Based on this finding, we consider the likely optical properties of an electromagnetic counterpart to GW190814, including possible kilonovae and short gamma-ray burst afterglows. Using the joint limits from our follow-up imaging, we conclude that a counterpart with an r-band decline rate of 0.68 mag day(-1), similar to the kilonova AT 2017gfo, could peak at an absolute magnitude of at most -17.8 mag (50% confidence). Our data are not constraining for "red" kilonovae and rule out "blue" kilonovae with M > 0.5 M (circle dot) (30% confidence). We strongly rule out all known types of short gamma-ray burst afterglows with viewing angles <17 degrees assuming an initial jet opening angle of similar to 5.degrees 2 and explosion energies and circumburst densities similar to afterglows explored in the literature. Finally, we explore the possibility that GW190814 merged in the disk of an active galactic nucleus, of which we find four in the localization region, but we do not find any candidate counterparts among these sources.