Suchergebnisse

Context. Obtaining precise stellar and wind properties and abundance patterns of massive stars is crucial to understanding their nature and interactions with their environments, as well as to constrain their evolutionary paths and end-products. Aims. To enable higher versatility and precision of the complete ultraviolet (UV) to optical range, we improve our high-performance, unified, NLTE atmosphere and spectrum synthesis code FASTWIND. Moreover, we aim to obtain an advanced description of X-ray emission from wind-embedded shocks, consistent with alternative modeling approaches. Methods. We include a detailed comoving frame radiative transfer for the essential frequency range, but still apply methods that enable low turnaround times. We compare the results of our updated computations with those from the alternative code CMFGEN, and our previous FASTWIND version, for a representative model grid. Results. In most cases, our new results agree excellently with those from CMFGEN, both regarding the total radiative acceleration, strategic optical lines, and the UV-range. Moderate differences concern He II λλ4200-4541 and N V λλ4603-4619. The agreement regarding N III λλ4634-4640-4642 has improved, though there are still certain discrepancies, mostly related to line overlap effects in the extreme ultraviolet, depending on abundances and micro-turbulence. In the UV range of our coolest models, we find differences in the predicted depression of the pseudo-continuum, which is most pronounced around Lyα. This depression is larger in CMFGEN, and related to different Fe IV atomic data. The comparison between our new and previous FASTWIND version reveals an almost perfect agreement, except again for N V λλ4603-4619. Using an improved, depth-dependent description for the filling factors of hot, X-ray emitting material, we confirm previous analytic scaling relations with our numerical models. Conclusions. We warn against uncritically relying on transitions, which are strongly affected by direct or indirect line-overlap effects. The predicted UV-continuum depression for the coolest grid-models needs to be checked, both observationally, and regarding the underlying atomic data. Wind lines from "super-ionized"ions such as O VI can, in principle, be used to constrain the distribution of wind-embedded shocks. The new FASTWIND version v11 is now ready to be used. ; With funding from the Spanish government through the "María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence" accreditation (MDM-2017-0737)

Due to the extreme extinction towards the Galactic centre (A(v) similar to 30 mag), its stellar population is mainly studied in the near-infrared (NIR) regime. Therefore, a proper analysis of the NIR extinction curve is necessary to fully characterise the stellar structure and population of the inner part of the galaxy. Aims. We studied the dependence of the extinction index (alpha(lambda)) in the NIR on the line of sight, wavelength, and extinction. Methods. We used the GALACTICNUCLEUS imaging survey, a high angular resolution catalogue (0.2 '') for the inner part of the Galaxy in JHK(s) and studied the spatial variation in the extinction index. We also applied two independent methods based on red clump stars to compute the extinction index between different bands and its variation with wavelength. Results. We did not detect any significant line-of-sight or extinction variation in a within the studied region in the nuclear stellar disc. The extinction index between JH and HKs differs by 0.19 +/- 0.05. We obtained mean values for the extinction indices alpha(JH)( )= 2.43 +/- 0.03 and alpha(HK), = 2.23 +/- 0.03. The dependence of the extinction index on the wavelength could explain the differences obtained for a d in the literature since it was assumed constant for the NIR regime.© ESO 2019. ; The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement no [614922]. This work is based on observations made with ESO Telescopes at the La Silla Paranal Observatory under programme IDs 195. B-0283 and 091. B-0418. We thank the sta ff at ESO for their great e ff orts and helpfulness. F. N.-L. acknowledges financial support from a MECD pre-doctoral contract, code FPU14/01700. F. N. acknowledges financial support through Spanish grants ESP2015-65597C4-1-R and ESP2017-86582-C4-1-R (MINECO/FEDER). We acknowledge support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the Centre of Excellence Severo Ochoa Award of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (CSIC) (SEV-2017-0709). N.N. acknowledges support from Sonderforschungsbereich SFB 881 "The Milky Way System" (subproject B8) of the German Research Foundation (DFG). ; Peer reviewed

The catalogues described in this paper and specified in Table 1 are only at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/631/A20. The catalogues follow the structure presented in Table 2. ; Context. The high extinction and extreme source crowding of the central regions of the Milky Way are serious obstacles to the study of the structure and stellar population of the Galactic centre (GC). Existing surveys that cover the GC region (2MASS, UKIDSS, VVV, SIRIUS) do not have the necessary high angular resolution. Therefore, a high-angular-resolution survey in the near infrared is crucial to improve the state of the art. Aims. Here, we present the GALACTICNUCLEUS catalogue, a near infrared JHKs high-angular-resolution (0.2″) survey of the nuclear bulge of the Milky Way. Methods. We explain in detail the data reduction, data analysis, calibration, and uncertainty estimation of the GALACTICNUCLEUS survey. We assess the data quality comparing our results with previous surveys. Results. We obtained accurate JHKs photometry for ∼3.3 × 106 stars in the GC detecting around 20% in J, 65% in H, and 90% in Ks. The survey covers a total area of ∼0.3 deg2, which corresponds to ∼6000 pc2. The GALACTICNUCLEUS survey reaches 5σ detections for J ∼ 22 mag, H ∼ 21 mag, and Ks ∼ 21 mag. The uncertainties are below 0.05 mag at J ∼ 21 mag, H ∼ 19 mag, and Ks ∼ 18 mag. The zero point systematic uncertainty is ≲0.04 mag in all three bands. We present colour–magnitude diagrams for the different regions covered by the survey.© ESO 2019 ; The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement n° [614922]. This work is based on observations made with ESO Telescopes at the La Silla Paranal Observatory under programmes IDs 195.B-0283 and 091.B-0418. We thank the staff of ESO for their great efforts and helpfulness. We acknowledge financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). F.N.-L. acknowledges financial support from a MECD pre-doctoral contract, code FPU14/01700. R.S., A.T.G.-C., B.S. acknnowledge financial support from the national grant PGC2018-095049-B-C21 (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE). F.N. acknowledges financial support through Spanish grants ESP2015-65597-C4-1-R and ESP2017-86582-C4-1-R (MINECO/FEDER). N.N. acknowledges support by Sonderforschungsbereich SFB 881 "The Milky Way System" (subproject B8) of the German Research Foundation (DFG). ; Peer reviewed

During the next closest approach of the orbiting star S2/S0-2 to the Galactic supermassive black hole (SMBH), it is estimated that radial velocity (RV) measurements with an uncertainty of a few 10 km s −1 will allow us to detect post-Newtonian effects throughout 2018. To evaluate the best achievable uncertainty in RV and its stability, we carried out near-infrared, high-resolution (R ∼ 20000) spectroscopic monitoring observations of S2 using the Subaru telescope and its near-infrared spectrograph IRCS from 2014 to 2016. Br-γ absorption lines have been detected in the 2015 and 2016 spectra, but have not been clearly detected in the 2014 spectrum. The detected Br-γ absorption lines are used to determine the RVs of S2. The statistical uncertainties are derived using the jackknife analysis, and spectra combined from divided subdata sets. The wavelength calibrations in our three-year monitoring are stable: short-term (hours to days) uncertainties in RVs are 0.5 km s −1 , and the long-term (three years) uncertainty is 1.2 km s −1 . We thoroughly analyzed possible sources of systematic uncertainties, such as the incomplete subtraction of OH skylines. The relevant uncertainties are estimated to be less than several km s −1 . The final results using the Br-γ line are 877 ± 25 km s −1 in 2015, and 1109 ± 14 km s −1 in 2016. When we use two He I lines at 2.113 μm in addition to Br-γ , the mean RV and its standard error are 1114 km s −1 and 5 km s −1 , respectively, in 2016. However, we have found a larger scatter around the expected RV curve with the best-fitting orbiting parameters of S2, implying additional uncertainties not yet considered. The difference between the RVs estimated by Newtonian mechanics and general relativity will reach about 200 km s −1 near the next pericenter passage in 2018. Therefore, in addition to astrometric and spectroscopic data obtained with other telescopes, RV measurements with Subaru in 2018 will form important data sets with which to detect general relativistic effects from the SMBH. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Astronomical Society of Japan. All rights reserved. ; We thank the Subaru Telescope staff for the support for our observations. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI, Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (A) 25707012, Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research 15K13463. H. S. was supproted by KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research 26610050. Y.T. was supproted by KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) 26800150. M.T. was supported by KAKENHI Grant Number 17K05439 and DAIKO FOUNDATION. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC grant agreement no[614922]. FN acknowledges financial support through Spanish grants ESP2015-65597-C4-1-R and ESP2017-86582-C4-1-R (MINECO/FEDER).

We present high-angular-resolution radio observations of the Arches cluster in the Galactic centre, one of the most massive young clusters in the Milky Way. The data were acquired in two epochs and at 6 and 10 GHz with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array. The rms noise reached is three to four times better than during previous observations and we have almost doubled the number of known radio stars in the cluster. Nine of them have spectral indices consistent with thermal emission from ionised stellar winds, one is a confirmed colliding wind binary, and two sources are ambiguous cases. Regarding variability, the radio emission appears to be stable on timescales of a few to ten years. Finally, we show that the number of radio stars can be used as a tool for constraining the age and/or mass of a cluster and also its mass function. © ESO 2021. ; Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (JVLA) of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a facility of the National Science Foundation (NSF) operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. A.T.G.-C., R.S., A.A. and B.S. acknowledge financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award for the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709). A.T.G.-C., R.S., and B.S. acknowledge financial support from national project PGC2018-095049-B-C21 (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE). A.A. acknowledges support from national project PGC2018-098915-B-C21 (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE). F.N. acknowledges financial support through Spanish grants ESP2017-86582-C4-1-R and PID2019-105552RB-C41 (MINECO/MCIU/AEI/FEDER) and from the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) through the Unidad de Excelencia "Maria de Maeztu"-Centro de Astrobiologia (CSIC-INTA) project No. MDM-2017-0737. F.N.-L. gratefully acknowledges funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) - Project-ID 138713538 - SFB 881 ("The Milky Way System", subproject B8). The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement no [614922]. ; Peer reviewed

Context. The study of the inner region of the Milky Way bulge is hampered by high interstellar extinction and extreme source crowding. Sensitive high angular resolution near-infrared imaging is needed to study stellar populations and their characteristics in such a dense and complex environment. Aims. We aim at investigating the stellar population in the innermost Galactic bulge, to study the star formation history in this region of the Galaxy. Methods. We used the 0.2″ angular resolution JHK data from the GALACTICNUCLEUS survey to study the stellar population within two 8.0′×3.4′ fields, about 0.6° and 0.4° to the Galactic north of the Milky Way centre and to compare it with the one in the immediate surroundings of Sagittarius A∗. We also characterise the absolute extinction and the extinction curve of the two fields. Results. The average interstellar extinction to the outer and the inner field is A ∼ 1.20 ± 0.08 mag and ∼1.48 ± 0.10 mag, respectively. We present K luminosity functions that are complete down to at least two magnitudes below the red clump (RC). We detect a feature in the luminosity functions that is fainter than the RC by 0.80 ± 0.03 and 0.79 ± 0.02 mag, respectively, in the K band. It runs parallel to the reddening vector. We identify the feature as the red giant branch bump. Fitting α-enhanced BaSTI luminosity functions to our data, we find that a single old stellar population of ∼12.8 ± 0.6 Gyr and Z = 0.040 ± 0.003 provides the best fit. Our findings thus show that the stellar population in the innermost bulge is old, similar to the one at larger distances from the Galactic plane, and that its metallicity is about twice solar at distances as short as about 60 pc from the centre of the Milky Way, similar to what is observed at about 500 pc from the Galactic Centre. Comparing the obtained metallicity with previous known values at larger latitudes (|b| > 2°), our results favour a flattening of the gradient at |b| < 2°. As a secondary result we obtain that the extinction index in the studied regions agrees within the uncertainties with our previous value of α = 2.30 ± 0.08 that was derived for the very Galactic centre.© ESO 2018. ; The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC grant agreement no [614922]. F. N.-L. acknowledges financial support from a MECD pre-doctoral contract, code FPU14/01700. F. N. acknowledges financial support through Spanish grants ESP2015-65597-C4-1-R and ESP2017-86582-C4-1-R (MINECO/FEDER). ; Peer Reviewed

Context. The Galactic centre (GC) is of fundamental astrophysical interest, but existing near-infrared surveys fall short covering it adequately, either in terms of angular resolution, multi-wavelength coverage, or both. Here we introduce the GALACTICNUCLEUS survey, a JHK imaging survey of the centre of the Milky Way with a 0.2 angular resolution. Aim. The purpose of this paper is to present the observations of Field 1 of our survey, centred approximately on SgrA∗ with an approximate size of 7.95 × 3.43. We describe the observational set-up and data reduction pipeline and discuss the quality of the data. Finally, we present the analysis of the data. Methods. The data were acquired with the near-infrared camera High Acuity Wide field K-band Imager (HAWK-I) at the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT). Short readout times in combination with the speckle holography algorithm allowed us to produce final images with a stable, Gaussian PSF (point spread function) of 0.2 FWHM (full width at half maximum). Astrometric calibration is achieved via the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) survey and photometric calibration is based on the SIRIUS/Infrared Survey Facility telescope (IRSF) survey. The quality of the data is assessed by comparison between observations of the same field with different detectors of HAWK-I and at different times. Results. We reach 5σ detection limits of approximately J = 22, H = 21, and K = 20. The photometric uncertainties are less than 0.05 at J ≤ 20, H ≤ 17, and K ≤ 16. We can distinguish five stellar populations in the colour-magnitude diagrams; three of them appear to belong to foreground spiral arms, and the other two correspond to high- and low-extinction star groups at the GC. We use our data to analyse the near-infrared extinction curve and find some evidence for a possible difference between the extinction index between J - H and H - K. However, we conclude that it can be described very well by a power law with an index of αJHK = 2.30 ± 0.08. We do not find any evidence that this index depends on the position along the line of sight, or on the absolute value of the extinction. We produce extinction maps that show the clumpiness of the ISM (interstellar medium) at the GC. Finally, we estimate that the majority of the stars have solar or super-solar metallicity by comparing our extinction-corrected colour-magnitude diagrams with isochrones with different metallicities and a synthetic stellar model with a constant star formation.© ESO 2018. ; The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement No. [614922].F.N.-L. acknowledges financial support from a MECD pre-doctoral contract, code FPU14/01700. F.N. acknowledges Spanish grants FIS2012-39162-C06-01, ESP2013-47809-C3-1-R and ESP2015-65597-C4-1-R. ; Peer Reviewed

5 pags., 7 figs. -- The Universe under the Microscope – Astrophysics at High Angular Resolution, 21–25 April 2008, Bad Honnef, Germany ; We report on recent near-infrared (NIR) and X-ray observations of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the electromagnetic manifestation of the ∼4x106M⊙ super-massive black hole (SMBH) at the Galactic Center. The goal of these coordinated multi-wavelength observations is to investigate the variable emission from Sgr A* in order to obtain a better understanding of the underlying physical processes in the accretion flow/outflow. The observations have been carried out using the NACO adaptive optics (AO) instrument at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (July 2005, May 2007) and the ACIS-I instrument aboard the Chandra X-ray Observatory (July 2005). We report on a polarized NIR flare synchronous to a 8x1033 erg/s X-ray flare in July 2005, and a further flare in May 2007 that shows the highest sub-flare to flare contrast observed until now. The observations can be interpreted in the framework of a model involving a temporary disk with a short jet. In the disk component flux density variations can be explained due to hot spots on relativistic orbits around the central SMBH. The variations of the sub-structures of the May 2007 flare are interpreted as a variation of the hot spot structure due to differential rotation within the disk. © 2008 IOP Publishing Ltd. ; Part of this work was supported by the German Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG via grant SFB 494. L. Meyer, K. Muzic, M. Zamaninasab, D. Kunneriath, and R.-S. Lu, are members of the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the MPIfR and the Universities of Bonn and Cologne. RS acknowledges support by the Ramon y Cajal programme by the Ministerio de Ciencia y Innovación of the government of Spain.

7 pags., 3 figs. -- The Universe under the Microscope – Astrophysics at High Angular Resolution, 21–25 April 2008, Bad Honnef, Germany ; At the center of the Milky Way, with a distance of 8 kpc, the compact source Sagittarius A* (SgrA*) can be associated with a super massive black hole of 4x 106M⊙. SgrA* shows strong variability from the radio to the X-ray wavelength domains. Here we report on simultaneous NIR/sub-millimeter/X-ray observations from May 2007 that involved the NACO adaptive optics (AO) instrument at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, the Australian Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), the US mm-array CARMA, the IRAM 30m mm-telescope, and other telescopes. We concentrate on the time series of mm/sub-mm data from CARMA, ATCA, and the MAMBO bolometer at the IRAM 30m telescope. © 2008 IOP Publishing Ltd. ; Part of this work was supported by the German Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG via grant SFB 494. L. Meyer, K. Muzic, M. Zamaninasab, D. Kunneriath, and R.-S. Lu, are members of the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the MPIfR and the Universities of Bonn and Cologne. RS acknowledges support by the Ramon y Cajal programme by the Ministerio de Ciencia y Innovacion of the government of Spain.