adsabs/SciX_UAT_keywords huggingface dataset:
Lens Flare: Magnified X-Ray Binaries as Passive Beacons in SETI

Low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) containing neutron stars are both extremely luminous and compact, emitting up to ∼106 ${L}_{\odot }$ within a kilometer-scale boundary layer. This combination allows for easy modulation, motivating an X-ray Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. When X-ray lenses with radii $100\mbox{--}1000\ \mathrm{km}$ magnify the LMXB boundary layer, it brightens by a factor of several thousand for a fraction of a second. In addition, there should be occultation events where the neutron star is blocked out. Passive X-ray lenses could require little internal power, and the LMXB light source itself shines for millions of years, with potential for an effective beacon for interstellar communication. A very large number of lenses would be needed to ensure frequent signals in all directions, however, and gathering material to construct them could be very difficult. Avoiding collisions between lenses, aiming them, and building and maintaining their precise shapes pose additional challenges. "Lens flares" of bright LMXBs are easily detectable in the Galaxy, although they would be rare events, occurring perhaps once per decade. Our more sensitive X-ray instruments could detect the eclipses of Galactic LMXBs and possibly intergalactic flares, but it is unlikely they would be observing the LMXB at the right time.

Keywords: search for extraterrestrial intelligence; x-ray transient sources; low-mass x-ray binary stars; neutron stars; technosignatures
Merging Criteria for Planetesimal Collisions

In the standard scenario of planet formation, terrestrial planets, ice giants, and cores of gas giants are formed by the accumulation of planetesimals. However, there are few N-body simulation studies of planetesimal accretion that correctly take into account the merging condition of planetesimals. In order to investigate a realistic accretion process of planetesimals, it is necessary to clarify the merging criteria of planetesimals at collision. We perform numerical collision experiments using smoothed particle hydrodynamics and obtain the merging criteria as a function of planetesimal mass and impact parameters for undifferentiated rocky and icy planetesimals and differentiated icy planetesimals. We vary the total mass of colliding planetesimals, their mass ratios, and the impact angle and obtain the critical impact velocity as the merging criteria distinguishing merging from hit-and-run collision. We find that the critical impact velocity normalized by the two-body surface escape velocity decreases with increasing impact angle. The critical impact velocity does not depend on the total mass, while it has a weak positive dependence on the mass ratio. These results barely depend on the composition and internal structure of the planetesimals.

Keywords: solar system planets; solar system; exoplanets
Dynamical Classification of Trans-Neptunian Objects Detected by the Dark Energy Survey

The outer solar system contains a large number of small bodies (known as trans-Neptunian objects or TNOs) that exhibit diverse types of dynamical behavior. The classification of bodies in this distant region into dynamical classes -- subpopulations that experience similar orbital evolution -- aids in our understanding of the structure and formation of the solar system. In this work, we propose an updated dynamical classification scheme for the outer solar system. This approach includes the construction of a new (automated) method for identifying mean motion resonances. We apply this algorithm to the current data set of TNOs observed by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and present a working classification for all of the DES TNOs detected to date. Our classification scheme yields 1 inner centaur, 19 outer centaurs, 21 scattering disk objects, 47 detached TNOs, 48 securely resonant objects, 7 resonant candidates, and 97 classical belt objects. Among the scattering and detached objects, we detect 8 TNOs with semimajor axes greater than 150 au.

Keywords: kuiper belt; orbital evolution; n-body simulations
Active Stars in the Spectroscopic Survey of Mid-to-late M Dwarfs within 15 pc

We present results from the volume-complete spectroscopic survey of 0.1-0.3 M ⊙ M dwarfs within 15 pc. This work discusses the active sample without close binary companions, providing a comprehensive picture of these 123 stars with Hα emission stronger than -1 Å. Our analysis includes rotation periods (including 31 new measurements), Hα equivalent widths, rotational broadening, inclinations, and radial velocities, determined using high-resolution, multiepoch spectroscopic data from the TRES and CHIRON spectrographs supplemented by photometry from TESS and MEarth. Using this volume-complete sample, we establish that the majority of active, low-mass M dwarfs are very rapid rotators: specifically, 74% ± 4% have rotation periods shorter than 2 days, while 19% ± 4% have intermediate rotation periods of 2-20 days, and the remaining 8% ± 3% have periods longer than 20 days. Among the latter group, we identify a population of stars with very high Hα emission, which we suggest is indicative of dramatic spindown as these stars transition from the rapidly rotating mode to the slowly rotating one. We are unable to determine rotation periods for six stars and suggest that some of the stars without measured rotation periods may be viewed pole-on, as such stars are absent from the distribution of inclinations we measure; this lack notwithstanding, we recover the expected isotropic distribution of spin axes. Our spectroscopic and photometric data sets also allow us to investigate activity-induced radial-velocity variability, which we show can be estimated as the product of rotational broadening and the photometric amplitude of spot modulation.

Keywords: m dwarf stars; stellar activity; stellar rotation; inclination; radial velocity; variable stars
Experiments on the Electrostatic Transport of Charged Anorthite Particles under Electron Beam Irradiation

To reveal the effect of secondary electron emission on the charging properties of a surface covered by micron-sized insulating dust particles and the migration characteristics of these particles, for the first time we used a laser Doppler method to measure the diameters and velocities of micron-sized anorthite particles under electron beam irradiation with an incident energy of 350 eV. Here, anorthite particles are being treated as a proxy for lunar regolith. We experimentally confirm that the vertical transport of anorthite particles is always dominant, although horizontal transport occurs. In our experiments, some anorthite particles were observed to have large vertical velocities up to 9.74 m s-1 at the measurement point. The upper boundary of the vertical velocities V z of these high-speed anorthite particles are well constrained by its diameter D, that is, ${V}_{{\rm{z}}}^{2}$ linearly depends on D -2. These velocity-diameter data provide strong constraints on the dust charging and transportation mechanisms. The shared charge model could not explain the observed velocity-diameter data. Both the isolated charge model and patched charge model appear to require a large dust charging potential of -350 to -78 V to reproduce the observed data. The microstructures of the dusty surface may play an important role in producing this charging potential and in understanding the pulse migration phenomenon observed in our experiment. The presented results and analysis in this paper are helpful for understanding the dust charging and electrostatic transport mechanisms in airless celestial bodies such as the Moon and asteroids in various plasma conditions.

Keywords: lunar atmosphere; astrophysical dust processes; interstellar dust processes
Statistics of Wide Pre-main-sequence Binaries in the Orion OB1 Association

Statistics of low-mass pre-main-sequence binaries in the Orion OB1 association with separations ranging from 0"6 to 20″ (220 to 7400 au at 370 pc) are studied using images from the VISTA Orion mini survey and astrometry from Gaia. The input sample based on the CVSO catalog contains 1137 stars of K and M spectral types (masses between 0.3 and 0.9 ${{ \mathcal M }}_{\odot }$ ), 1021 of which are considered to be association members. There are 135 physical binary companions to these stars with mass ratios above ∼0.13. The average companion fraction is 0.09 ± 0.01 over 1.2 decades in separation, slightly less than, but still consistent with, the field. We found a difference between the Ori OB1a and OB1b groups, the latter being richer in binaries by a factor of 1.6 ± 0.3. No overall dependence of the wide-binary frequency on the observed underlying stellar density is found, although in the Ori OB1a off-cloud population, these binaries seem to avoid dense clusters. The multiplicity rates in Ori OB1 and in sparse regions like Taurus differ significantly, hinting that binaries in the field may originate from a mixture of diverse populations.

Keywords: visual binary stars; wide binary stars; pre-main sequence stars
Hi-C 2.1 Observations of Reconnection Nanojets

One of the possible mechanisms for heating the solar atmosphere is the magnetic reconnection occurring at different spatiotemporal scales. The discovery of fast bursty nanojets due to reconnection in the coronal loops has been linked to nanoflares and is considered as a possible mechanism for coronal heating. The occurrence of these jets mostly in the direction inwards to the loop was observed in the past. In this study, we report 10 reconnection nanojets, four with directions inward and six moving outward to the loop, in observations from the High-resolution Coronal Imager 2.1 and the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory. We determined the maximum length, spire width, speed, and lifetimes of these jets and studied their correlations. We found that outward jets with higher speeds are longer in length and duration while the inward jets show opposite behavior. The average duration of the outward jets is ≈42 s and that of inward jets is ≈24 s. We identified jets with subsonic speeds below 100 km s-1 to high speeds over 150 km s-1. These jets can be identified in multiple passbands of AIA extending from the upper transition region to the corona suggesting their multithermal nature.

Keywords: solar coronal loops
Spectral Rotational Characterization of the Didymos System prior to the DART Impact

The smallest member of the Didymos binary near-Earth object system (Dimorphos) is the target of the DART/LICIACube mission, the first attempt to change the orbit of another celestial body via a kinetic impactor. It is important to characterize the unperturbed system prior to the DART impact. In this work we obtained, for the first time, spectral characterization of the system at several rotational phases from TNG+DOLORES in the visible range (0.34-0.81 μm). This is crucial in order to disentangle the primary and secondary bodies and highlight eventual dishomogeneities on their surfaces. We confirm that a subtle but persistent spectral variability appears, even when compared with data obtained from previous 2003 and 2019 apparitions. While the reason for such variability is still under investigation, our analysis hints that different compositions could play a role. Future observations during the brighter 2022 apparition in synergy with data obtained from LUKE on board LICIACube will definitely tackle this conundrum. *Based on observations made with the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) operated on the island of La Palma by the Fundación Galileo Galilei of the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) at the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (Program AOT42-TAC8).

Keywords: near-earth objects; ground telescopes; spectrometers
Cosmic-Ray Transport in Varying Galactic Environments

We study the propagation of mildly relativistic cosmic rays (CRs) in multiphase interstellar medium environments with conditions typical of nearby disk galaxies. We employ the techniques developed in Armillotta et al. to postprocess three high-resolution TIGRESS magnetohydrodynamic simulations modeling local patches of star-forming galactic disks. Together, the three simulations cover a wide range of gas surface density, gravitational potential, and star formation rate (SFR). Our prescription for CR propagation includes the effects of advection by the background gas, streaming along the magnetic field at the local ion Alfvén speed, and diffusion relative to the Alfvén waves, with the diffusion coefficient set by the balance between streaming-driven Alfvén wave excitation and damping mediated by local gas properties. We find that the combined transport processes are more effective in environments with higher SFR. These environments are characterized by higher-velocity hot outflows (created by clustered supernovae) that rapidly advect CRs away from the galactic plane. As a consequence, the ratio of midplane CR pressure to midplane gas pressures decreases with increasing SFR. We also use the postprocessed simulations to make predictions regarding the potential dynamical impacts of CRs. The relatively flat CR pressure profiles near the midplane argue that they would not provide significant support against gravity for most of the ISM mass. However, the CR pressure gradients are larger than the other pressure gradients in the extraplanar region (∣z∣ > 0.5 kpc), suggesting that CRs may affect the dynamics of galactic fountains and/or winds. The degree of this impact is expected to increase in environments with lower SFR.

Keywords: cosmic rays; magnetohydrodynamics; interstellar medium
Dissociative Recombination of Rotationally Cold OH+ and Its Implications for the Cosmic Ray Ionization Rate in Diffuse Clouds

Observations of OH+ are used to infer the interstellar cosmic ray ionization rate in diffuse atomic clouds, thereby constraining the propagation of cosmic rays through and the shielding by interstellar clouds, as well as the low energy cosmic ray spectrum. In regions where the H2-to-H number density ratio is low, dissociative recombination (DR) is the dominant destruction process for OH+ and the DR rate coefficient is important for predicting the OH+ abundance and inferring the cosmic ray ionization rate. We have experimentally studied DR of electronically and vibrationally relaxed OH+ in its lowest rotational levels, using an electron–ion merged-beams setup at the Cryogenic Storage Ring. From these measurements, we have derived a kinetic temperature rate coefficient applicable to diffuse cloud chemical models, i.e., for OH+ in its electronic, vibrational, and rotational ground level. At typical diffuse cloud temperatures, our kinetic temperature rate coefficient is a factor of ∼5 times larger than the previous experimentally derived value and a factor of ∼33 times larger than the value calculated by theory. Our combined experimental and modeling results point to a significant increase for the cosmic ray ionization rate inferred from observations of OH+ and H2O+, corresponding to a geometric mean of (6.6 ± 1.0) × 10‑16 s‑1, which is more than a factor of 2 larger than the previously inferred values of the cosmic ray ionization rate in diffuse atomic clouds. Combined with observations of diffuse and dense molecular clouds, these findings indicate a greater degree of cosmic ray shielding in interstellar clouds than has been previously inferred.

Keywords: diffuse interstellar clouds; diffuse molecular clouds; laboratory astrophysics; electron recombination reactions; reaction rates; astrochemistry
Charting the Galactic Acceleration Field. I. A Search for Stellar Streams with Gaia DR2 and EDR3 with Follow-up from ESPaDOnS and UVES

We present maps of the stellar streams detected in the Gaia Data Release 2 (DR2) and Early Data Release 3 (EDR3) catalogs using the STREAMFINDER algorithm. We also report the spectroscopic follow-up of the brighter DR2 stream members obtained with the high-resolution CFHT/ESPaDOnS and VLT/UVES spectrographs as well as with the medium-resolution NTT/EFOSC2 spectrograph. Two new stellar streams that do not have a clear progenitor are detected in DR2 (named Hríd and Gunnthrá), and seven are detected in EDR3 (named Gaia-6 to Gaia-12). Several candidate streams are also identified. The software also finds very long tidal tails associated with the 15 globular clusters: NGC 288, NGC 1261, NGC 1851, NGC 2298, NGC 2808, NGC 3201, M68, ωCen, NGC 5466, Palomar 5, M5, NGC 6101, M92, NGC 6397, and NGC 7089. These stellar streams will be used in subsequent contributions in this series to chart the properties of the Galactic acceleration field on ~100 pc to ~100 kpc scales.

Keywords: milky way galaxy; dark matter
HectoMAP: The Complete Redshift Survey (Data Release 2)

HectoMAP is a dense redshift survey of 95,403 galaxies based primarily on MMT spectroscopy with a median redshift z = 0.345. The survey covers 54.64 deg2 in a 1.°5 wide strip across the northern sky centered at a decl. of 43.°25. We report the redshift, the spectral indicator D n 4000, and the stellar mass. The red-selected survey is 81% complete for 55,962 galaxies with (g - r) > 1 and r < 20.5; it is 72% complete for 32,908 galaxies with (g - r) > 1, (r - i) > 0.5 and 20.5 < r < 21.3. Comparison of the survey basis SDSS photometry with the HSC-SSP photometry demonstrates that HectoMAP provides complete magnitude-limited surveys based on either photometric system. We update the comparison between the HSC-SSP photometric redshifts with HectoMAP spectroscopic redshifts; the comparison demonstrates that the HSC-SSP photometric redshifts have improved between the second and third data releases. HectoMAP is a foundation for examining the quiescent galaxy population (63% of the survey), clusters of galaxies, and the cosmic web. HectoMAP is completely covered by the HSC-SSP survey, thus enabling a variety of strong- and weak-lensing investigations.

Keywords: redshift surveys; large-scale structure of the universe; galaxy clusters
Stellar-mass Measurements in A133 with Magellan/IMACS

We present the analysis of deep optical imaging of the galaxy cluster A133 with the IMACS instrument on Magellan. Our multi-band photometry enables stellar-mass measurements in the cluster member galaxies down to a mass limit of M{\star }3× 108 M⊙ (≈0.1 of the Large Magellanic Cloud stellar mass). We observe a clear difference in the spatial distribution of large and dwarf galaxies within the cluster. Modeling these galaxy populations separately, we can confidently track the distribution of stellar mass locked in the galaxies to the cluster's virial radius. The extended envelope of the cluster's brightest galaxy can be tracked to ∼200 kpc. The central galaxy contributes ∼1/3 of the total cluster stellar mass within the radius r500c.

Keywords: galaxy clusters; photometry; stellar mass functions; galaxies
Energy Supply for Heating the Slow Solar Wind Observed by Parker Solar Probe between 0.17 and 0.7 au

Energy supply sources for the heating process in the slow solar wind remain unknown. The Parker Solar Probe (PSP) mission provides a good opportunity to study this issue. Recently, PSP observations have found that the slow solar wind experiences stronger heating inside 0.24 au. Here for the first time we measure in the slow solar wind the radial gradient of the low-frequency breaks on the magnetic trace power spectra and evaluate the associated energy supply rate. We find that the energy supply rate is consistent with the observed perpendicular heating rate calculated based on the gradient of the magnetic moment. Based on this finding, one could explain why the slow solar wind is strongly heated inside 0.25 au but expands nearly adiabatically outside 0.25 au. This finding supports the concept that the energy added from the energy-containing range is transferred by an energy cascade process to the dissipation range, and then dissipates to heat the slow solar wind. The related issues for further study are discussed.

Keywords: slow solar wind; interplanetary turbulence; solar coronal heating
The Origin of the Doppler Flip in HD 100546: A Large-scale Spiral Arm Generated by an Inner Binary Companion

Companions at subarcsecond separation from young stars are difficult to image. However, their presence can be inferred from the perturbations they create in the dust and gas of protoplanetary disks. Here we present a new interpretation of SPHERE polarized observations that reveal the previously detected inner spiral in the disk of HD 100546. The spiral coincides with a newly detected 12CO inner spiral and the previously reported CO emission Doppler flip, which has been interpreted as the signature of an embedded protoplanet. Comparisons with hydrodynamical models indicate that this Doppler flip is instead the kinematic counterpart of the spiral, which is likely generated by an inner companion inside the disk cavity.

Keywords: protoplanetary disks
Stellar Populations of Spectroscopically Decomposed Bulge-Disk for S0 Galaxies from the CALIFA Survey

We investigate the stellar population properties of bulges and disks separately for 34 S0s using integral-field spectroscopy from the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area survey. The spatially resolved stellar age and metallicity of bulge and disk components are simultaneously estimated using the penalized pixel fitting method with photometrically defined weights for the two components. We find a tight correlation between age and metallicity for bulges, while the relation for disks has a larger scatter than that for bulges. This implies that the star formation histories of disks are more complicated than those of bulges. The bulges of high-mass S0s are mostly comparable in terms of metallicity, while bulges appear to be systematically more metal-rich than disks for low-mass S0s. The ages of bulges and disks in high-mass S0s appear to increase with local density. The bulge ages of low-mass S0s also increase with local density, but such a trend is not clear in the disk ages of low-mass S0s. In addition, the age difference between bulge and disk components (ΔAge) tends to increase with local density, for both high-mass and low-mass S0s. High-mass S0s have systematically greater ΔAge than low-mass S0s at a given local density. Our results indicate that the stellar mass significantly influences the evolution of S0 galaxies, but the environment also plays an important role in determining the evolution of bulges and disks at a given stellar mass.

Keywords: galaxy evolution; galaxy ages; galaxy environments; extragalactic astronomy
Climbing the Cliffs: Classifying Young Stellar Objects in the Cosmic Cliffs JWST Data Using a Probabilistic Random Forest

Among the first observations released to the public from the JWST was a section of the star-forming region NGC 3324 known colloquially as the "Cosmic Cliffs." We build a photometric catalog of the region and test the ability of using the probabilistic random forest machine-learning method to identify its young stellar objects (YSOs). We find 450 candidate YSOs (cYSOs) out of 19,497 total objects within the field, 413 of which are cYSOs not found in previous works. These classifications are verified with several different metrics, including recall and precision. Using the obtained probabilities of objects being YSOs, we employ a Monte Carlo approach to determine the surface density of cYSOs in the Cosmic Cliffs, which we find to be largely coincident with column densities derived from Herschel data, up to a column density of 1.37 × 1022 cm‑2. The newly determined number and spatial distribution of YSOs in the Cosmic Cliffs demonstrate that JWST is far more capable of detecting YSOs in dusty regions than Spitzer. Comparisons of the observed colors and brightness of faint cYSOs with those of pre-main-sequence models suggest JWST has detected a significant population of substellar YSOs in the Cosmic Cliffs. The size of this population further suggests previous estimates of star formation efficiencies in molecular clouds have been systematically low.

Keywords: star formation; star forming regions; random forests; classification; young stellar objects