Prof Chris Lintott

Abstract:

We use new Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images of nine Green Pea galaxies (GPGs) to study their resolved structure and color. The choice of filters, F555W and F850LP, together with the redshift of the galaxies (z ~ 0.25), minimizes the contribution of the nebular [O iii] and Hα emission lines to the broadband images. While these galaxies are typically very blue in color, our analysis reveals that it is only the dominant stellar clusters that are blue. Each GPG does clearly show the presence of at least one bright and compact star-forming region, but these are invariably superimposed on a more extended and lower surface brightness emission. Moreover, the colors of the star-forming regions are on average bluer than those of the diffuse emission, reaching up to 0.6 magnitudes bluer. Assuming that the diffuse and compact components have constant and single-burst star formation histories, respectively, the observed colors imply that the diffuse components (possibly the host galaxy of the star formation episode) have, on average, old stellar ages (>1 Gyr), while the star clusters are younger than 500 Myr. While a redder stellar component is perhaps the most plausible explanation for these results, the limitations of our current data set lead us to examine possible alternative mechanisms, particularly recombination emission processes, which are unusually prominent in systems with such strong line emission. With the available data, however, it is not possible to distinguish between these two interpretations. A substantial presence of old stars would indicate that the mechanisms allowing large escape fractions in these local galaxies may be different from those at play during the reionization epoch.

Abstract:

© 2021 2020 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. We present the results from the first two years of the Planet Hunters TESS (PHT) citizen science project, which identifies planet candidates in the TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) data by engaging members of the general public. Over 22 000 citizen scientists from around the world visually inspected the first 26 sectors of TESS data in order to help identify transit-like signals. We use a clustering algorithm to combine these classifications into a ranked list of events for each sector, the top 500 of which are then visually vetted by the science team. We assess the detection efficiency of this methodology by comparing our results to the list of TESS Objects of Interest (TOIs) and show that we recover 85 per cent of the TOIs with radii greater than 4 R and 51 per cent of those with radii between 3 and 4 R. Additionally, we present our 90 most promising planet candidates that had not previously been identified by other teams, 73 of which exhibit only a single-transit event in the TESS light curve, and outline our efforts to follow these candidates up using ground-based observatories. Finally, we present noteworthy stellar systems that were identified through the Planet Hunters TESS project.

Abstract:

Multicomponent modeling of galaxies is a valuable tool in the effort to quantitatively understand galaxy evolution, yet the use of the technique is plagued by issues of convergence, model selection, and parameter degeneracies. These issues limit its application over large samples to the simplest models, with complex models being applied only to very small samples. We attempt to resolve this dilemma of "quantity or quality" by developing a novel framework, built inside the Zooniverse citizen-science platform, to enable the crowdsourcing of model creation for Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies. We have applied the method, including a final algorithmic optimization step, on a test sample of 198 galaxies, and examine the robustness of this new method. We also compare it to automated fitting pipelines, demonstrating that it is possible to consistently recover accurate models that either show good agreement with, or improve on, prior work. We conclude that citizen science is a promising technique for modeling images of complex galaxies, and release our catalog of models.

Abstract:

The Heliospheric Imagers on board National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s twin STEREO spacecraft show that coronal mass ejections (CMEs) can be visually complex structures. To explore this complexity, we created a citizen science project with the U.K. Science Museum, in which participants were shown pairs of CME images and asked to decide which image in each pair appeared the most “complicated.” A Bradley‐Terry model was then applied to these data to rank the CMEs by their “complicatedness,” or “visual complexity.” This complexity ranking revealed that the annual average visual complexity values follow the solar activity cycle, with a higher level of complexity being observed at the peak of the cycle. The average complexity of CMEs observed by STEREO‐A was also found to be significantly higher than those observed by STEREO‐B. Visual complexity was found to be associated with CME size and brightness, but our results suggest that complexity may be influenced by the scale‐sizes of structure in the CMEs.