Astronomical instrumentation

Abstract:

Following the pilot study of Kuntschner et al., we have investigated the properties of a volume-and magnitude-limited (cz > 10 000 km s-1, bJ > 16) sample of early-type galaxies that were carefully selected from the Anglo-Australian Observatory (AAO) two-degree field galaxy redshift survey (2dFGRS) to have no more than one and five companions within 1 and 2 Mpc, respectively. We used images from the Digital Sky Survey (DSS) to confirm the E/SO morphologies. We augmented this sample with field galaxies from Colbert et al. selected as having no neighbour within 1 Mpc and ±1000 km s-1. We present spectroscopic observations of 22 galaxies from the combined sample, from which central velocity dispersions and the Lick stellar population indices were measured. After carefully correcting the spectra for nebular emission, we derived luminosity-weighted ages, metallicities and α-element abundance ratios. We compare these isolated galaxies with samples of early-type galaxies in the Virgo and Coma clusters, and also with the previous sample of galaxies in low-density regions of Kuntschner et al. We find that galaxies in low-density environments are younger and have a greater spread of ages compared to cluster galaxies. They also show a wider range of metallicities at a given velocity dispersion than cluster galaxies, which display only supersolar metallicities. On average cluster, as well as, isolated galaxies show non-solar abundance ratios in α elements, suggesting that, independent of galactic environment, star formation occurred on short time-scales. However, the abundance ratios for our low-density environment sample galaxies do not scale with the stellar velocity dispersion as observed in clusters. In fact we detect a large spread at a given velocity dispersion even reaching solar abundance ratios. The metallicity of isolated early-type galaxies is found to correlate weakly with σ. We reason that early-type galaxies in low-density environments experienced merging-induced star formation episodes over a longer and more recent period of time compared to a cluster environment, and speculate that a considerable fraction of their stars formed out of low-metallicity halo gaseous material during the slow growth of a stellar disc between merging events. © 2006 RAS.

Abstract:

We have demonstrated the first near-infrared multi-object spectrograph, CIRPASS, on the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope (WHT) and the 3.9-m Anglo-Australian Telescope. We have conducted an H survey of 38 0.77 < z < 1 galaxies over ∼100 arcmin2 of the Hubble Deep Field North and Flanking Fields, to determine star formation rates (SFRs) using CIRPASS on the WHT. This represents the first successful application of this technique to observing high redshift galaxies (Doherty et al. 2004). Stacking the spectra in the rest-frame, we find a lower limit (uncorrected for dust reddening) on the star formation rate density at redshift z = 1 of 0.04 M yr1 Mpc 3 (Doherty et al. 2006). This implies rapid evolution in the star formation rate density from z = 0 to z = 1 which is proportional to (1 + z) 3.1. We intend to extend our work with FMOS on Subaru as the evolSMURF project (the Evolution of Star-formation and Metallicity in the Universe at high Redshift with FMOS). This will represent nearly two orders-of-magnitude improvement on previous work, and for the first time will provide a sample of sufficient size to measure accurately the H luminosity function, and so determine the global star formation rate using the same indicator as used in local surveys. Using [O II]3727 , H, [O III] 5007 and H redshifted into the z, J & H bands, we can chart the star formation history over 70% of the age of the Universe, affording complete coverage up to z = 1.6 with the same well-understood diagnostics. The line ratios will also allow the extinction and metallicity to be measured at z>1. This will resolve one of the long-standing puzzles in extragalactic astrophysics the true evolution of the Madau-Lilly diagram of star formation density. © 2007 International Astronomical Union.

Abstract:

We have used the Rayner and Best smooth tests of goodness-of-fit to study the Gaussianity of the Very Small Array (VSA) data. These tests are designed to be sensitive to the presence of 'smooth' deviations from a given distribution, and are applied to the data transformed into normalized signal-to-noise eigenmodes. In a previous work, they have been already adapted and applied to simulated observations of interferometric experiments. In this paper, we extend the practical implementation of the method to deal with mosaiced observations, by introducing the Arnoldi algorithm. This method permits us to solve large eigenvalue problems with low computational cost. Out of the 41 published VSA individual pointings dedicated to cosmological [cosmic microwave background (CMB)] observations, 37 are found to be consistent with Gaussianity, whereas four pointings show deviations from Gaussianity. In two of them, these deviations can be explained as residual systematic effects of a few visibility points which, when corrected, have a negligible impact on the angular power spectrum. The non-Gaussianity found in the other two (adjacent) pointings seems to be associated to a local deviation of the power spectrum of these fields with respect to the common power spectrum of the complete data set, at angular scales of the third acoustic peak (ℓ = 700-900). No evidence of residual systematics is found in this case, and unsubtracted point sources are not a plausible explanation either. If those visibilities are removed, the differences of the new power spectrum with respect to the published one only affect three bins. A cosmological analysis based on this new VSA power spectrum alone shows no differences in the parameter constraints with respect to our published results, except for the physical baryon density, which decreases by 10 per cent. Finally, the method has been also used to analyse the VSA observations in the Corona Borealis supercluster region. Our method finds a clear deviation (99.82 per cent) with respect to Gaussianity in the second-order moment of the distribution, and which cannot be explained as systematic effects. A detailed study shows that the non-Gaussianity is produced in scales of ℓ ≈ 500, and that this deviation is intrinsic to the data (in the sense that cannot be explained in terms of a Gaussian field with a different power spectrum). This result is consistent with the Gaussianity studies in the Corona Borealis data presented in Génova-Santos et al. which show a strong decrement that cannot be explained as primordial CMB. © 2006 RAS.