Radio source extraction with ProFound

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press 487:3 (2019) 3971-3989

Authors:

CL Hale, ASG Robotham, LJM Davies, Matthew Jarvis, SP Driver, I Heywood

Abstract:

In the current era of radio astronomy, continuum surveys observe a multitude of objects with complex morphologies and sizes, and are not limited to observing point sources. Typical radio source extraction software generates catalogues by using Gaussian components to form a model of the emission. This may not be well suited to complicated jet structures and extended emission, particularly in the era of interferometers with a high density of short baselines, which are sensitive to extended emission. In this paper, we investigate how the optically motivated source detection package ProFound (Robotham et al. 2018) may be used to model radio emission of both complicated and point-like radio sources. We use a combination of observations and simulations to investigate how ProFound compares to other source extractor packages used for radio surveys. We find that ProFound can accurately recover both the flux densities of simulated Gaussian sources as well as extended radio galaxies. ProFound can create models that trace the complicated nature of these extended galaxies, which we show is not necessarily the case with other source extraction software. Our work suggests that our knowledge of the emission from extended radio objects may be both over or under-estimated using traditional software. We suggest that ProFound offers a useful alternative to the fitting of Gaussian components for generating catalogues from current and future radio surveys. Furthermore, ProFound's multiwavelength capabilities will be useful in investigating radio sources in combination with multiwavelength data.

Disk-jet coupling in the 2017/2018 outburst of the Galactic black hole candidate X-ray binary MAXI J1535-571

(2019)

Authors:

TD Russell, AJ Tetarenko, JCA Miller-Jones, GR Sivakoff, AS Parikh, S Rapisarda, R Wijnands, S Corbel, E Tremou, D Altamirano, MC Baglio, C Ceccobello, N Degenaar, J van den Eijnden, R Fender, I Heywood, HA Krimm, M Lucchini, S Markoff, DM Russell, R Soria, PA Woudt

The LOFAR Tied-Array All-Sky Survey (LOTAAS): Survey overview and initial pulsar discoveries

Astronomy & Astrophysics EDP Sciences 626 (2019) a104

Authors:

S Sanidas, S Cooper, CG Bassa, JWT Hessels, VI Kondratiev, D Michilli, BW Stappers, CM Tan, J van Leeuwen, L Cerrigone, RA Fallows, M Iacobelli, E Orrú, RF Pizzo, A Shulevski, MC Toribio, S ter Veen, P Zucca, L Bondonneau, J-M Grießmeier, A Karastergiou, M Kramer, C Sobey

Discovery of a radio transient in M81

(2019)

Authors:

GE Anderson, JCA Miller-Jones, MJ Middleton, R Soria, DA Swartz, R Urquhart, N Hurley-Walker, PJ Hancock, RP Fender, P Gandhi, S Marko, TP Roberts

The energetics of starburst-driven outflows at z ∼ 1 from KMOS

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press 487:1 (2019) 381-393

Authors:

AM Swinbank, CM Harrison, AL Tiley, HL Johnson, I Smail, JP Stott, PN Best, RG Bower, Martin Bureau, A Bunker, M Cirasuolo, M Jarvis, GE Magdis, RM Sharples, D Sobral

Abstract:

We present an analysis of the gas outflow energetics from KMOS observations of ∼ 529 main-sequence star-forming galaxies at z ∼ 1 using broad, underlying H α and forbidden lines of [N II] and [S II]. Based on the stacked spectra for a sample with median star-formation rates and stellar masses of SFR = 7 M⊙   yr−1 and M⋆ = (1.0 ± 0.1) × 1010 M⊙, respectively, we derive a typical mass outflow rate of M˙wind = 1–4 M⊙ yr−1 and a mass loading of M˙wind / SFR = 0.2–0.4. By comparing the kinetic energy in the wind with the energy released by supernovae, we estimate a coupling efficiency between the star formation and wind energetics of ϵ ∼  0.03. The mass loading of the wind does not show a strong trend with star-formation rate over the range ∼ 2–20 M⊙ yr−1, although we identify a trend with stellar mass such that dM / dt / SFR ∝ M0.26±0.07⋆⁠. Finally, the line width of the broad H α increases with disc circular velocity with a sub-linear scaling relation FWHMbroad ∝ v0.21 ± 0.05. As a result of this behaviour, in the lowest mass galaxies (M⋆ ≲ 1010 M⊙), a significant fraction of the outflowing gas should have sufficient velocity to escape the gravitational potential of the halo whilst in the highest mass galaxies (M⋆ ≳ 1010 M⊙) most of the gas will be retained, flowing back on to the galaxy disc at later times.