Random Access Addressing of MEMS Electrostatic Shutter Array for Multi-Object Astronomical Spectroscopy

An extended version of cross-bar type addressing technique is developed for three-port electrostatic micro shutters arranged in an arrayed format. A microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) shutter blade suspended by a pair of torsion beams works as a movable electrode that is either attracted upwards to the cover plate to close the aperture or retracted downwards into the through-hole to open it. Tri-state positioning of the shutter—i.e., open, rest, and close—is controlled by the hysteresis loop of the electrostatic pull-in and release behavior using the combination of the voltages applied to the shutter, the cover, and the substrate. Random access addressing of the shutters is demonstrated by a control system composed of MATLAB-coded Arduino electronics. The shutter array developed in this work is for a sub-cluster of a reconfigurable shutter array under development for a multi-object galactic astronomy.

The predicted properties of helium-enriched globular cluster progenitors at high redshift

ABSTRACT Globular cluster progenitors may have been detected by Hubble Space Telescope, and are predicted to be observable with James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and ground-based extremely large telescopes with adaptive optics. This has the potential to elucidate the issue of globular cluster formation and the origins of significantly helium-enriched subpopulations, a problem in Galactic astronomy with no satisfactory theoretical solution. Given this context, we use model stellar tracks and isochrones to investigate the predicted observational properties of helium-enriched stellar populations in globular cluster progenitors. We find that, relative to helium-normal populations, helium-enriched (ΔY = +0.12) stellar populations similar to those inferred in the most massive globular clusters, are expected, modulo some rapid fluctuations in the first ∼30 Myr, to be brighter and redder in the rest frame. At fixed age, stellar mass, and metallicity, a helium-enriched population is predicted to converge to being ∼0.40 mag brighter at $\lambda \approx 2.0\, {\mu \rm m}$, and to be 0.30-mag redder in the JWST–NIRCam colour (F070W − F200W), and to actually be fainter for $\lambda \lesssim 0.50 \, {\mu \rm m}$. Separately, we find that the time-integrated shift in ionizing radiation is a negligible $\sim \!5{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$, though we show that the Lyman-α escape fraction could end up higher for helium-enriched stars.

The 3D non-LTE solar nitrogen abundance from atomic lines

Nitrogen is an important element in various fields of stellar and Galactic astronomy, and the solar nitrogen abundance is crucial as a yardstick for comparing different objects in the cosmos. In order to obtain a precise and accurate value for this abundance, we carried out N I line formation calculations in a 3D radiative-hydrodynamic STAGGER model solar atmosphere in full 3D non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (non-LTE). We used a model atom that includes physically motivated descriptions for the inelastic collisions of N I with free electrons and with neutral hydrogen. We selected five N I lines of high excitation energy to study in detail, based on their strengths and on their being relatively free of blends. We found that these lines are slightly strengthened from non-LTE photon losses and from 3D granulation effects, resulting in negative abundance corrections of around − 0.01 dex and − 0.04 dex, respectively. Our advocated solar nitrogen abundance is log ɛN = 7.77, with the systematic 1σ uncertainty estimated to be 0.05 dex. This result is consistent with earlier studies after correcting for differences in line selections and equivalent widths.

КВАЗАРИ І РЕГЕНЕРАЦІЯ ВОДНЮ. ЧАСТИНА 2.

Further consequences of the mechanisms of hydrogen regeneration, which are realized in large galaxies during the period of activity of their nuclei, are considered. In addition to the indirect evidence presented in the first part and related to the work of the structures forming the jets, this part of the article considers direct evidence of the existence of these processes in galaxies. The evidence given is based on emissions of regenerated hydrogen into galactic and intergalactic space, as shown by astronomical observations of the Galaxy and its closest surroundings. Evidence is also found among the general observational data of intergalactic astronomy, the origin of which is well explained in the framework of the approach presented. However, these data are traditionally viewed through the prism of the dominant concept, that is, they are interpreted as residual hydrogen, which appeared from the Big Bang. Among the results of galactic astronomy there are data showing the possible contribution of the processes under consideration to the formation of the observable structure of the Milky Way, as well as their involvement in the organization of its satellite galaxies. The criterion is given, according to which galactic gas clouds and star groups can be distinguished, organized from the galaxy's own matter during the period of activity of its nucleus. Using the example of a spiral galaxy, it is suggested that the active galactic nuclei might be involved in the formation of the morphology of the galaxy. It is concluded that the central supermassive object in the period of its activity, performs its main galactic function - carries out the processing of waste of stars in the galaxy. This inverse process closes the chain of the continuous life cycle of the galaxy, which consists of two interrelated processes. The first process is the continuous burning of hydrogen in the stars, and the second is the episodic activity of the galactic nucleus, as a result of which hydrogen is recovered from the "waste", necessary to support direct stellar processes. One more process joins these two processes - the process of returning the energy expended by baryonic matter to electromagnetic radiation. It is realized through the dark component of matter. The main conclusion is made - the Universe as a system is well organized and self-sufficient for its eternal existence, and it does not need any external motivation.

Leaves on trees: identifying halo stars with extreme gradient boosted trees

Context. Extended stellar haloes are a natural by-product of the hierarchical formation of massive galaxies like the Milky Way. If merging is a non-negligible factor in the growth of our Galaxy, evidence of such events should be encoded in its stellar halo. The reliable identification of genuine halo stars is a challenging task, however. Aims. With the advent of the Gaia space telescope, we are ushered into a new era of Galactic astronomy. The first Gaia data release contains the positions, parallaxes, and proper motions for over two million stars, mostly in the solar neighbourhood. The second Gaia data release will enlarge this sample to over 1.5 billion stars, the brightest ~ 5 million of which will have full phase-space information. Our aim for this paper is to develop a machine learning model for reliably identifying halo stars, even when their full phase-space information is not available. Methods. We use the Gradient Boosted Trees algorithm to build a supervised halo star classifier. The classifier is trained on a sample of stars extracted from the Gaia Universe Model Snapshot, which is also convolved with the errors of the public TGAS data, which is a subset of Gaia DR1, as well as with the expected uncertainties for the upcoming Gaia DR2 catalogue. We also trained our classifier on a dataset resulting from the cross-match between the TGAS and RAVE catalogues, where the halo stars are labelled in an entirely model-independent way. We then use this model to identify halo stars in TGAS. Results. When full phase-space information is available and for Gaia DR2-like uncertainties, our classifier is able to recover 90% of the halo stars with at most 30% distance errors, in a completely unseen test set and with negligible levels of contamination. When line-of-sight velocity is not available, we recover ~ 60% of such halo stars, with less than 10% contamination. When applied to the TGAS catalogue, our classifier detects 337 high confidence red giant branch halo stars. At first glance this number may seem small, however, it is consistent with the expectation from the models, given the uncertainties in the data. The large parallax errors are in fact the biggest limitation in our ability to identify a large number of halo stars in all the cases studied.

Dissecting stellar chemical abundance space with t-SNE

In the era of large-scale Galactic astronomy and multi-object spectroscopic stellar surveys, the sample sizes and the number of available stellar chemical abundances have reached dimensions in which it has become difficult to process all the available information in an effective manner. In this paper we demonstrate the use of a dimensionality-reduction technique (t-distributed stochastic neighbour embedding; t-SNE) for analysing the stellar abundance-space distribution. While the non-parametric non-linear behaviour of this technique makes it difficult to estimate the significance of any abundance-space substructure found, we show that our results depend little on parameter choices and are robust to abundance errors. By reanalysing the high-resolution high-signal-to-noise solar-neighbourhood HARPS-GTO sample with t-SNE, we find clearer chemical separations of the high- and low-[α/Fe] disc sequences, hints for multiple populations in the high-[α/Fe] population, and indications that the chemical evolution of the high-[α/Fe] metal-rich stars is connected with the super-metal-rich stars. We also identify a number of chemically peculiar stars, among them a high-confidence s-process-enhanced abundance-ratio pair (HD 91345/HD 126681) with very similar ages and v X and v Y velocities, which we suggest have a common birth origin, possibly a dwarf galaxy. Our results demonstrate the potential of abundance-space t-SNE and similar methods for chemical-tagging studies with large spectroscopic surveys.