Suchergebnisse

We present an analysis of UV spectra of 13 quasars believed to belong to extreme Population A (xA) quasars, aimed at the estimation of the chemical abundances of the broad-line-emitting gas. Metallicity estimates for the broad-line-emitting gas of quasars are subject to a number of caveats; xA sources with the strongest Fe ii emission offer several advantages with respect to the quasar general population, as their optical and UV emission lines can be interpreted as the sum of a low-ionization component roughly at quasar rest frame (from virialized gas), plus a blueshifted excess (a disk wind), in different physical conditions. Capitalizing on these results, we analyze the component at rest frame and the blueshifted one, exploiting the dependence of several intensity line ratios on metallicity Z. We find that the validity of intensity line ratios as metallicity indicators depends on the physical conditions. We apply the measured diagnostic ratios to estimate the physical properties of sources such as density, ionization, and metallicity of the gas. Our results confirm that the two regions (the low-ionization component and the blueshifted excess) of different dynamical conditions also show different physical conditions and suggest metallicity values that are high, and probably the highest along the quasar main sequence, with Z ∼ 20-50 Z o˙, if the solar abundance ratios can be assumed constant. We found some evidence of an overabundance of aluminum with respect to carbon, possibly due to selective enrichment of the broad-line-emitting gas by supernova ejecta. © 2021. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. ; M.S. acknowledges the support of the Erasmus+ program of the European Union and would like to express very great appreciation to Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, University of Padova, and Astronomical Observatory of the University of Warsaw for enabling her to complete an internship. The project was partially supported by the Polish Funding Agency National Science Centre project 2017/26/A/ST9/00756 (MAESTRO 9) and MNiSW grant DIR/WK/2018/12. P.M. acknowledges the Hypatia of Alexandria visiting grant SO-IAA (SEV-2017-0709) through the Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa and is deeply indebted to Drs. J. Perea and A. del Olmo for the generous allocation of computing resources and for a stay at IAA. A.d.O. acknowledges financial support from the Spanish grants MCI PID2019-106027GB-C41 and the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award for the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709). Funding for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, and the Max Planck Society. The SDSS is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium (ARC) for the Participating Institutions. The Participating Institutions are the University of Chicago, Fermilab, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Japan Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), New Mexico State University, University of Pittsburgh, Princeton University, the United States Naval Observatory, and the University of Washington. ; Peer reviewed

We present the first results of the LBT Imaging of Galaxy Haloes and Tidal Structures (LIGHTS) survey. LIGHTS is an ongoing observational campaign with the 2 × 8.4 m Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) aiming to explore the stellar haloes and the low surface brightness population of satellites down to a depth of μV ∼31 mag arcsec-2 (3σ in 10″ × 10″ boxes) of nearby galaxies. We simultaneously collected deep imaging in the g and r Sloan filters using the Large Binocular Cameras. The resulting images are 60 times (i.e. ∼4.5 mag) deeper than those from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and they have characteristics comparable (in depth and spatial resolution) to the ones expected from the future Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). Here we show the first results of our pilot programme targeting NGC 1042 (an M 33 analogue at a distance of 13.5 Mpc) and its surroundings. The depth of the images allowed us to detect an asymmetric stellar halo in the outskirts of this galaxy whose mass (1.4 ± 0.4 × 108 M) is in agreement with the ΛCDM expectations. Additionally, we show that deep imaging from the LBT reveals low mass satellites (a few times 105 M) with very faint central surface brightness μV(0) ∼27 mag arcsec-2 (i.e. similar to Local Group dwarf spheroidals, such as Andromeda XIV or Sextans, but at distances well beyond the local volume). The depth and spatial resolution provided by the LIGHTS survey open up a unique opportunity to explore the 'missing satellites' problem in a large variety of galaxies beyond our Local Group down to masses where the difference between the theory and observation (if any) should be significant. © 2021 ESO. ; We acknowledge support from grant PID2019-107427GB-C32 from The Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. We acknowledge financial support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 721463 to the SUNDIAL ITN network, and the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER), from IAC project P/300624, financed by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, through the State Budget and by the Canary Islands Department of Economy, Knowledge and Employment, through the Regional Budget of the Autonomous Community. DZ acknowledges financial support from NSF AST-2006785. NC acknowledges support from the research project grant "Understanding the Dynamic Universe" funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation under Dnr KAW 2018.0067 and Chris Usher for interesting comments. DJS acknowledges support from NSF grants AST-1821967 and 1813708. JR acknowledges funding from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the `Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa' award to the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709), financial support from the grants AYA2015-65973-C3-1-R and RTI2018-096228B-C31 (MINECO/FEDER, UE) as well as support from the State Research Agency (AEI-MCINN) of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the grant `The structure and evolution of galaxies and their central regions' with reference PID2019-105602GB-I00/10.13039/501100011033. The LBT is an international collaboration among institutions in the United States, Italy and Germany. LBT Corporation partners are: The University of Arizona on behalf of the Arizona Board of Regents; Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, Italy; LBT Beteiligungsgesellschaft, Germany, representing the Max-Planck Society, The Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam, and Heidelberg University; The Ohio State University, representing OSU, University of Notre Dame, University of Minnesota and University of Virginia. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and operated by the California Institute of Technology. This work was partly done using GNU Astronomy Utilities (Gnuastro, ascl.net/1801.009) version 0.13.12-f50c. Work on Gnuastro has been funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) scholarship and its Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (21244012, 24253003), the European Research Council (ERC) advanced grant 339659-MUSICOS, and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) under grant number AYA2016-76219-P. ; Peer reviewed