Casey J. Law — Page 3

arXiv2007

The cool supergiant population of the massive young star cluster RSGC1

We present new high-resolution near-IR spectroscopy and OH maser observations to investigate the population of cool luminous stars of the young massive Galactic cluster RSGC1. Using the 2.293\micron CO-bandhead feature, we make high-precision radial velocity measurements of 16 of the 17 candidate Red Supergiants (RSGs) identified by Figer et al. We show that F16 and F17 are foreground stars, while we confirm that the rest are indeed physically-associated RSGs. We determine that Star F15, also associated with the cluster, is a Yellow Hypergiant based on its luminosity and spectroscopic similarity to $ρ$ Cas. Using the cluster's radial velocity, we have derived the kinematic distance to the cluster and revisited the stars' temperatures and luminosities. We find a larger spread of luminosities than in the discovery paper, consistent with a cluster age 30% older than previously thought (12$\pm$2Myr), and a total initial mass of $(3\pm1) \times 10^{4}$\msun. The spatial coincidence of the OH maser with F13, combined with similar radial velocities, is compelling evidence that the two are related. Combining our results with recent SiO and H$_2$O maser observations, we find that those stars with maser emission are the most luminous in the cluster. From this we suggest that the maser-active phase is associated with the end of the RSG stage, when the luminosity-mass ratios are at their highest.

astro-ph↗

arXiv1999

The Clustering of Faint Galaxies on Small Angular Scales

We present a preliminary measurement of the angular clustering of faint ($R \le 25$) field galaxies in which we concentrate on the behavior of $w(θ)$ on small angular scales ($θ\ls 10''$). The galaxies are strongly clustered and $w(θ)$ is well-characterized by a power law of the form $A_w θ^{-δ}$. The best-fitting value of the power law index, $δ$, is, however, steeper than the fiducial value of $δ= 0.8$, indicating there are more pairs of galaxies separated by $θ\ls 10''$ in our sample than would be otherwise expected. Using the best-fitting form of $w(θ)$, we estimate that $\sim 10%$ of the galaxies are in physically close pairs (separations $\ls 21 h^{-1}$ kpc). This is a factor of order 2 larger than local galaxy samples, but comparable to galaxy samples with $ \sim 0.4$. The mean redshift of our galaxies is of order 0.95, and, therefore, our result suggests that there was little or no evolution in the merger rate of galaxies between $z \sim 1$ and $z \sim 0.4$.

astro-ph↗