arXiv subjects

Gayandhi M. De Silva

Publications and source records attributed to Gayandhi M. De Silva.

42 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

The TESS-HERMES survey Data Release 1: high-resolution spectroscopy of the TESS southern continuous viewing zone

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will provide high precision time-series photometry for millions of stars with at least a half-hour cadence. Of particular interest are the circular regions of 12-degree radius centered around the ecliptic poles that will be observed continuously for a full year. Spectroscopic stellar parameters are desirable to characterize and select suitable targets for TESS, whether they are focused on exploring exoplanets, stellar astrophysics, or Galactic archaeology. Here, we present spectroscopic stellar parameters ($T_{\rm eff}$, $\log g$, [Fe/H], $v \sin i$, $v_{\rm micro}$) for about 16,000 dwarf and subgiant stars in TESS' southern continuous viewing zone. For almost all the stars, we also present Bayesian estimates of stellar properties including distance, extinction, mass, radius, and age using theoretical isochrones. Stellar surface gravity and radius are made available for an additional set of roughly 8,500 red giants. All our target stars are in the range $10<V<13.1$. Among them, we identify and list 227 stars belonging to the Large Magellanic Cloud. The data were taken using the the High Efficiency and Resolution Multi-Element Spectrograph (HERMES, R $\sim 28,000$) at the Anglo-Australian Telescope as part of the TESS-HERMES survey. Comparing our results with the TESS Input Catalog (TIC) shows that the TIC is generally efficient in separating dwarfs and giants, but it has flagged more than hundred cool dwarfs ($T_{\rm eff}< 4800$ K) as giants, which ought to be high-priority targets for the exoplanet search. The catalog can be accessed via http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/tess-hermes/ , or at MAST via https://archive.stsci.edu/prepds/tess-hermes/ .

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arXiv2017

The GALAH survey: Chemical Tagging of Star Clusters and New Members in the Pleiades

The technique of chemical tagging uses the elemental abundances of stellar atmospheres to `reconstruct' chemically homogeneous star clusters that have long since dispersed. The GALAH spectroscopic survey --which aims to observe one million stars using the Anglo-Australian Telescope -- allows us to measure up to 30 elements or dimensions in the stellar chemical abundance space, many of which are not independent. How to find clustering reliably in a noisy high-dimensional space is a difficult problem that remains largely unsolved. Here we explore t-distributed stochastic neighbour embedding (t-SNE) -- which identifies an optimal mapping of a high-dimensional space into fewer dimensions -- whilst conserving the original clustering information. Typically, the projection is made to a 2D space to aid recognition of clusters by eye. We show that this method is a reliable tool for chemical tagging because it can: (i) resolve clustering in chemical space alone, (ii) recover known open and globular clusters with high efficiency and low contamination, and (iii) relate field stars to known clusters. t-SNE also provides a useful visualization of a high-dimensional space. We demonstrate the method on a dataset of 13 abundances measured in the spectra of 187,000 stars by the GALAH survey. We recover 7 of the 9 observed clusters (6 globular and 3 open clusters) in chemical space with minimal contamination from field stars and low numbers of outliers. With chemical tagging, we also identify two Pleiades supercluster members (which we confirm kinematically), one as far as 6$^\circ$ -- one tidal radius away from the cluster centre.

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arXiv2016

The GALAH survey: The data reduction pipeline

We present the data reduction procedures being used by the GALAH survey, carried out with the HERMES fibre-fed, multi-object spectrograph on the 3.9~m Anglo-Australian Telescope. GALAH is a unique survey, targeting 1 million stars brighter than magnitude V=14 at a resolution of 28,000 with a goal to measure the abundances of 29 elements. Such a large number of high resolution spectra necessitates the development of a reduction pipeline optimized for speed, accuracy, and consistency. We outline the design and structure of the Iraf-based reduction pipeline that we developed, specifically for GALAH, to produce fully calibrated spectra aimed for subsequent stellar atmospheric parameter estimation. The pipeline takes advantage of existing Iraf routines and other readily available software so as to be simple to maintain, testable and reliable. A radial velocity and stellar atmospheric parameter estimator code is also presented, which is used for further data analysis and yields a useful verification of the reduction quality. We have used this estimator to quantify the data quality of GALAH for fibre cross-talk level ($\lesssim0.5$%) and scattered light ($\sim5$ counts in a typical 20 minutes exposure), resolution across the field, sky spectrum properties, wavelength solution reliability (better than $1$ $\mathrm{km\ s^{-1}}$ accuracy) and radial velocity precision.

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arXiv2012

High-resolution elemental abundance analysis of the open cluster IC 4756

We present detailed elemental abundances of 12 subgiants in the open cluster IC 4756 including Na, Al, Mg, Si, Ca, Ti, Cr, Ni, Fe, Zn and Ba. We measure the cluster to have [Fe/H] = -0.01 +/- 0.10. Most of the measured star-to-star [X/H] abundance variation is below sigma < 0.03, as expected from a coeval stellar population preserving natal abundance patterns, supporting the use of elemental abundances as a probe to reconstruct dispersed clusters. We find discrepancies between Cr I and Cr II abundances as well as between Ti I and Ti II abundances, where the ionized abundances are larger by about 0.2 dex. This follows other such studies which demonstrate the effects of overionization in cool stars. IC 4756 are supersolar in Mg, Si, Na and Al, but are solar in the other elements. The fact that IC 4756 is supersolar in some alpha-elements (Mg, Si) but solar in the others (Ca, Ti) suggests that the production of alpha-elements is not simply one dimensional and could be exploited for chemical tagging.

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arXiv2011

Principal Component Analysis on Chemical Abundances Spaces

In preparation for the HERMES chemical tagging survey of about a million Galactic FGK stars, we estimate the number of independent dimensions of the space defined by the stellar chemical element abundances [X/Fe]. [...] We explore abundances in several environments, including solar neighbourhood thin/thick disk stars, halo metal-poor stars, globular clusters, open clusters, the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy. [...] We find that, especially at low metallicity, the production of r-process elements is likely to be associated with the production of alpha-elements. This may support the core-collapse supernovae as the r-process site. We also verify the over-abundances of light s-process elements at low metallicity, and find that the relative contribution decreases at higher metallicity, which suggests that this lighter elements primary process may be associated with massive stars. [...] Our analysis reveals two types of core-collapse supernovae: one produces mainly alpha-elements, the other produces both alpha-elements and Fe-peak elements with a large enhancement of heavy Fe-peak elements which may be the contribution from hypernovae. [...] The extra contribution from low mass AGB stars at high metallicity compensates the dimension loss due to the homogenization of the core-collapse supernovae ejecta. [...] the number of independent dimensions of the [X/Fe]+[Fe/H] chemical space in the solar neighbourhood for HERMES is about 8 to 9. Comparing fainter galaxies and the solar neighbourhood, we find that the chemical space for fainter galaxies such as Fornax and the Large Magellanic Cloud has a higher dimensionality. This is consistent with the slower star formation history of fainter galaxies. [...]

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arXiv2011

The Telescopes and Processes of the Australian Astronomical Observatory

The Australian Astronomical Observatory operates the Anglo-Australian Telescope and the United Kingdom Schmidt Telescope in Australia, as well as coordinating access for the Australian community to the Gemini, Magellan, and other international telescope facilities. We review here the processes involved within the AAO related to allocating observing time on these facilities, as well as the impact on telescope use of both the Large Program projects and the AAO's instrument program.

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