arXiv subjects

Krzysztof Findeisen

Publications and source records attributed to Krzysztof Findeisen.

11 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory Data Preview 1

We present Rubin Data Preview 1 DP1, the first data from the NSF DOE Vera C Rubin Observatory, comprising raw and calibrated single epoch images, coadds, difference images, detection catalogs, and ancillary data products. DP1 is based on 1792 optical near infrared exposures acquired over 48 distinct nights by the Rubin Commissioning Camera LSSTComCam on the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the Summit Facility on Cerro Pachón Chile in late 2024. DP1 covers $\sim$15 deg$^2$ distributed across seven roughly equal-sized non-contiguous fields, each independently observed in six broad photometric bands $ugrizy$. The median FWHM of the point spread function across all bands is approximately 1.14 arcseconds, with the sharpest images reaching about 0.58 arcseconds. The 5$σ$ point source depths for coadded images in the deepest field the Extended Chandra Deep Field South are $u$ = 24.55, $g$ = 26.18, $r$ = 25.96, $i$ = 25.71, $z$ = 25.07, $y$ = 23.1. Other fields are no more than 2.2 magnitudes shallower in any band where they have nonzero coverage. DP1 contains approximately 2.3 million distinct astrophysical objects, of which 1.6 million are extended in at least one band in coadds and 431 solar system objects of which 93 are new discoveries. DP1 is approximately 3.5 TB in size and is available to Rubin data rights holders via the Rubin Science Platform a cloud based environment for the analysis of petascale astronomical data. While small compared to future LSST releases its high quality and diversity of data support a broad range of early science investigations ahead of full operations in 2026.

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arXiv2026

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory Prompt Processing System

Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Prompt Processing system will automatically process 10 TB of raw images to produce up to 10 million transient alerts per night. We summarize how Prompt Processing meets its throughput, latency, and reliability requirements and present results from Rubin Observatory Commissioning.

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arXiv2022

Faro: A framework for measuring the scientific performance of petascale Rubin Observatory data products

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will advance many areas of astronomy over the next decade with its unique wide-fast-deep multi-color imaging survey, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). The LSST will produce approximately 20TB of raw data per night, which will be automatically processed by the LSST Science Pipelines to generate science-ready data products -- processed images, catalogs and alerts. To ensure that these data products enable transformative science with LSST, stringent requirements have been placed on their quality and scientific fidelity, for example on image quality and depth, astrometric and photometric performance, and object recovery completeness. In this paper we introduce faro, a framework for automatically and efficiently computing scientific performance metrics on the LSST data products for units of data of varying granularity, ranging from single-detector to full-survey summary statistics. By measuring and monitoring metrics, we are able to evaluate trends in algorithmic performance and conduct regression testing during development, compare the performance of one algorithm against another, and verify that the LSST data products will meet performance requirements by comparing to specifications. We present initial results using faro to characterize the performance of the data products produced on simulated and precursor data sets, and discuss plans to use faro to verify the performance of the LSST commissioning data products.

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arXiv2020

The First Extensive Spectroscopic Study of Young Stars in the North America and Pelican Nebulae Region

We present a spectroscopic survey of over 3400 potential members in the North America and Pelican nebulae (NAP) using several low-resolution ($R\approx$ 1300-2000) spectrographs: Palomar/Norris, WIYN/HYDRA, Keck/DEIMOS, and MMT/Hectospec. We identify 580 young stars as likely members of the NAP region based on criteria involving infrared excess, Li I 6708 absorption, X-ray emission, parallax, and proper motions. The spectral types of individual spectra are derived by fitting them with templates that are either empirical spectra of pre-main sequence stars, or model atmospheres. The templates are artificially veiled, and a best-fit combination of spectral type and veiling parameter is derived for each star. We use the spectral types with archival photometry to derive $V$-band extinction and stellar luminosity. From the H-R diagram, the median age of the young stars is about 1 Myr, with a luminosity dispersion of $\sim$0.3--0.4 dex. We investigate the photometric variability of the spectroscopic member sample using ZTF data, and conclude that photometric variability, while present, does not significantly contribute to the luminosity dispersion. While larger than the formal errors, the luminosity dispersion is smaller than if veiling were not taken into account in our spectral typing process. The measured ages of stellar kinematic groups, combined with inferred ages for embedded stellar populations revealed by Spitzer, suggests a sequential history of star formation in the NAP region.

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arXiv2018

An Overview of the LSST Image Processing Pipelines

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is an ambitious astronomical survey with a similarly ambitious Data Management component. Data Management for LSST includes processing on both nightly and yearly cadences to generate transient alerts, deep catalogs of the static sky, and forced photometry light-curves for billions of objects at hundreds of epochs, spanning at least a decade. The algorithms running in these pipelines are individually sophisticated and interact in subtle ways. This paper provides an overview of those pipelines, focusing more on those interactions than the details of any individual algorithm.

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arXiv2014

Simulated Performance of Timescale Metrics for Aperiodic Light Curves

Aperiodic variability is a characteristic feature of young stars, massive stars, and active galactic nuclei. With the recent proliferation of time domain surveys, it is increasingly essential to develop methods to quantify and analyze aperiodic variability. We develop three timescale metrics that have been little used in astronomy -- Δm-Δt plots, peak-finding, and Gaussian process regression -- and present simulations comparing their effectiveness across a range of aperiodic light curve shapes, characteristic timescales, observing cadences, and signal to noise ratios. We find that Gaussian process regression is easily confused by noise and by irregular sampling, even when the model being fit reflects the process underlying the light curve, but that Δm-Δt plots and peak-finding can coarsely characterize timescales across a broad region of parameter space. We make public the software we used for our simulations, both in the spirit of open research and to allow others to carry out analogous simulations for their own observing programs.

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arXiv2014

CSI 2264: Simultaneous optical and infrared light curves of young disk-bearing stars in NGC 2264 with CoRoT and Spitzer-- evidence for multiple origins of variability

We present the Coordinated Synoptic Investigation of NGC 2264, a continuous 30-day multi-wavelength photometric monitoring campaign on more than 1000 young cluster members using 16 telescopes. The unprecedented combination of multi-wavelength, high-precision, high-cadence, and long-duration data opens a new window into the time domain behavior of young stellar objects. Here we provide an overview of the observations, focusing on results from Spitzer and CoRoT. The highlight of this work is detailed analysis of 162 classical T Tauri stars for which we can probe optical and mid-infrared flux variations to 1% amplitudes and sub-hour timescales. We present a morphological variability census and then use metrics of periodicity, stochasticity, and symmetry to statistically separate the light curves into seven distinct classes, which we suggest represent different physical processes and geometric effects. We provide distributions of the characteristic timescales and amplitudes, and assess the fractional representation within each class. The largest category (>20%) are optical "dippers" having discrete fading events lasting ~1-5 days. The degree of correlation between the optical and infrared light curves is positive but weak; notably, the independently assigned optical and infrared morphology classes tend to be different for the same object. Assessment of flux variation behavior with respect to (circum)stellar properties reveals correlations of variability parameters with H$α$ emission and with effective temperature. Overall, our results point to multiple origins of young star variability, including circumstellar obscuration events, hot spots on the star and/or disk, accretion bursts, and rapid structural changes in the inner disk.

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arXiv2014

CSI 2264: Characterizing Accretion-Burst Dominated Light Curves for Young Stars in NGC 2264

Based on more than four weeks of continuous high cadence photometric monitoring of several hundred members of the young cluster NGC 2264 with two space telescopes, NASA's Spitzer and the CNES CoRoT (Convection, Rotation, and planetary Transits), we provide high quality, multi-wavelength light curves for young stellar objects (YSOs) whose optical variability is dominated by short duration flux bursts, which we infer are due to enhanced mass accretion rates. These light curves show many brief -- several hour to one day -- brightenings at optical and near-infrared (IR) wavelengths with amplitudes generally in the range 5-50% of the quiescent value. Typically, a dozen or more of these bursts occur in a thirty day period. We demonstrate that stars exhibiting this type of variability have large ultraviolet (UV) excesses and dominate the portion of the u-g vs. g-r color-color diagram with the largest UV excesses. These stars also have large Halpha equivalent widths, and either centrally peaked, lumpy Halpha emission profiles or profiles with blue-shifted absorption dips associated with disk or stellar winds. Light curves of this type have been predicted for stars whose accretion is dominated by Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities at the boundary between their magnetosphere and inner circumstellar disk, or where magneto-rotational instabilities modulate the accretion rate from the inner disk. Amongst the stars with the largest UV excesses or largest Halpha equivalent widths, light curves with this type of variability greatly outnumber light curves with relatively smooth sinusoidal variations associated with long-lived hot spots. We provide quantitative statistics for the average duration and strength of the accretion bursts and for the fraction of the accretion luminosity associated with these bursts.

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arXiv2013

Disk-Related Bursts and Fades in Young Stars

We present first results from a new, multiyear, time domain survey of young stars in the North America Nebula complex using the Palomar Transient Factory. Our survey is providing an unprecedented view of aperiodic variability in young stars on timescales of days to years. The analyzed sample covers R_PTF = 13.5-18 and spans a range of mid-infrared color, with larger-amplitude optical variables (exceeding 0.4 mag root-mean-squared) more likely to have mid-infrared evidence for circumstellar material. This paper characterizes infrared excess stars with distinct bursts above or fades below a baseline of lower-level variability, identifying 41 examples. The light curves exhibit a remarkable diversity of amplitudes, timescales, and morphologies, with a continuum of behaviors that can not be classified into distinct groups. Among the bursters, we identify three particularly promising sources that may represent theoretically predicted short-timescale accretion instabilities. Finally, we find that fading behavior is approximately twice as common as bursting behavior on timescales of days to years, although the bursting and fading duty cycle for individual objects often varies from year to year.

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arXiv2011

Stellar Activity in the Broad-Band Ultraviolet

The completion of the GALEX All-Sky Survey in the ultraviolet allows activity measurements to be acquired for many more stars than is possible with the limited sensitivity of ROSAT or the limited sky coverage of Chandra, XMM, or spectroscopic surveys for line emission in the optical or ultraviolet. We have explored the use of GALEX photometry as an activity indicator, using as a calibration sample stars within 50 pc, representing the field, and in selected nearby associations, representing the youngest stages of stellar evolution. We present preliminary relations between UV flux and the optical activity indicator R'_HK and between UV flux and age. We demonstrate that far-UV (FUV, 1350-1780Å) excess flux is roughly proportional to R'_HK. We also detect a correlation between near-UV (NUV, 1780-2830Å) flux and activity or age, but the effect is much more subtle, particularly for stars older than than ~0.5-1 Gyr. Both the FUV and NUV relations show large scatter, ~0.2 mag when predicting UV flux, ~0.18 dex when predicting R'_HK, and ~0.4 dex when predicting age. This scatter appears to be evenly split between observational errors in current state-of-the-art data and long-term activity variability in the sample stars.

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arXiv2010

Ultraviolet-Selected Field and Pre-Main-Sequence Stars Towards Taurus and Upper Scorpius

We have carried out a Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) Cycle 1 guest investigator program covering 56 square degrees near the Taurus T association and 12 square degrees along the northern edge of the Upper Scorpius OB association. We combined photometry in the GALEX FUV and NUV bands with data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey to identify candidate young (<100 Myr old) stars as those with an ultraviolet excess relative to older main sequence stars. Follow-up spectroscopy of a partial sample of these candidates suggest 5 new members of Taurus, with 8-20 expected from additional observations, and 5 new members of Upper Scorpius, with 3-6 expected from additional observations. These candidate new members appear to represent a distributed, non-clustered population in either region, although our sample statistics are as of yet too poor to constrain the nature or extent of this population. Rather, our study demonstrates the ability of GALEX observations to identify young stellar populations distributed over a wide area of the sky. We also highlight the necessity of a better understanding of the Galactic ultraviolet source population to support similar investigations. In particular, we report a large population of stars with an ultraviolet excess but no optical indicators of stellar activity or accretion, and briefly argue against several interpretations of these sources.

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