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Nigel Hambly

Publications and source records attributed to Nigel Hambly.

14 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2024

On the nature of apparent transient sources on the National Geographic Society-Palomar Observatory Sky Survey glass copy plates

We examine critically recent claims for the presence of above-atmosphere optical transients in publicly-available digitised scans of Schmidt telescope photographic plate material derived from the National Geographic Society-Palomar Observatory Sky Survey. We employ the publicly available SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey catalogues to examine statistically the morphology of the sources. We develop a simple, objective and automated image classification scheme based on a random forest decision tree classifier. We find that the putative transients are likely to be spurious artefacts of the photographic emulsion. We suggest a possible cause of the appearance of these images as resulting from the copying procedure employed to disseminate glass copy survey atlas sets in the era before large-scale digitisation programmes.

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arXiv2021

Faint objects in motion: the new frontier of high precision astrometry

Sky survey telescopes and powerful targeted telescopes play complementary roles in astronomy. In order to investigate the nature and characteristics of the motions of very faint objects, a flexibly-pointed instrument capable of high astrometric accuracy is an ideal complement to current astrometric surveys and a unique tool for precision astrophysics. Such a space-based mission will push the frontier of precision astrometry from evidence of Earth-mass habitable worlds around the nearest stars, to distant Milky Way objects, and out to the Local Group of galaxies. As we enter the era of the James Webb Space Telescope and the new ground-based, adaptive-optics-enabled giant telescopes, by obtaining these high precision measurements on key objects that Gaia could not reach, a mission that focuses on high precision astrometry science can consolidate our theoretical understanding of the local Universe, enable extrapolation of physical processes to remote redshifts, and derive a much more consistent picture of cosmological evolution and the likely fate of our cosmos. Already several missions have been proposed to address the science case of faint objects in motion using high precision astrometry missions: NEAT proposed for the ESA M3 opportunity, micro-NEAT for the S1 opportunity, and Theia for the M4 and M5 opportunities. Additional new mission configurations adapted with technological innovations could be envisioned to pursue accurate measurements of these extremely small motions. The goal of this White Paper is to address the fundamental science questions that are at stake when we focus on the motions of faint sky objects and to briefly review instrumentation and mission profiles.

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arXiv2020

GaiaNIR: Combining optical and Near-Infra-Red (NIR) capabilities with Time-Delay-Integration (TDI) sensors for a future Gaia-like mission

ESA recently called for new "Science Ideas" to be investigated in terms of feasibility and technological developments -- for technologies not yet sufficiently mature. These ideas may in the future become candidates for M or L class missions within the ESA Science Program. With the launch of Gaia in December 2013, Europe entered a new era of space astrometry following in the footsteps of the very successful Hipparcos mission from the early 1990s. Gaia is the successor to Hipparcos, both of which operated in optical wavelengths, and Gaia is two orders of magnitude more accurate in the five astrometric parameters and is surveying four orders of magnitude more stars in a vast volume of the Milky Way. The combination of the Hipparcos/Tycho-2 catalogues with the first early Gaia data release will give improved proper motions over a long ~25 year baseline. The final Gaia solution will also establish a new optical reference frame by means of quasars, by linking the optical counterparts of radio (VLBI) sources defining the orientation of the reference frame, and by using the zero proper motion of quasars to determine a non-rotating frame. A weakness of Gaia is that it only operates at optical wavelengths. However, much of the Galactic centre and the spiral arm regions, important for certain studies, are obscured by interstellar extinction and this makes it difficult for Gaia to deeply probe. Traditionally, this problem is overcome by switching to the infra-red but this was not possible with Gaia's CCDs. Additionally, to scan the entire sky and make global absolute parallax measurements the spacecraft must have a constant rotation and this requires that the CCDs operate in TDI mode, increasing their complexity.

astro-ph.IM↗
arXiv2017

Theia: Faint objects in motion or the new astrometry frontier

In the context of the ESA M5 (medium mission) call we proposed a new satellite mission, Theia, based on relative astrometry and extreme precision to study the motion of very faint objects in the Universe. Theia is primarily designed to study the local dark matter properties, the existence of Earth-like exoplanets in our nearest star systems and the physics of compact objects. Furthermore, about 15 $\%$ of the mission time was dedicated to an open observatory for the wider community to propose complementary science cases. With its unique metrology system and "point and stare" strategy, Theia's precision would have reached the sub micro-arcsecond level. This is about 1000 times better than ESA/Gaia's accuracy for the brightest objects and represents a factor 10-30 improvement for the faintest stars (depending on the exact observational program). In the version submitted to ESA, we proposed an optical (350-1000nm) on-axis TMA telescope. Due to ESA Technology readiness level, the camera's focal plane would have been made of CCD detectors but we anticipated an upgrade with CMOS detectors. Photometric measurements would have been performed during slew time and stabilisation phases needed for reaching the required astrometric precision.

astro-ph.IM↗
arXiv2017

Get ready for Gaia: cool white dwarfs in common proper motion with Tycho stars

We discuss the Gaia Data Release 1 (September 2016) and preliminary work on maximising the benefit for cool white dwarf (WD) science in advance of the full parallax catalogue which will appear around one year later in DR2. The Tycho catalogue is used in conjunction with the all-sky ground based astrometric/photometric SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey in order to identify candidate faint common proper motion objects to the Tycho stars. Gaia DR1 is supplemented by the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution catalogue containing some 2 million parallaxes with Hipparcos-like precision for Tycho stars. While hotter, brighter WDs are present in Tycho, cooler examples are much rarer (if present at all) and CPM offers one method to infer precision distances for a statistically useful sample of these very faint WDs.

astro-ph.SR↗
arXiv2011

White Dwarfs in the SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey: the Thin Disk, Thick Disk and Spheroid Luminosity Functions

We present a magnitude and proper motion limited catalogue of ~10,000 white dwarf candidates, obtained from the SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey by means of reduced proper motion selection. This catalogue extends to magnitudes r~19.75 and proper motions as low as mu ~0.05"/yr, and covers nearly three quarters of the sky. Photometric parallaxes provide distance estimates accurate to ~50%. This catalogue is used to measure the luminosity functions for disk and spheroid white dwarfs, using strict velocity cuts to isolate subsamples belonging to each population. Disk luminosity functions measured in this manner are really a conglomerate of thin and thick disk objects, due to the significant velocity overlap between these populations. We introduce a new statistical approach to the stellar luminosity function for nearby objects that succesfully untangles the contributions from the different kinematic populations, without the need for stringent velocity cuts. This improves the statistical power by allowing all stars to contribute to the luminosity function, even at tangential velocities where the populations are indistinguishable. This method is particularly suited to white dwarfs, for which population discrimination by chemical tagging is not possible. We use this technique to obtain the first measurement of the thick disk white dwarf luminosity function, while also improving constraint on both the thin disk and spheroid luminosity functions. We find that the thin disk, thick disk and spheroid populations contribute to the local white dwarf density in roughly 79%/16%/5% proportions.

astro-ph.GA↗
arXiv2010

Automated curation of infra-red imaging data in the WFCAM and VISTA Science Archives

The two fastest near infrared survey telescopes are UKIRT-WFCAM and VISTA. The data from both these instruments are being archived by Wide Field Astronomy Unit (WFAU) at the IfA, Edinburgh, using the same curation pipeline, with some instrument specific processing. The final catalogues from these surveys will contain many tens of billions of detections. Data are taken for a range of large surveys and smaller PI programmes. The surveys vary from shallow hemisphere surveys to ultra deep single pointings with hundreds of individual epochs, each with a wide range of scientific goals, leading to a wide range of products and database tables being created. Processing of the main surveys must allow for the inclusion of specific high-level requirements from the survey teams, but automation reduces the amount of work by archive operators allowing a higher curation efficiency. The decision making processes which drive the curation pipeline are a crucial element for efficient archiving. This paper describes the main issues involved in automating the pipeline.

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arXiv2009

A new model for archiving synoptic data in the VISTA Data Flow System

The VISTA Data Flow System comprises nightly pipeline and archiving of near infrared data from UKIRT-WFCAM and VISTA. This includes multi-epoch data which can be used to find moving and variable objects. We have developed a new model for archiving these data which gives the user an extremely flexible and reliable data set that is easy to query through an SQL interface. We have introduced several new database tables into our schema for deep/synoptic datasets. We have also developed a set of curation procedures, which give additional quality control and automation. We discuss the methods used and show some example data. Our design is particularly effective on correlated data-sets, where the observations in different filters are synchronised. It is scalable to large VISTA datasets which will be observed in the next few years and to future surveys such as Pan-STARRS and LSST.

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arXiv2007

A pseudo-parallel Python environment for database curation

One of the major challenges providing large databases like the WFCAM Science Archive (WSA) is to minimize ingest times for pixel/image metadata and catalogue data. In this article we describe how the pipeline processed data are ingested into the database as the first stage in building a release database which will be succeeded by advanced processing (source merging, seaming, detection quality flagging etc.). To accomplish the ingestion procedure as fast as possible we use a mixed Python/C++ environment and run the required tasks in a simple parallel modus operandi where the data are split into daily chunks and then processed on different computers. The created data files can be ingested into the database immediately as they are available. This flexible way of handling the data allows the most usage of the available CPUs as the comparison with sequential processing shows.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2007

Recalibration of Data in the VDFS Science Archives

The VDFS comprises the system to pipeline process and archive the data from infrared observations taken by both the WFCAM instrument on UKIRT and the forthcoming VISTA telescope. These include the largest near-IR surveys to date, such as UKIDSS, which produce terabyte sized catalogues of over 10^9 rows. Such large data volumes present a performance challenge when the catalogue data, stored in a relational database, require many iterations of astrometric and photometric recalibration. Here we present the VDFS recalibration solution that will be employed in the WSA from the forthcoming UKIDSS Data Release 4 and VSA from its inception.

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arXiv2001

The SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey. Paper I: Introduction and Description

In this, the first in a series of three papers concerning the SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey (SSS), we give an introduction and user guide to the survey programme. We briefly describe other wide-field surveys and compare with our own. We give examples of the data, and make a comparison of the accuracies of the various image parameters available with those from the other surveys providing similar data; we show that the SSS database and interface offer advantages over these surveys. Some science applications of the data are also described and some limitations discussed. The series of three papers constitutes a comprehensive description and user guide for the SSS.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2001

The SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey. Paper II: Image detection, parameterisation, classification and photometry

In this, the second in a series of three papers concerning the SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey, we describe the methods for image detection, parameterisation, classification and photometry. We demonstrate the internal and external accuracy of our object parameters. Using examples from the first release of data, the South Galactic Cap survey, we show that our image detection completeness is close to 100% to within 1.5 mag of the nominal plate limits. We show that for the Bj survey data, the image classification is externally > 99% reliable to Bj = 19.5. Internally, the image classification is reliable at a level of > 90% to Bj=21, R=19. The photometric accuracy of our data is typically 0.3 mag with respect to external data for m > 15. Internally, the relative photometric accuracy in restricted position and magnitude ranges can be as accurate as 5% for well exposed stellar images. Colours (B-R or R-I) are externally accurate to 0.07 mag at Bj = 16.5 rising to 0.16 mag at Bj = 20.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2001

The SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey. Paper III: Astrometry

In this, the third in a series of three papers concerning the SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey, we describe the astrometric properties of the database. We describe the algorithms employed in the derivation of the astrometric parameters of the data, and demonstrate their accuracies by comparison with external datasets using the first release of data, the South Galactic Cap survey. We show that the celestial coordinates, which are tied to the International Celestial Reference Frame via the Tycho-2 reference catalogue, are accurate to better than +/- 0.2 arcsec at J,R=19,18 rising to +/- 0.3 arcsec at J,R=22,21 with positional dependent systematic effects from bright to faint magnitudes at the +/- 0.1 arcsec level. The proper motion measurements are shown to be accurate to typically +/- 10 mas/yr at J,R=19,18 rising to +/- 50 mas/yr at J,R=22,21 and are tied to zero using the extragalactic reference frame. We show that the zeropoint errors in the proper motions are < 1 mas/yr for R > 17 and are no larger than 10 mas/yr for R < 17 mas/yr.

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