Astronomy C

[astronomybuff]

a) An elliptical galaxy has been observed to have an Ha line of 715.68 nm, while it's "true" wavelength of Ha lines is 656.28 nm. How far away is the galaxy, in parsecs?
b) How long is the major axis of the galaxy, in parsecs?

Show/explain your work.

A) Using the 2 wavelengths, the redshift is calculated to be 0.090510. Since that is a small redshift, I'll approximate the recessional velocity to be about 2.7153 * 10^4 km/s. Assuming Hubble's constant to be 72, the distance is 377 mpc, or 3.77 * 10^8 parsecs.
B) I'm not sure if you can calculate the major axis of the galaxy using the information from the problem?

a is correct. Hm yeah, I got an answer when doing b before, but now I'm not quite sure how to do it... anyone else have an idea?

[RiverWalker88]

a) An elliptical galaxy has been observed to have an Ha line of 715.68 nm, while it's "true" wavelength of Ha lines is 656.28 nm. How far away is the galaxy, in parsecs?
b) How long is the major axis of the galaxy, in parsecs?

Show/explain your work.

A) Using the 2 wavelengths, the redshift is calculated to be 0.090510. Since that is a small redshift, I'll approximate the recessional velocity to be about 2.7153 * 10^4 km/s. Assuming Hubble's constant to be 72, the distance is 377 mpc, or 3.77 * 10^8 parsecs.
B) I'm not sure if you can calculate the major axis of the galaxy using the information from the problem?

a is correct. Hm yeah, I got an answer when doing b before, but now I'm not quite sure how to do it... anyone else have an idea?

b. could be straightforward if angular diameter was given, but I can't think of a good way to try to guess the major axis of a galaxy using only distance/redshift.

EDIT: Rewording

[RiverWalker88]

Revive!

Go to js9.si.edu/nso/nso.html and remotely open the image at "ftp://cda.harvard.edu/pub/science/ao01/ ... t2.fits.gz". (Caution: This link will lead to a file that is ~38 megabytes that you probably don't want to download. It's not harmful, it's just kind of big).

Remotely Open Images (Click to Show Hidden Text)

Open the file menu and click on "Open Remote". For this particular image, you will use a proxy server, so leave that bubble filled. Paste the link above into the search bar and click "open". It may take a moment for the image to load.

Answer the following questions about this image:

1. What is the strongest period of the central object?
2. Do the jets in this image display periodicity? If so, is this possibly a result of the central object?
3. How many photons does the brightest area of the central object emit per second?
4. Are the jets in this image approximately the same (with the exception of their position and direction of outflow)? How can you tell?

[AstroClarinet]

Revive!

Go to js9.si.edu/nso/nso.html and remotely open the image at "ftp://cda.harvard.edu/pub/science/ao01/ ... t2.fits.gz". (Caution: This link will lead to a file that is ~38 megabytes that you probably don't want to download. It's not harmful, it's just kind of big).

Remotely Open Images (Click to Show Hidden Text)

Open the file menu and click on "Open Remote". For this particular image, you will use a proxy server, so leave that bubble filled. Paste the link above into the search bar and click "open". It may take a moment for the image to load.

Answer the following questions about this image:

1. What is the strongest period of the central object?
2. Do the jets in this image display periodicity? If so, is this possibly a result of the central object?
3. How many photons does the brightest area of the central object emit per second?
4. Are the jets in this image approximately the same (with the exception of their position and direction of outflow)? How can you tell?

1. 250 sec
2. Yes & yes (because they have the same period as the central object)
3. Approximately 0.23 photons/sec (0.0397 photons/arcsec²/sec over 5.81 arcsec²). If you meant the brightest pixel, then more like 0.13 photons/sec.
4. They are approximately the same, because they have similar lengths, periods, and light curves. They also both have brighter regions farther out on the jets (seen on the 3d plots). The main differences are that the upper jet stays brighter further out instead of just having a bright spot in the middle (like the lower jet), and the upper jet overall emits more photons.

[RiverWalker88]

Revive!

Go to js9.si.edu/nso/nso.html and remotely open the image at "ftp://cda.harvard.edu/pub/science/ao01/ ... t2.fits.gz". (Caution: This link will lead to a file that is ~38 megabytes that you probably don't want to download. It's not harmful, it's just kind of big).

Remotely Open Images (Click to Show Hidden Text)

Open the file menu and click on "Open Remote". For this particular image, you will use a proxy server, so leave that bubble filled. Paste the link above into the search bar and click "open". It may take a moment for the image to load.

Answer the following questions about this image:

1. What is the strongest period of the central object?
2. Do the jets in this image display periodicity? If so, is this possibly a result of the central object?
3. How many photons does the brightest area of the central object emit per second?
4. Are the jets in this image approximately the same (with the exception of their position and direction of outflow)? How can you tell?

1. 250 sec
2. Yes & yes (because they have the same period as the central object)
3. Approximately 0.23 photons/sec (0.0397 photons/arcsec²/sec over 5.81 arcsec²). If you meant the brightest pixel, then more like 0.13 photons/sec.
4. They are approximately the same, because they have similar lengths, periods, and light curves. They also both have brighter regions farther out on the jets (seen on the 3d plots). The main differences are that the upper jet stays brighter further out instead of just having a bright spot in the middle (like the lower jet), and the upper jet overall emits more photons.

1. Click to Show Answer

   I got 166.772 seconds for this one. I circled the central region, ran the power spectrum, and got a peak at 0.005998 Hz. When converted to seconds, I got 166.772. However, there was an evident peak (albeit smaller, but evident) around 0.004Hz, so there is some periodicity around 250s as well.

2. Click to Show Answer

   I found that the jets displayed only mostly constant emission, and really no periodicity (see note at end) in their power spectrum. However, if the central object was left encircled or was in the region where the jet light curve was measured, it was bright enough that it showed its light curve peaks in the power spectrum of the jet.
   
   I did double check to see, and there is a peak in the light curve of the jets without the central object at around ~0.004Hz, meaning at least weak periodicity at around 250 seconds, which likely was caused by the central object.

3. Click to Show Answer

   Yep! We got a similar answer (0.23 vs 0.21), with variability likely a result of different circling.

4. Click to Show Answer

   I would say no on this one, because the energy spectra of the four different jets are all pretty different, meaning that the material in them is different. However, your analysis is really good, and way more in-depth than I went.

In-depth Explanation
For anyone new to JS9 or unsure how this was done, here's how I came to my answers.

1. Click to Show Answer

   To determine the period of the power spectrum, on would have to first encircle the central object (most likely with a circular region). Then, you would open the analysis menu and run the "Light Curve" function under "NSO Analysis". Close the light curve (It will be noisy and useless) and run the "Power Spectrum" analysis under "NSO Analysis". This will give you a series of peaks. Click and drag the area around the highest peak (you should see a yellowish box surround it) to zoom into that peak to get a better measurement of where it lands. The x value of this peak is the period in Hertz, so you need to convert it so seconds by dividing 1 by the measure in Hertz. This will give you the period in seconds.

2. Click to Show Answer

   To find the period of the jets, do the same process as above, but place a region (a rectangle, most likely) around individual jets (I did each separately, but getting an idea from 1 or 2 should work) and run the analysis you ran in part a. Compare it to the period you found in part a.

3. Click to Show Answer

   To complete this one, first encircle the central object (I used the vague term of "Brightest area", just ignore that). Then, run "Flux in Regions" under "NSO Analysis". This will give you an entry that tells you your flux in photons/arcsecond^2/second. To get your answer in photons/second, you can cancel out the arcsecond^2 with the area of the region. To find this, use "Counts in Regions". You can then use the area column to determine the area of the region in arcsec^2.

4. Click to Show Answer

   As seen above, there are many ways to approach this particular question. I compared the energy spectra of the four different jets (Analysis > Energy Spectrum), but you could also have looked at the lengths, brightness, periods, and overall features of the jets.

[AstroClarinet]

I figured out how I messed up (Click to Show Hidden Text)

 1) I kind of ignored the 2nd pair of jets... I mean I noticed they were there but I guess I assumed they weren't important? 
2) I didn't know that the analyses looked at all the regions that were open. I suppose I should have realized that when I started getting duplicate analyses for different regions.
3) I used the period fold instead of the power spectrum, which probably wasn't a great idea because the period fold requires a lot of random guessing. For some reason though, 250 Hz looked stronger in the period fold than 167 Hz.

Seeing how many mistakes I made, this was good practice for me! 

Here are the new questions:
1. What creates the narrow and broad lines in AGN spectra, and how?
2. PSS 0133+0400 has a redshift of 4.15 and proper motions of 0.437 mas/yr (in the negative RA direction; already corrected) and 0.100 mas/yr (in the positive Dec direction). Estimate its distance in gigalight-years.
3. Find the magnitude of the total/space velocity of PSS 0133+0400, relative to our solar system, in km/s.
Bonus: Calculate the wavelength (in micrometers) of the Pfund limit (Hydrogen line from n=5 to n=infinity).

[RiverWalker88]

I figured out how I messed up (Click to Show Hidden Text)

 1) I kind of ignored the 2nd pair of jets... I mean I noticed they were there but I guess I assumed they weren't important? 
2) I didn't know that the analyses looked at all the regions that were open. I suppose I should have realized that when I started getting duplicate analyses for different regions.
3) I used the period fold instead of the power spectrum, which probably wasn't a great idea because the period fold requires a lot of random guessing. For some reason though, 250 Hz looked stronger in the period fold than 167 Hz.

Seeing how many mistakes I made, this was good practice for me! 

Here are the new questions:
1. What creates the narrow and broad lines in AGN spectra, and how?
2. PSS 0133+0400 has a redshift of 4.15 and proper motions of 0.437 mas/yr (in the negative RA direction; already corrected) and 0.100 mas/yr (in the positive Dec direction). Estimate its distance in gigalight-years.
3. Find the magnitude of the total/space velocity of PSS 0133+0400, relative to our solar system, in km/s.
Bonus: Calculate the wavelength (in micrometers) of the Pfund limit (Hydrogen line from n=5 to n=infinity).

Alright, I'll take a stab at this (although I honestly only have a slight idea of what I'm doing).

Click to Show Answer

1. The rotational velocity of the galaxy, because the line can be shifted differently in different parts of the galaxy depending on how fast it is rotating (pretty sure this causes the width of 21cm, but not sure if it applies to any other lines).
2. Using Hubble's law (assuming Hubble's constant to be 70km/s/Mpc) and relativistic redshift: 3974.281 Mpc
3. First, I calculated the transverse velocity using distance (in km) and proper motion (in mas/s) to get 1.698e12km/s (uhhh... that's definitely wrong). Then, I set that as the x component of a vector, and the recessional velocity (2.782e5km/s) as the y, and calculated the magnitude to get 1.698e12 km/s. That's certainly wrong.
Bonus: , such that  . (I have no idea, sorry)

Okay, kind of failed miserably...

[EKT26]

I figured out how I messed up (Click to Show Hidden Text)

 1) I kind of ignored the 2nd pair of jets... I mean I noticed they were there but I guess I assumed they weren't important? 
2) I didn't know that the analyses looked at all the regions that were open. I suppose I should have realized that when I started getting duplicate analyses for different regions.
3) I used the period fold instead of the power spectrum, which probably wasn't a great idea because the period fold requires a lot of random guessing. For some reason though, 250 Hz looked stronger in the period fold than 167 Hz.

Seeing how many mistakes I made, this was good practice for me! 

Here are the new questions:
1. What creates the narrow and broad lines in AGN spectra, and how?
2. PSS 0133+0400 has a redshift of 4.15 and proper motions of 0.437 mas/yr (in the negative RA direction; already corrected) and 0.100 mas/yr (in the positive Dec direction). Estimate its distance in gigalight-years.
3. Find the magnitude of the total/space velocity of PSS 0133+0400, relative to our solar system, in km/s.
Bonus: Calculate the wavelength (in micrometers) of the Pfund limit (Hydrogen line from n=5 to n=infinity).

Alright, I'll take a stab at this (although I honestly only have a slight idea of what I'm doing).

Click to Show Answer

1. The rotational velocity of the galaxy, because the line can be shifted differently in different parts of the galaxy depending on how fast it is rotating (pretty sure this causes the width of 21cm, but not sure if it applies to any other lines).
2. Using Hubble's law (assuming Hubble's constant to be 70km/s/Mpc) and relativistic redshift: 3974.281 Mpc
3. First, I calculated the transverse velocity using distance (in km) and proper motion (in mas/s) to get 1.698e12km/s (uhhh... that's definitely wrong). Then, I set that as the x component of a vector, and the recessional velocity (2.782e5km/s) as the y, and calculated the magnitude to get 1.698e12 km/s. That's certainly wrong.
Bonus: , such that  . (I have no idea, sorry)

Okay, kind of failed miserably...

Ok so i similarly failed on miserably, but now it's with company

Click to Show Answer

1. Broad and narrow lines are due to doppler broadening which is when different parts are moving at different velocities. This makes sense because different parts of the disk are moving at different velocities relative to the observer. Narrow lines exist because uh maybe, the elements that correspond with those lines are always closer to the center (at a lower energy) and therefore don't have velocities enough to be considered broad.
2. Assumed relativistic redshift and then used this super outdated thing that have in my notes called "angular diameter formula" which is just the conversion of angular distances to tangential distances but divided the whole thing by time so it would be an angular velocity into a tangential velocity which i then used to find my distance. 11.8 Gly
3. i reused my work from 2 and found the velocity in the RA direction, found velocity in the Declination direction, and then vector added all of them up to get... 256 ly/y... this is somehow even more ridiculous of an answer. 
For the bonus i used rydberg's formula and got 2.278 micrometers

[AstroClarinet]

1. What creates the narrow and broad lines in AGN spectra, and how?
2. PSS 0133+0400 has a redshift of 4.15 and proper motions of 0.437 mas/yr (in the negative RA direction; already corrected) and 0.100 mas/yr (in the positive Dec direction). Estimate its distance in gigalight-years.
3. Find the magnitude of the total/space velocity of PSS 0133+0400, relative to our solar system, in km/s.
Bonus: Calculate the wavelength (in micrometers) of the Pfund limit (Hydrogen line from n=5 to n=infinity).

Alright, I'll take a stab at this (although I honestly only have a slight idea of what I'm doing).

Click to Show Answer

1. The rotational velocity of the galaxy, because the line can be shifted differently in different parts of the galaxy depending on how fast it is rotating (pretty sure this causes the width of 21cm, but not sure if it applies to any other lines).
2. Using Hubble's law (assuming Hubble's constant to be 70km/s/Mpc) and relativistic redshift: 3974.281 Mpc
3. First, I calculated the transverse velocity using distance (in km) and proper motion (in mas/s) to get 1.698e12km/s (uhhh... that's definitely wrong). Then, I set that as the x component of a vector, and the recessional velocity (2.782e5km/s) as the y, and calculated the magnitude to get 1.698e12 km/s. That's certainly wrong.
Bonus: , such that  . (I have no idea, sorry)

Okay, kind of failed miserably...

Ok so i similarly failed on miserably, but now it's with company

Click to Show Answer

1. Broad and narrow lines are due to doppler broadening which is when different parts are moving at different velocities. This makes sense because different parts of the disk are moving at different velocities relative to the observer. Narrow lines exist because uh maybe, the elements that correspond with those lines are always closer to the center (at a lower energy) and therefore don't have velocities enough to be considered broad.
2. Assumed relativistic redshift and then used this super outdated thing that have in my notes called "angular diameter formula" which is just the conversion of angular distances to tangential distances but divided the whole thing by time so it would be an angular velocity into a tangential velocity which i then used to find my distance. 11.8 Gly
3. i reused my work from 2 and found the velocity in the RA direction, found velocity in the Declination direction, and then vector added all of them up to get... 256 ly/y... this is somehow even more ridiculous of an answer. 
For the bonus i used rydberg's formula and got 2.278 micrometers

Thanks for taking the challenge! I think this is right...

Click to Show Answer

1. Yep. Though I really don't know if the reason why both broad and narrow lines can appear in the same spectrum is because they show up for different elements or not - does anyone else know?
2. Yep to RiverWalker. EKT26 - you just have to get radial velocity from relativistic redshift, and then use Hubble's Law to get 13.9 Gly.
3. First you need to calculate the total proper motion, since there was an x and y component. . Then you use the small angle formula to convert this to a linear velocity. , which yields . Use the pythagorean theorem with this and the recessional velocity and you get 9.02*106 km/s (still) as the final result (which I think is reasonable enough for an object at that redshift?).
Bonus: For this you use the Rydberg formula  (wasn't sure how many people would know about it, so that's why this is a bonus). To find the Pfund limit, you set n1 equal to 5 and n2 equal to infinity (I put a big number in there; I suppose you could instead just ignore that term since it would be infinitely small), plug in 1 for the atomic number Z, and then the Rydberg constant for hydrogen for R. Then you would take a reciprocal and convert it to micrometers; I got 2.28 micrometers (good job EKT26).
Fun fact, I was originally going to do the bonus for some other element like oxygen until I realized the Rydberg formula only works in a few cases... 

[RiverWalker88]

I guess I'll take it...?

The attached image will be needed to answer the following questions.

1. What DSO is depicted in this image?
2. When this cluster was first discovered, astronomers were unsure if it was a true galaxy cluster, or one just forming. Observations in what wavelength proved this to be a true galaxy cluster?
3. About how far away is this galaxy cluster (billion light-years)?
4. At least 19 galaxies have been confirmed to be in this cluster. What measurement can we make to determine if a galaxy is in the same cluster as galaxies that appear in the same field?