Actually I’ve been back since yesterday, but after a long stressful trip with lots of delays and lost luggage I didn’t get around to a post yesterday.
Our stuff is right where we left it.
All of our stuff turned on and is working great. I did find a failed hard disk, but the RAID is already synched. Our new data storage computer survived shipping too, and booted right up.
It’s the one in the middle with the most lights.
LAN decided that I could wait a day for my luggage. They fixed it quick though, and thanks to the El Pino crew it came today by dinner.
Look at the extra “rush” tags.
There are new observer cars. They only have 2 pedals. At least they didn’t color coordinate the license plates.
Now on to the real business. It was Katie’s turn to set the song of the day rules, and this should be fun.. It seems I need to start us on what promises to be an epic journey.
On August 3, 1809, my Great^5 grandfather Enoch Males married Nancy Thomas in Bourbon County, Kentucky. They then promptly lit a shuck for Indiana. I’ve been watching a lot of the show “Justified” lately — if you’re familiar, Bourbon isn’t quite as “in the hills” as Harlan. Just the same, judging by this song I’m glad Enoch and Nancy didn’t stick around.
For old time’s sake, here’s another version to listen to while you ponder the hidden messages about the MagAO life.
2015B is upon us. I’m getting ready to leave in a couple days. My parents drove down from NM for a visit since I won’t be seeing them at any of the upcoming holidays. We hiked to the top of Blackett’s Ridge — a 1700-foot elevation gain — and it was a beautiful day: Saw this cool lizard up there. Here are my parents, my brother, and myself.
A nice way to enjoy fall in Tucson before the summer run in LCO!
Blog Rules:
1. Every post of the day must have a song of the day.
2. If the post of the day is the first one for 2015B, the song of the day is at the poster’s discretion.
3. If the post of the day is not the first post of the day for 2015B, the song of the day for post N must be related somehow to the song from day N-1.
3.1. The connection must be clearly stated.
4. Any other covers, etc. are allowed, just be clear about which song is the official song of the day.
On November 11th, I had the great pleasure of attending the Groundbreaking Ceremony for the GMT. It was a very windy, cold, but happy occasion. I’ll be posting a more complete update in the next 24 hours, including hopefully some of the photos that I was able to take during the celebrations. The event was well attended, including wise and often humorous remarks by the ambassadors to Chile from Australia, South Korea, and the United States. The President of the Republic of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, was the keynote speaker. Everyone working to build GMTO (the GMTO staff, the many people from all of the partners involved, including the talented women and men of Steward Observatory and the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab) should be very pleased to see the project reach this milestone.
Fortunately for the MAGAO team, the more than 150 people that were visiting the mountain yesterday have now left, leaving hopefully enough room for you to work and sleep during your upcoming long observing block!
I am happy to announce the acceptance of Magellan Adaptive Optics first-light observations of the exoplanet beta Pic b. Paper II by the Astrophysical Journal. This paper presents the 0.9-5 micron spectral energy distribution (SED) of young giant exoplanet beta Pic b. We carefully calibrated Clio (see the Appendix), analyzed our photometry, combined it with other works’ photometry, and measured the total brightness of the planet at all wavelengths — the bolometric luminosity. Here are the images of the star and planet:
Images of the star beta Pic (Left: saturated; Center: Unsaturated) and its planet beta Pic b (Right) with MagAO. In this study we analyze the photometry in order to measure the total luminosity of the planet at all wavelengths (Figure 1 from the paper).
Here is the star’s SED and the planet’s SED: Top: SED of the star (Figure 2 from the paper). Bottom: SED of the planet (Figure 3 from the paper).
We measured the bolometric luminosity empirically by integrating the SED and extending with a best-fit blackbody: Empirical Bolometric Luminosity (Figure 8 from the paper).
This is the first time the luminosity has been measured empirically, and it is in agreement with the luminosity from models but about 20% brighter than brown dwarfs of a similar temperature (the bolometric correction, abbreviated B.C. in the table): Physical parameters of the planet according to different works (Table 15 from the paper).
Abstract: Young giant exoplanets are a unique laboratory for understanding cool, low-gravity atmospheres. A quintessential example is the massive extrasolar planet beta Pic b, which is 9 AU from and embedded in the debris disk of the young nearby A6V star beta Pictoris. We observed the system with first light of the Magellan Adaptive Optics (MagAO) system. In Paper I we presented the first CCD detection of this planet with MagAO+VisAO. Here we present four MagAO+Clio images of beta Pic b at 3.1 um, 3.3 um, L’, and M’, including the first observation in the fundamental CH_4 band. To remove systematic errors from the spectral energy distribution (SED), we re-calibrate the literature photometry and combine it with our own data, for a total of 22 independent measurements at 16 passbands from 0.99-4.8 um. Atmosphere models demonstrate the planet is cloudy but are degenerate in effective temperature and radius. The measured SED now covers > 80% of the planet’s energy, so we approach the bolometric luminosity empirically. We calculate the luminosity by extending the measured SED with a blackbody and integrating to find log(L_{bol}/L_{Sun}) = -3.78 +- 0.03. From our bolometric luminosity and an age of 23 +- 3 Myr, hot-start evolutionary tracks give a mass of 12.7 +- 0.3 M_{Jup}, radius of 1.45 +- 0.02 R_{Jup}, and T_{eff} of 1708 +- 23 K (model-dependent errors not included). Our empirically-determined luminosity is in agreement with values from atmospheric models (typically -3.8 dex), but brighter than values from the field-dwarf bolometric correction (typically -3.9 dex), illustrating the limitations in comparing young exoplanets to old brown dwarfs.
K. Morzinski et al., “Magellan Adaptive Optics first-light observations of the exoplanet beta Pic b. II. 3-5 micron direct imaging with MagAO+Clio, and the empirical bolometric luminosity of a self-luminous giant planet”
ApJ 815, 108, 2015 ; ArXiv Preprint ; ApJ
