08-30-2017, 07:50 PM
"Astronomers reveal new insights into physical properties of the young star system ROXs 12"
This is not a system with which I'm familiar, but it looks very interesting. In this case, it's a relatively nearby system (400 light years or about 2.4 million billion miles away!) that contains some very young objects, astronomically speaking. The system was observed using instruments on the Gemini and Keck I telescopes on MK.
https://phys.org/news/2017-08-astronomer...rties.html
"Located about 400 light years away from the Earth, ROXs 12 is a young system, known to be composed of two 6-million-year-old objects. The larger component, designated ROXs 12 A, is a star of spectral type M0, with a radius of 1.14 solar radii but about 35 percent less massive than the sun. ROXs 12 B is a much smaller substellar companion of ROXs 12 A, but very little is known about its physical parameters."
[...]
"In order to get more details about ROXs 12 and its mysterious companion, a team of researchers led by Brendan Bowler of the University of Texas at Austin has conducted moderate-resolution near-infrared spectroscopic observations of ROXs 12 B. For their observational campaign, the astronomers used several spectrographs, including the Near-Infrared Integral Field Spectrometer (NIFS) at Gemini-North 8.1 m telescope in Hawaii, and the OH-Suppressing InfraRed Imaging Spectrograph (OSIRIS) at the Keck I telescope, also in Hawaii."
OH-suppressing technology is relatively new and I was involved in a few related projects early in my career here. The upper atmosphere contains lots of OH- ions that emit several emission lines in the near infrared and also at optical wavelengths. The ions become excited by "gravity waves" in the upper atmosphere, essentially waves of turbulence, and the line strengths vary very quickly. This makes high-resolution spectroscopy observations difficult as they have to take into account the effects the lines have on the data. One of my very first projects after arriving in Hawaii was to produce a spectroscopic map of these lines between about one and 2.5 microns to allow astronomers to understand the data they were taking and are still used today. The project involved Tom Geballe, a few of here may well know him.
http://www.ukirt.hawaii.edu/astronomy/ca...lines.html
This is not a system with which I'm familiar, but it looks very interesting. In this case, it's a relatively nearby system (400 light years or about 2.4 million billion miles away!) that contains some very young objects, astronomically speaking. The system was observed using instruments on the Gemini and Keck I telescopes on MK.
https://phys.org/news/2017-08-astronomer...rties.html
"Located about 400 light years away from the Earth, ROXs 12 is a young system, known to be composed of two 6-million-year-old objects. The larger component, designated ROXs 12 A, is a star of spectral type M0, with a radius of 1.14 solar radii but about 35 percent less massive than the sun. ROXs 12 B is a much smaller substellar companion of ROXs 12 A, but very little is known about its physical parameters."
[...]
"In order to get more details about ROXs 12 and its mysterious companion, a team of researchers led by Brendan Bowler of the University of Texas at Austin has conducted moderate-resolution near-infrared spectroscopic observations of ROXs 12 B. For their observational campaign, the astronomers used several spectrographs, including the Near-Infrared Integral Field Spectrometer (NIFS) at Gemini-North 8.1 m telescope in Hawaii, and the OH-Suppressing InfraRed Imaging Spectrograph (OSIRIS) at the Keck I telescope, also in Hawaii."
OH-suppressing technology is relatively new and I was involved in a few related projects early in my career here. The upper atmosphere contains lots of OH- ions that emit several emission lines in the near infrared and also at optical wavelengths. The ions become excited by "gravity waves" in the upper atmosphere, essentially waves of turbulence, and the line strengths vary very quickly. This makes high-resolution spectroscopy observations difficult as they have to take into account the effects the lines have on the data. One of my very first projects after arriving in Hawaii was to produce a spectroscopic map of these lines between about one and 2.5 microns to allow astronomers to understand the data they were taking and are still used today. The project involved Tom Geballe, a few of here may well know him.
http://www.ukirt.hawaii.edu/astronomy/ca...lines.html