No Arabic abstract
GRAVITY is a new generation beam combination instrument for the VLTI. Its goal is to achieve microarsecond astrometric accuracy between objects separated by a few arcsec. This $10^6$ accuracy on astrometric measurements is the most important challenge of the instrument, and careful error budget have been paramount during the technical design of the instrument. In this poster, we will focus on baselines induced errors, which is part of a larger error budget.
TMT has defined the accuracy to be achieved for both absolute and differential astrometry in its top-level requirements documents. Because of the complexities of different types of astrometric observations, these requirements cannot be used to specify system design parameters directly. The TMT astrometry working group therefore developed detailed astrometry error budgets for a variety of science cases. These error budgets detail how astrometric errors propagate through the calibration, observing and data reduction processes. The budgets need to be condensed into sets of specific requirements that can be used by each subsystem team for design purposes. We show how this flowdown from error budgets to design requirements is achieved for the case of TMTs first-light Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (IRIS) instrument.
We present a performance analysis of the DiskMass Survey. The survey uses collisionless tracers in the form of disk stars to measure the surface-density of spiral disks, to provide an absolute calibration of the stellar mass-to-light ratio, and to yield robust estimates of the dark-matter halo density profile in the inner regions of galaxies. We find a disk inclination range of 25-35 degrees is optimal for our measurements, consistent with our survey design to select nearly face-on galaxies. Uncertainties in disk scale-heights are significant, but can be estimated from radial scale-lengths to 25% now, and more precisely in the future. We detail the spectroscopic analysis used to derive line-of-sight velocity dispersions, precise at low surface-brightness, and accurate in the presence of composite stellar populations. Our methods take full advantage of large-grasp integral-field spectroscopy and an extensive library of observed stars. We show that the baryon-to-total mass fraction (F_b) is not a well-defined observational quantity because it is coupled to the halo mass model. This remains true even when the disk mass is known and spatially-extended rotation curves are available. In contrast, the fraction of the rotation speed supplied by the disk at 2.2 scale lengths (disk maximality) is a robust observational indicator of the baryonic disk contribution to the potential. We construct the error-budget for the key quantities: dynamical disk mass surface-density, disk stellar mass-to-light ratio, and disk maximality (V_disk / V_circular). Random and systematic errors in these quantities for individual galaxies will be ~25%, while survey precision for sample quartiles are reduced to 10%, largely devoid of systematic errors outside of distance uncertainties.
GRAVITY is the second generation Very Large Telescope Interferometer instrument for precision narrow-angle astrometry and interferometric imaging in the Near Infra-Red (NIR). It shall provide precision astrometry of order 10 microarcseconds, and imaging capability at a few milliarcsecond resolution, and hence will revolutionise dynamical measurements of celestial objects. GRAVITY is currently in the last stages of its integration and tests in Garching at MPE, and will be delivered to the VLT Interferometer (VLTI) in 2015. We present here the instrument, with a particular focus on the components making use of fibres: integrated optics beam combiners, polarisation rotators, fibre differential delay lines, and the metrology.
The accurate evaluation of the nuclear reaction rates and corresponding uncertainties is an essential requisite for a precise determination of light nuclide primordial abundances. The recent measurement of the D(p,gamma)3He radiative capture cross section by the LUNA collaboration, with its order 3% error, represents an important step in improving the theoretical prediction for Deuterium produced in the early universe. In view of this recent result, we present in this paper a full analysis of its abundance, which includes a new critical study of the impact of the other two main processes for Deuterium burning, namely the deuteron-deuteron transfer reactions, D(d,p)3H and D(d,n)3He. In particular, emphasis is given to the statistical method of analysis of experimental data, to a quantitative study of the theoretical uncertainties, and a comparison with similar studies presented in the recent literature. We then discuss the impact of our study on the concordance of the primordial nucleosynthesis stage with the Planck experiment results on the baryon density Omegab h2 and the effective number of neutrino parameter Neff, as function of the assumed value of the 4He mass fraction Yp. While after the LUNA results, the value of Deuterium is quite precisely fixed, and points to a value of the baryon density in excellent agreement with the Planck result, a combined analysis also including Helium leads to two possible scenarios with different predictions for Omegab h2 and Neff. We argue that new experimental results on the systematics and the determination of Yp would be of great importance in assessing the overall concordance of the standard cosmological model.
We present the details of the photometric and astrometric calibration of the Pan-STARRS1 $3pi$ Survey. The photometric goals were to reduce the systematic effects introduced by the camera and detectors, and to place all of the observations onto a photometric system with consistent zero points over the entire area surveyed, the ~30,000 square degrees north of $delta$ = -30 degrees. The astrometric calibration compensates for similar systematic effects so that positions, proper motions, and parallaxes are reliable as well. The Pan-STARRS Data Release 2 (DR2) astrometry is tied to the Gaia DR1 release.