No Arabic abstract
Combining the precise parallaxes and optical photometry delivered by Gaias second data release (Gaia DR2) with the photometric catalogues of PanSTARRS-1, 2MASS, and AllWISE, we derive Bayesian stellar parameters, distances, and extinctions for 265 million stars brighter than G=18. Because of the wide wavelength range used, our results substantially improve the accuracy and precision of previous extinction and effective temperature estimates. After cleaning our results for both unreliable input and output data, we retain 137 million stars, for which we achieve a median precision of 5% in distance, 0.20 mag in V-band extinction, and 245 K in effective temperature for G<14, degrading towards fainter magnitudes (12%, 0.20 mag, and 245 K at G=16; 16%, 0.23 mag, and 260 K at G=17, respectively). We find a very good agreement with the asteroseismic surface gravities and distances of 7000 stars in the Kepler, the K2-C3, and the K2-C6 fields, with stellar parameters from the APOGEE survey, as well as with distances to star clusters. Our results are available through the ADQL query interface of the Gaia mirror at the Leibniz-Institut f{u}r Astrophysik Potsdam (gaia.aip.de) and as binary tables at data.aip.de. As a first application, in this paper we provide distance- and extinction-corrected colour-magnitude diagrams, extinction maps as a function of distance, and extensive density maps, demonstrating the potential of our value-added dataset for mapping the three-dimensional structure of our Galaxy. In particular, we see a clear manifestation of the Galactic bar in the stellar density distributions, an observation that can almost be considered a direct imaging of the Galactic bar.
Hypervelocity stars are intriguing rare objects traveling at speeds large enough to be unbound from the Milky Way. Several mechanisms have been proposed for producing them, including the interaction of the Galaxys super-massive black hole (SMBH) with a binary; rapid mass-loss from a companion to a star in a short-period binary; the tidal disruption of an infalling galaxy and finally ejection from the Large Magellanic Cloud. While previously discovered high-velocity early-type stars are thought to be the result of an interaction with the SMBH, the origin of high-velocity late type stars is ambiguous. The second data release of Gaia (DR2) enables a unique opportunity to resolve this ambiguity and determine whether any late-type candidates are truly unbound from the Milky Way. In this paper, we utilize the new proper motion and velocity information available from DR2 to re-evaluate a collection of historical data compiled on the newly-created Open Fast Stars Catalog. We find that almost all previously-known high-velocity late-type stars are most likely bound to the Milky Way. Only one late-type object (LAMOST J115209.12+120258.0) is unbound from the Galaxy. Performing integrations of orbital histories, we find that this object cannot have been ejected from the Galactic centre and thus may be either debris from the disruption of a satellite galaxy or a disc runaway.
We discuss the prospects of high precision pointing of our transmitter to habitable planets around Galactic main sequence stars. For an efficient signal delivery, the future sky positions of the host stars should be appropriately extrapolated with accuracy better than the beam opening angle $Theta$ of the transmitter. Using the latest data release (DR2) of Gaia, we estimate the accuracy of the extrapolations individually for $4.7times 10^7$ FGK stars, and find that the total number of targets could be $sim 10^7$ for the accuracy goal better than 1. Considering the pairwise nature of communication, our study would be instructive also for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), not only for sending signals outward.
We present a method for obtaining the likelihood function of distance and extinction to a star given its photometry. The other properties of the star (its mass, age, metallicity and so on) are marginalised assuming a simple Galaxy model. We demonstrate that the resulting marginalised likelihood function can be described faithfully and compactly using a Gaussian mixture model. For dust mapping applications we strongly advocate using monochromatic over bandpass extinctions, and provide tables for converting from the former to the latter for different stellar types.
We search for the fastest stars in the subset of stars with radial velocity measurements of the second data release (DR2) of the European Space Agency mission Gaia. Starting from the observed positions, parallaxes, proper motions, and radial velocities, we construct the distance and total velocity distribution of more than $7$ million stars in our Milky Way, deriving the full 6D phase space information in Galactocentric coordinates. These information are shared in a catalogue, publicly available at http://home.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~marchetti/research.html. To search for unbound stars, we then focus on stars with a probability greater than $50 %$ of being unbound from the Milky Way. This cut results in a clean sample of $125$ sources with reliable astrometric parameters and radial velocities. Of these, $20$ stars have probabilities greater than 80 $%$ of being unbound from the Galaxy. On this latter sub-sample, we perform orbit integration to characterize the stars orbital parameter distributions. As expected given the relatively small sample size of bright stars, we find no hypervelocity star candidates, stars that are moving on orbits consistent with coming from the Galactic Centre. Instead, we find $7$ hyper-runaway star candidates, coming from the Galactic disk. Surprisingly, the remaining $13$ unbound stars cannot be traced back to the Galaxy, including two of the fastest stars (around $700$ km/s). If conformed, these may constitute the tip of the iceberg of a large extragalactic population or the extreme velocity tail of stellar streams.
{We combine the results of our earlier study of the UV characteristics of 18 classical novae (CNe) with data from the literature and with the recent precise distance determinations from the Gaia satellite to investigate the statistical properties of old novae. All final parameters for the sample include a detailed treatment of the errors and their propagation. The physical properties reported here include the absolute magnitudes at maximum and minimum, a new maximum magnitude versus rate of decline (MMRD) relation, and the inclination-corrected 1100--6000-AA accretion disk luminosity. Most importantly, these data have allowed us to derive a homogenous set of accretion rates in quiescence for the 18 novae. All novae in the sample were super-Eddington during outburst, with an average absolute magnitude at maximum of $-7.5pm1.0$. The average absolute magnitude at minimum corrected for inclination is $3.9pm1.0$. The median mass accretion rate is $logdot{M}_{1Modot}=-8.52$ (using $1Modot$ as WD mass for all novae) or $logdot{M}_{M_{WD}}=-8.48$ (using the individual WD masses). These values are lower than those assumed in studies of CNe evolution and appear to attenuate the need for a hibernation hypothesis to interpret the nova phenomenon. We identified a number of correlations among the physical parameters of the quiescent and eruptive phases, some already known but others new and even surprising. Several quantities correlate with the speed class $t_3$ including, unexpectedly, the mass accretion rate ($dot{M)}$. This rate correlates also with the absolute magnitude at minimum corrected for inclination, and with the outburst amplitude, providing new and simple ways to estimate $dot{M}$ through its functional dependence on (more) easily observed quantities. There is no correlation between $dot{M}$ and the orbital period.}