No Arabic abstract
Population III (Pop. III) stars, as of yet, have not been detected, however as we move into the era of extremely large telescopes this is likely to change. One likely tracer for Pop. III stars is the HeII$lambda1640$ emission line, which will be detectable by the HARMONI spectrograph on the European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) over a broad range of redshifts ($2leq zleq14$). By post-processing galaxies from the cosmological, AMR-hydrodynamical simulation NewHorizon with theoretical spectral energy distributions (SED) for Pop. III stars and radiative transfer (i.e. the Yggdrasil Models and CLOUDY look-up tables respectively) we are able to compute the flux of HeII$lambda1640$ for individual galaxies. From mock 10 hour observations of these galaxies we show that HARMONI will be able to detect Pop. III stars in galaxies up to $zsim10$ provided Pop. III stars have a top heavy Initial Mass Function (IMF). Furthermore, we find that should Pop. III stars instead have an IMF similar to those of the Pop. I stars, the HeII$lambda1640$ line would only be observable for galaxies with Pop. III stellar masses in excess of $10^{7}{,M}_odot,{rm yr}^{-1}$, average stellar age $<1{rm Myr}$ at $z=4$. Finally, we are able to determine the minimal intrinsic flux required for HARMONI to detect Pop. III stars in a galaxy up to $z=10$.
Harmoni is the ELTs first light visible and near-infrared integral field spectrograph. It will provide four different spatial scales, ranging from coarse spaxels of 60 x 30 mas best suited for seeing limited observations, to 4 mas spaxels that Nyquist sample the diffraction limited point spread function of the ELT at near-infrared wavelengths. Each spaxel scale may be combined with eleven spectral settings, that provide a range of spectral resolving powers from R 3500 to R 20000 and instantaneous wavelength coverage spanning the 0.47 - 2.45 {mu}m wavelength range of the instrument. The consortium consists of several institutes in Europe under leadership of Oxford University. Harmoni is starting its Final Design Phase after a Preliminary Design Phase in November, 2017. The CRAL has the responsibility of the Integral Field Unit design linking the Preoptics to the 4 Spectrographs. It is composed of a field splitter associated with a relay system and an image slicer that create from a rectangular Field of View a very long (540mm) output slit for each spectrograph. In this paper, the preliminary design and performances of Harmoni Image Slicer will be presented including image quality, pupil distortion and slit geometry. It has been designed by CRAL for Harmoni PDR in November, 2017. Special emphases will be put on straylight analysis and slice diffraction. The optimisation of the manufacturing and slit geometry will also be reported.
The next generation of large aperture ground based telescopes will offer the opportunity to perform accurate stellar photometry in very crowded fields. This future capability will allow one to study in detail the stellar population in distant galaxies. In this paper we explore the effect of photometric errors on the stellar metallicity distribution derived from the color distribution of the Red Giant Branch stars in the central regions of galaxies at the distance of the Virgo cluster. We focus on the analysis of the Color-Magnitude Diagrams at different radii in a typical giant Elliptical galaxy obtained from synthetic data constructed to exemplify observations of the European Extremely Large Telescope. The simulations adopt the specifications of the first light high resolution imager MICADO and the expected performance of the Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics Module MAORY. We find that the foreseen photometric accuracy allows us to recover the shape of the metallicity distribution with a resolution $lesssim 0.4$ dex in the inner regions ($mu_{rm B}$ = 20.5 mag arcsec$^{-2}$) and $simeq 0.2$ dex in regions with $mu_{rm B}$ = 21.6 mag arcsec$^{-2}$, that corresponds to approximately half of the effective radius for a typical giant elliptical in Virgo. At the effective radius ($mu_{rm B} simeq 23$ mag arcsec$^{-2}$), the metallicity distribution is recovered with a resolution of $simeq 0.1$ dex. It will thus be possible to study in detail the metallicity gradient of the stellar population over (almost) the whole extension of galaxies in Virgo. We also evaluate the impact of moderate degradations of the Point Spread Function from the assumed optimal conditions and find similar results, showing that this science case is robust.
A deep objective-prism survey for H-alpha emission stars towards the Canis Major star-forming clouds was performed. A total of 398 Halpha emitters were detected, 353 of which are new detections. There is a strong concentration of these H-alpha emitters towards the molecular clouds surrounding the CMa~OB1 association, and it is likely that these stars are young stellar objects recently born in the clouds. An additional population of H-alpha emitters is scattered all across the region, and probably includes unrelated foreground dMe stars and background Be stars. About 90% of the H-alpha emitters are detected by WISE, of which 75% was detected with usable photometry. When plotted in a WISE colour-colour diagram it appears that the majority are Class II YSOs. Coordinates and finding charts are provided for all the new stars, and coordinates for all the detections. We searched the Gaia-DR2 catalogue and from 334 Halpha emission stars with useful parallaxes, we selected a subset of 98 stars that have parallax errors of less than 20% and nominal distances in the interval 1050 to 1350 pc that surrounds a strong peak at 1185 pc in the distance distribution. Similarly, Gaia distances were obtained for 51 OB-stars located towards Canis Major and selected with the same parallax errors as the H-alpha stars. We find a median distance for the OB stars of 1182 pc, in excellent correspondence with the distance from the H-alpha stars. Two known runaway stars are confirmed as members of the association. Finally, two new Herbig-Haro objects are identified.
Combining high-contrast imaging with medium-resolution spectroscopy has been shown to significantly boost the direct detection of exoplanets. HARMONI, one of the first-light instruments to be mounted on ESOs ELT, will be equipped with a single-conjugated adaptive optics system to reach the diffraction limit of the ELT in H and K bands, a high-contrast module dedicated to exoplanet imaging, and a medium-resolution (up to R = 17 000) optical and near-infrared integral field spectrograph. Combined together, these systems will provide unprecedented contrast limits at separations between 50 and 400 mas. In this paper, we estimate the capabilities of the HARMONI high-contrast module for the direct detection of young giant exoplanets. We use an end-to-end model of the instrument to simulate observations based on realistic observing scenarios and conditions. We analyze these data with the so-called molecule mapping technique combined to a matched-filter approach, in order to disentangle the companions from the host star and tellurics, and increase the S/N of the planetary signal. We detect planets above 5-sigma at contrasts up to 16 mag and separations down to 75 mas in several spectral configurations of the instrument. We show that molecule mapping allows the detection of companions up to 2.5 mag fainter compared to state-of-the-art high-contrast imaging techniques based on angular differential imaging. We also demonstrate that the performance is not strongly affected by the spectral type of the host star, and that we reach close sensitivities for the best three quartiles of observing conditions at Armazones, which means that HARMONI could be used in near-critical observations during 60 to 70% of telescope time at the ELT. Finally, we simulate planets from population synthesis models to further explore the parameter space that HARMONI and its high-contrast module will soon open.
We present simulated observations of gas kinematics in galaxies formed in 10 pc resolution cosmological simulations with the hydrodynamical + N-body code RAMSES, using the new RAMSES2HSIM pipeline with the simulated observing pipeline (HSIM) for the ELT HARMONI IFU spectrograph. We post-process the galaxys gas kinematics and H{alpha} line emission for each simulation cell, and integrate the emission to produce an extinction-corrected input cube. We then simulate observations of the input cube with HARMONI, for a range of exposure times, spatial sampling, and spectral resolution. We analyze the mock observations to recover galaxy properties such as its kinematics and compare with the known simulation values. We investigate the cause of biases between the real and observed kinematic values, demonstrating the sensitivity of the inferred rotation curve to knowledge of the instruments point spread function.