No Arabic abstract
We report the serendipitous discovery of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey star, SDSS J160043.6+074802.9 to be a very rapid pulsator. The variation is dominated by a frequency near 8380 microHz (period = 119.33 s) with a large amplitude (0.04 mag) and its first harmonic at 16760 microHz (59.66 s; 0.005 mag). In between these frequencies, we find at least another 8 variations with periods between 62 and 118 seconds and amplitudes between about 0.007 and 0.003 mag; weaker oscillations might also be present. Preliminary spectrograms from the performance verification phase of the Southern African Large Telescope indicate that SDSS J160043.6+074802.9 is a spectroscopic binary consisting of an sdO star and a late-type main-sequence companion. This makes it the first unambiguous detection of such an sdO star to pulsate, and certainly the first found to exhibit multi-frequency variations.
A spectroscopic analysis of SDSS J160043.6+074802.9, a binary system containing a pulsating subdwarf-O (sdO) star with a late-type companion, yields Teff = 70 000 +/- 5000 K and log g = 5.25 +/- 0.30, together with a most likely type of K3V for the secondary star. We compare our results with atmospheric parameters derived by Fontaine et al. (2008) and in the context of existing evolution models for sdO stars. New and more extensive photometry is also presented which recovers most, but not all, frequencies found in an earlier paper. It therefore seems probable that some pulsation modes have variable amplitudes. A non-adiabatic pulsation analysis of uniform metallicity sdO models show those having log g > 5.3 to be more likely to be unstable and capable of driving pulsation in the observed frequency range.
We discuss the implications of rapid (few-minute) variability in the TeV flux of blazars, which has been observed recently with the HESS and MAGIC telescopes. The variability timescales seen in PKS 2155-304 and Mrk 501 are much shorter than inferred light-crossing times at the black hole horizon, suggesting that the variability involves enhanced emission in a small region within an outflowing jet. The enhancement could be triggered by dissipation in part of the black holes magnetosphere at the base of the outflow, or else by instabilities in the jet itself. By considering the energetics of the observed flares, along with the requirement that TeV photons escape without producing pairs, we deduce that the bulk Lorentz factors in the jets must be >50. The distance of the emission region from the central black hole is less well-constrained. We discuss possible consequences for multi-wavelength observations.
We have performed an optical observation campaign on PKS 2155-304, whose aim was to determine the variability properties of this object on very short time scales in several photometric bands. We detected variability on time scales as short as 15 min. The Fourier properties of the light curves have been investigated using structure function analysis. The power spectra are well described by a power-law with an index -2.4. It is compatible with the index found in the X-ray domain. The value of this index shows that the light curves cannot be generated by a sum of exponential pulses. Using historical data, we find that the longest time scale of variability in the optical domain lies between 10 and 40 days. We find a strong correlation between flux and spectral index, which we interpret as the signature of an underlying constant component. As a result we do not find evidence of spectral variation for the active nucleus in the optical domain. A lag has been found between the light curves in different optical bands. The short-wavelength light curves lead the long-wavelength ones. The amplitude of the lag is about 40 min for a factor 2 in wavelength. Our results are compared with predictions from different models. None of them can explain naturally the set of results obtained with this campaign, but we bring out some clues for the origin of the variability.
We report the discovery of pulsations in the spectroscopic PG 1159 type pre-white dwarf SDSS J075415.12+085232.18. Analysis of the spectrum by Werner, Rauch and Kepler (2014) indicated Teff=120 000+/-10 000 K, log g=7.0+/-0.3, mass M=0.52+/-0.02 Msun, C/He=0.33 by number. We obtained time-series images with the SOAR 4.1 m telescope and 2.1 m Otto Struve telescope at McDonald Observatory and show the star is also a variable PG 1159 type star, with dominant period of 525 s.
We report on the discovery of a very bright z = 2.00 star-forming galaxy that is strongly lensed by a foreground z=0.422 luminous red galaxy (LRG). This system was found in a systematic search for bright arcs lensed by LRGs and brightest cluster galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 5 sample. Follow-up observations on the Subaru 8.2m telescope on Mauna Kea and the Astrophysical Research Consortium 3.5m telescope at Apache Point Observatory confirmed the lensing nature of this system. A simple lens model for the system, assuming a singular isothermal ellipsoid mass distribution, yields an Einstein radius of 3.82 +/- 0.03 arcsec or 14.8 +/- 0.1 kpc/h at the lens redshift. The total projected mass enclosed within the Einstein radius is 2.10 +/- 0.03 x 10^12 M_sun/h, and the magnification factor for the source galaxy is 27 +/- 1. Combining the lens model with our gVriz photometry, we find an (unlensed) star formation rate for the source galaxy of 32 M_sun/h / yr, adopting a fiducial constant star formation rate model with an age of 100 Myr and E(B-V) = 0.25. With an apparent magnitude of r = 19.9, this system is among the very brightest lensed z >= 2 galaxies, and provides an excellent opportunity to pursue detailed studies of the physical properties of an individual high-redshift star-forming galaxy.