No Arabic abstract
The ongoing Gaia mission of ESA will provide accurate spatial and kinematical information for a large fraction of stars in the Galaxy. Interstellar extinction and line absorption studies toward a large number of stars at different distances and directions can give a 3-dimensional distribution map of interstellar absorbers, and thus reach a similar spatial perfection. Under certain morphologies (e.g. geometrically thin absorption curtains) one can infer a complete velocity vector from its radial velocity component and so obtain a dynamical information comparable to stars. But observations of a large number of stars at different distances are needed to determine the location of the absorption pockets. Therefore, techniques to measure interstellar absorptions towards (abundant) cool stars are needed. A complex mix of colliding absorption clouds is found in the Galactic plane. Thus, one would wish to start with deep observations to detect the weak, but simpler interstellar absorptions at high Galactic latitudes. Finally, interstellar atomic line absorption studies toward cool stars in the optical are largely limited to Sodium and Potassium doublets, not covered by many surveys, including Gaia. Diffuse interstellar bands can give the same type of information as interstellar atomic absorption lines. A combination of both may also point to differences in dynamics of different components of the interstellar medium. In particular, the Gaia DIB at 862 nm can be used to build absorption maps, as already demonstrated by RAVE. Additionally, several ground-based surveys (e.g APOGEE, Gaia-ESO and Galah) are upgrading this approach. The use of this new information can change our understanding in many areas (e.g. determination of membership of stars in clusters, studies of a few Myr old supernova remnants and investigations of Galactic fountains).
Context: Open clusters are ideal laboratories to investigate a variety of astrophysical topics, from the properties of the Galactic disk to stellar evolutionary models. Knowing their metallicity and possibly detailed chemical abundances is therefore important. However, the number of systems with chemical abundances determined from high resolution spectroscopy is still small. Aims: To increase the number of open clusters with radial velocities and chemical abundances determined from high resolution spectroscopy we used publicly available catalogues of surveys in combination with Gaia data. Methods: Open cluster stars have been identified in the APOGEE and GALAH spectroscopic surveys by cross-matching their latest data releases with stars for which high-probability astrometric membership has been derived in many clusters on the basis of the Gaia second data release. Results: Radial velocities have been determined for 131 and 14 clusters from APOGEE and GALAH data, respectively. This is the first radial velocity determination from high resolution spectra for 16 systems. Iron abundances have been obtained for 90 and 14 systems from APOGEE and GALAH samples, respectively. To our knowledge 66 of these clusters (57 in APOGEE and 9 in GALAH) do not have previous determinations in the literature. For 90 and 7 clusters in the APOGEE and GALAH samples, respectively, we have also determined average abundances for Na, Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Cr, Mn, and Ni.
Current ongoing stellar spectroscopic surveys (RAVE, GALAH, Gaia-ESO, LAMOST, APOGEE, Gaia) are mostly devoted to studying Galactic archaeology and structure of the Galaxy. But they allow for important auxiliary science: (i) Galactic interstellar medium can be studied in four dimensions (position in space + radial velocity) through weak but numerous diffuse insterstellar bands and atomic absorptions seen in spectra of background stars, (ii) emission spectra which are quite frequent even in field stars can serve as a good indicator of their youth, pointing e.g. to stars recently ejected from young stellar environments, (iii) astrometric solution of the photocenter of a binary to be obtained by Gaia can yield accurate masses when joined by spectroscopic information obtained serendipitously during a survey. These points are illustrated by first results from the first three surveys mentioned above. These hint at the near future: spectroscopic studies of the dynamics of the interstellar medium can identify and quantify Galactic fountains which may sustain star formation in the disk by entraining fresh gas from the halo; RAVE already provided a list of ~14,000 field stars with chromosperic emission in Ca II lines, to be supplemented by many more observations by Gaia in the same band, and by GALAH and Gaia-ESO observations of Balmer lines; several millions of astrometric binaries with periods up to a few years which are being observed by Gaia can yield accurate masses when supplemented with measurements from only a few high-quality ground based spectra.
We perform a multiwavelength study toward the SNR G18.1-0.1 and nearby several HII regions (infrared dust bubbles N21 and N22, and the HII regions G018.149-00.283 and G18.197-00.181). Our goal is to provide observational evidence supporting that massive stars usually born in clusters from the same molecular cloud, which then produce, along their evolution, different neighboring objects such as HII regions, interstellar bubbles and supernova remnants. We suggest that the objects analysed in this work belong to a same complex located at the distance of about 4 kpc. Using molecular data we inspected the interstellar medium toward this complex and from optical and X-ray observations we looked for OB-type stars in the region. Analysing public 13CO J=1--0 data we found several molecular structures very likely related to the HII region/SNR complex. We suggest that the molecular gas is very likely being swept and shaped by the expansion of the HII regions. From spectroscopic optical observations obtained with the 2.15 m telescope at CASLEO, Argentina, we discovered three O-type stars very likely exciting the bubbles N21 and N22, and an uncatalogued HII region northward bubble N22, respectively. Also we found four B0-5 stars, one toward the bubble N22 and the others within the HII region G18.149-0.283. By inspecting the Chandra Source Catalog we found two point X-ray sources and we suggest that one of them is an early O-type star. Finally we inspected the large scale interstellar medium around this region. We discovered a big molecular shell of about 70 pc x 28 pc in which the analysed complex appears to be located in its southern border.
Evolved stars near the tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) show solar-like oscillations with periods spanning hours to months and amplitudes ranging from $sim$1 mmag to $sim$100 mmag. The systematic detection of the resulting photometric variations with ground-based telescopes would enable the application of asteroseismology to a much larger and more distant sample of stars than is currently accessible with space-based telescopes such as textit{Kepler} or the ongoing Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (textit{TESS}) mission. We present an asteroseismic analysis of 493 M giants using data from two ground-based surveys: the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) and the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN). By comparing the extracted frequencies with constraints from textit{Kepler}, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Apache Point Observatory Galaxy Evolution Experiment (APOGEE), and Gaia we demonstrate that ground-based transient surveys allow accurate distance measurements to oscillating M giants with a precision of $sim$15$%$. Using stellar population synthesis models we predict that ATLAS and ASAS-SN can provide asteroseismic distances to $sim$2$times$10$^{6}$ galactic M giants out to typical distances of $20-50 ; rm{kpc}$, vastly improving the reach of Gaia and providing critical constraints for Galactic archaeology and galactic dynamics.
With the use of the data from archives, we studied the correlations between the equivalent widths of four diffuse interstellar bands (4430$r{A}$, 5780$r{A}$, 5797$r{A}$, 6284$r{A}$) and properties of the target stars (colour excess values, distances and Galactic coordinates). Many different plots of the diffuse interstellar bands and their maps were produced and further analysed. There appears to be a structure in the plot of equivalent widths of 5780$r{A}$ DIB (and 6284$r{A}$ DIB) against the Galactic $x$-coordinate. The structure is well defined below $sim150$ m$r{A}$ and within $|x|<250$ pc, peaking around $x=170$ pc. We argue that the origin of this structure is not a statistical fluctuation. Splitting the data in the Galactic longitude into several subregions improves or lowers the well known linear relation between the equivalent widths and the colour excess, which was expected. However, some of the lines of sight display drastically different behaviour. The region within $150^circ<l<200^circ$ shows scatter in the correlation plots with the colour excess for all of the four bands with correlation coefficients $textrm{R}<0.58$. We suspect that the variation of physical conditions in the nearby molecular clouds could be responsible. Finally, the area $250^circ<l<300^circ$ displays (from the statistical point of view) significantly lower values of equivalent widths than the other regions -- this tells us that there is either a significant underabundance of carriers (when compared with the other regions) or that this has to be a result of an observational bias.