No Arabic abstract
In order to accurately determine stellar properties, knowledge of the effective temperature of stars is vital. We implement Gaia and 2MASS photometry in the InfraRed Flux Method and apply it to over 360,000 stars across different evolutionary stages in the GALAH DR3 survey. We derive colour-effective temperature relations that take into account the effect of metallicity and surface gravity over the range 4000 to 8000 kelvin, from very metal-poor stars to super solar metallicities. The internal uncertainty of these calibrations is of order 40-80 kelvin depending on the colour combination used. Comparison against solar-twins, Gaia benchmark stars and the latest interferometric measurements validates the precision and accuracy of these calibrations from F to early M spectral types. We assess the impact of various sources of uncertainties, including the assumed extinction law, and provide guidelines to use our relations. Robust solar colours are also derived.
The Galactic Archaeology with HERMES (GALAH) Survey is a massive observational project to trace the Milky Ways history of star formation, chemical enrichment, stellar migration and minor mergers. Using high-resolution (R$simeq$28,000) spectra taken with the High Efficiency and Resolution Multi-Element Spectrograph (HERMES) instrument at the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT), GALAH will determine stellar parameters and abundances of up to 29 elements for up to one million stars. Selecting targets from a colour-unbiased catalogue built from 2MASS, APASS and UCAC4 data, we expect to observe dwarfs at 0.3 to 3 kpc and giants at 1 to 10 kpc. This enables a thorough local chemical inventory of the Galactic thin and thick disks, and also captures smaller samples of the bulge and halo. In this paper we present the plan, process and progress as of early 2016 for GALAH survey observations. In our first two years of survey observing we have accumulated the largest high-quality spectroscopic data set at this resolution, over 200,000 stars. We also present the first public GALAH data catalogue: stellar parameters (Teff, log(g), [Fe/H], [alpha/Fe]), radial velocity, distance modulus and reddening for 10680 observations of 9860 Tycho-2 stars that may be included in the first Gaia data release.
The Gaia-ESO survey (GES) is now in its fifth and last year of observations, and has already produced tens of thousands of high-quality spectra of stars in all Milky Way components. This paper presents the strategy behind the selection of astrophysical calibration targets, ensuring that all GES results on radial velocities, atmospheric parameters, and chemical abundance ratios will be both internally consistent and easily comparable with other literature results, especially from other large spectroscopic surveys and from Gaia. The calibration of GES is particularly delicate because of: (i) the large space of parameters covered by its targets, ranging from dwarfs to giants, from O to M stars, and with a large range of metallicities, as well as including fast rotators, emission line objects, stars affected by veiling and so on; (ii) the variety of observing setups, with different wavelength ranges and resolution; and (iii) the choice of analyzing the data with many different state-of-the art methods, each stronger in a different region of the parameter space, which ensures a better understanding of systematic uncertainties. An overview of the GES calibration and homogenization strategy is also given, along with some examples of the usage and results of calibrators in GES iDR4 - the fourth internal GES data release, that will form the basis of the next GES public data release. The agreement between GES iDR4 recommended values and reference values for the calibrating objects are very satisfactory. The average offsets and spreads are generally compatible with the GES measurement errors, which in iDR4 data already meet the requirements set by the main GES scientific goals.
The latest Gaia data release enables us to accurately identify stars that are more luminous than would be expected on the basis of their spectral type and distance. During an investigation of the 329 best Solar twin candidates uncovered among the spectra acquired by the GALAH survey, we identified 64 such over-luminous stars. In order to investigate their exact composition, we developed a data-driven methodology that can generate a synthetic photometric signature and spectrum of a single star. By combining multiple such synthetic stars into an unresolved binary or triple system and comparing the results to the actual photometric and spectroscopic observations, we uncovered 6 definitive triple stellar system candidates and an additional 14 potential candidates whose combined spectrum mimics the Solar spectrum. Considering the volume correction factor for a magnitude limited survey, the fraction of probable unresolved triple stars with long orbital periods is ~2 %. Possible orbital configurations of the candidates were investigated using the selection and observational limits. To validate the discovered multiplicity fraction, the same procedure was used to evaluate the multiplicity fraction of other stellar types.
Galah is an ongoing high-resolution spectroscopic survey with the goal of disentangling the formation history of the Milky Way, using the fossil remnants of disrupted star formation sites which are now dispersed around the Galaxy. It is targeting a randomly selected, magnitude limited ($V leq 14$) sample of stars, with the goal of observing one million objects. To date, 300,000 spectra have been obtained. Not all of them are correctly processed by parameter estimation pipelines and we need to know about them. We present a semi-automated classification scheme which identifies different types of peculiar spectral morphologies, in an effort to discover and flag potentially problematic spectra and thus help to preserve the integrity of the surveys results. To this end we employ a recently developed dimensionality reduction technique t-SNE (t-distributed Stochastic Neighbour Embedding), which enables us to represent the complex spectral morphology in a two-dimensional projection map while still preserving the properties of the local neighbourhoods of spectra. We find that the majority (178,483) of the 209,533 Galah spectra considered in this study represents normal single stars, whereas 31,050 peculiar and problematic spectra with very diverse spectral features pertaining to 28,579 stars are distributed into 10 classification categories: Hot stars, Cool metal-poor giants, Molecular absorption bands, Binary stars, H$alpha$/H$beta$ emission, H$alpha$/H$beta$ emission superimposed on absorption, H$alpha$/H$beta$ P-Cygni, H$alpha$/H$beta$ inverted P-Cygni, Lithium absorption, and Problematic. Classified spectra with supplementary information are presented in the catalogue, indicating candidates for follow-up observations and population studies of the short-lived phases of stellar evolution.
The Galactic Archaeology with HERMES (GALAH) survey is a large-scale stellar spectroscopic survey of the Milky Way and designed to deliver chemical information complementary to a large number of stars covered by the $Gaia$ mission. We present the GALAH second public data release (GALAH DR2) containing 342,682 stars. For these stars, the GALAH collaboration provides stellar parameters and abundances for up to 23 elements to the community. Here we present the target selection, observation, data reduction and detailed explanation of how the spectra were analysed to estimate stellar parameters and element abundances. For the stellar analysis, we have used a multi-step approach. We use the physics-driven spectrum synthesis of Spectroscopy Made Easy (SME) to derive stellar labels ($T_mathrm{eff}$, $log g$, $mathrm{[Fe/H]}$, $mathrm{[X/Fe]}$, $v_mathrm{mic}$, $v sin i$, $A_{K_S}$) for a representative training set of stars. This information is then propagated to the whole survey with the data-driven method of $The~Cannon$. Special care has been exercised in the spectral synthesis to only consider spectral lines that have reliable atomic input data and are little affected by blending lines. Departures from local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) are considered for several key elements, including Li, O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, and Fe, using 1D MARCS stellar atmosphere models. Validation tests including repeat observations, Gaia benchmark stars, open and globular clusters, and K2 asteroseismic targets lend confidence in our methods and results. Combining the GALAH DR2 catalogue with the kinematic information from $Gaia$ will enable a wide range of Galactic Archaeology studies, with unprecedented detail, dimensionality, and scope.