Nucleosynthesis and Stellar Evolution

Two of the basic building blocks of galaxies are stars and the interstellar medium. The evolution of the abundance composition in the latter and especially the enrichment of heavy elements as a function of space and time reflects in turn the history of star formation and the lifetimes of the diverse contributing stellar objects. Therefore, the understanding of stellar evolution and its endpoints (mainly planetary nebulae, supernovae of type Ia and type II/Ib/Ic) is essential. Despite many efforts, a full and self-consistent understanding of supernovae (the main contributors to nucleosynthesis in galaxies) is not existing, yet. However, they leave fingerprints, seen either in spectra, lightcurves, radioactivities/decay gamma-rays or in galactic evolution. Here we want to address the composition of ejecta, their model uncertainties and relate them to constraints from abundance observations in galactic evolution. This revised version was published online in September 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Superassociations and Stellar Complexes in Galaxies

The basic characteristics of stellar complexes and superassociations, as well as the differences between these kinds of gigantic groups of young stars, are discussed. The main difference is that superassociations are the result of induced (triggered) star formation, while the stars and clusters in stellar complexes develop as a result of the spontaneous processes typical of galactic gaseous disks.     

OPAL不透明度对恒星结构和演化模型的影响

本文利用国际上最新公布的OPAL不透明度表及相应的化学丰度，计算了三颗不同初始质量的星族互恒星的非守恒演化模型，并和过去长期采用的LAOL不透明度的结果进行详细比较，得出以下主要结论：（1）恒星HR图中的演化轨迹光度降低，主序位置明显向红方向移动；（2）恒星中心H，He燃烧寿命大大延长了；（3）小质量星氢燃烧核和对流核都变小，大、中质量星的中心对流核和燃烧核都有所增大；（4）恒星中心温度－密度关系基本不受影响．     

Stellar Motions in Galactic Satellites

The study of the motions of the stars that belong to a galactic satellite (i.e. a globular cluster or a dwarf galaxy orbiting a larger one) has some similarities, as well as significant differences, with that of the restricted three-body problem of celestial mechanics. The high percentage of chaotic orbits present in some models is of particular interest because it rises, on the one hand, the question of the origin of those chaotic motions and, on the other hand, the question of whether an equilibrium stellar system can be built when the bulk of the stars that make it up behave chaotically.     

星流的搜寻

在冷暗物质的宇宙学模型框架里,银河系(尤其是银晕)至少部分起源于对周围卫星星系的吸积。随着新技术和新设备的不断应用,大规模巡天项目的成功实施使天文学家获得了越来越多、越来越全面的关于银河系的数据。通过对这些数据进行分析,天文学家发现了很多星流的候选体,为银河系的等级并合理论提供了观测上的证据。随着对星流研究的扩大和深入,人们对银河系及其结构和起源的了解也越来越详细。介绍了搜寻星流的方法,以及基于这些方法获得的星流研究结果。     

Spatial Structure of Regular and Chaotic Orbits in A Self-Consistent Triaxial Stellar System

We created a triaxial stellar system through the cold dissipationless collapse of 100,000 particles whose evolution was followed with a multipolar code. Once an equilibrium system had been obtained, the multipolar expansion was freezed and smoothed in order to get a stationary smooth potential. The resulting model was self-consistent and the orbits and Lyapunov exponents could then be computed for a randomly selected sample of 3472 of the bodies that make up the system. More than half of the orbits (52.7 % ) turned out to be chaotic. Regular orbits were then classified using the frequency analysis automatic code of Carpintero and Aguilar (1998, MNRAS 298(1), 1–21). We present plots of the distributions of the different kinds of orbits projected on the symmetry planes of the system. We distinguish chaotic orbits with only one non-zero Lyapunov exponent from those with two non-zero exponents and show that their spatial distributions differ, that of the former being more similar to the one of the regular orbits. Most of the regular orbits are boxes and boxlets, but the minor axis tubes play an important role filling in the wasp waists of the boxes and helping to give a lentil shape to the system. We see no problem in building stable triaxial models with substantial amounts of chaotic orbits; the difficulties found by other authors may be due not to a physical cause but to a limitation of Schwarzschild’s method.     

空间星震学观测-国外项目与中国方案

介绍了恒星星震学研究的内容和目的以及国际上该领域的研究和最新进展 ,阐述了空间星震学观测的科学意义 ;在对国外空间星震学观测项目进行综述之后 ,提出了一个中国空间星震学观测方案。     

Stellar Populations in Bulges of Spiral Galaxies

We present a few results of a work in progress tackling the radial spectroscopic properties of bulges of spiral galaxies. This revised version was published online in September 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

星像抖动的时域频谱

本文顾及湍流外尺度的影响导出了星像抖动频谱的普遍表达式，在均匀光路的情况下得到了分析表达式。理论结果与实验数据相当一致。同时讨论了测量星像抖动所需要的频带宽度以及有限带宽所产生的测量误差。     

使用SOFM方法进行恒星光谱自动分类

ＳＯＦＭ是人工神经网络的非监督学习算法,可以将数据组织到一个特征图上,而保存 大多数原始数据空间的拓扑特征．使用这种方法进行恒星光谱自动分类,分类结果与哈佛 序列十分相似．ＳＯＦＭ方法应该是进行大数量恒星光谱样本在线分类的有用方法,它能 够自动执行,因此可用于处理大数量天体光谱．     

Stellar associations and complexes in M33

About 460 OB associations were selected by a comparison of theUBV plates. TheUBV photographic photometry of 1944 blue stars in the associations was made. The new associations appear like cores within Humphreys and Sandage's associations. Their star content, size distribution, and mean size 80 pc confirm their identity with the OB associations in the Galaxy and in the Magellanic clouds. The boundaries of the associations are delineated mainly by the density of the resolved stars on theU plates. It is impossible to divide them into smaller areas. The genuine OB associations form groups of two or more members with a length scale of 250 pc. Their boundaries were delineated independently, but they coincide with the OB associations of Humphreys and Sandage (1980). These groups represent real concentration of blue massive stars with a large age dispersion. The star complexes unify a group of associations,Hii regions, andHi peak distribution. Their mean size is 570 pc. The extensiveHi clouds with a mean size of 1.2 kpc contain two or more star complexes. The questions related to star formation are briefly discussed.     

The Cannon:一种基于光谱数据的恒星参数测量方法

新一代大规模光谱巡天项目产生了近千万条低分辨率恒星光谱,基于这些光谱数据,介绍一种名为The Cannon的机器学习方法。该方法完全基于已知恒星大气参数(有效温度、表面重力加速度和金属丰度等)的光谱数据,通过数据驱动来构建特征向量,建立光谱流量特征和恒星参数的函数对应关系,进而应用到观测光谱数据中,实现对恒星光谱的大气参数求解。The Cannon的主要优势为不直接基于任何恒星物理模型,适用性更广;由于使用了全谱信息,即便对于低信噪比光谱也能得到较高可信度的参数结果,该算法在大规模恒星光谱的数据处理和参数求解方面具有明显的优势。此外,还利用The Cannon得到LAMOST光谱数据中K巨星和M巨星的恒星参数。     

Stellar populations in the Canis Major overdensity

We performed a photometric multicolour survey of the core of the Canis Major overdensity at     , reaching   V ∼ 22  and covering  0.3 × 1.0  arcmin². The main aim is to unravel the complex mixture of stellar populations toward this Galactic direction, where in the recent past important signatures of an accretion event have been claimed to be detected. While our previous investigations were based on disjointed pointings aimed at revealing the large-scale structure of the third Galactic Quadrant, we now focus on a complete coverage of a smaller field centred on the Canis Major overdensity. A large wavelength baseline, in the UBVRI bands, allows us to build up a suite of colour–colour and colour–magnitude diagrams, providing a much better diagnostic tool to disentangle the stellar populations of the region. In fact, the simple use of one colour–magnitude diagram, widely employed in all the previous studies defending the existence of the Canis Major galaxy, does not allow one to separate the effects of the different parameters (reddening, age, metallicity and distance) involved in the interpretation of data, forcing to rely on heavy modelling. In agreement with our previous studies, in the same general region of the Milky Way, we recognize a young stellar population compatible with the expected structure and extension of the Local (Orion) and Outer (Norma–Cygnus) spiral arms in the Third Galactic Quadrant. Moreover, we interpret the conspicuous intermediate-age metal-poor population as belonging to the Galactic thick disc, distorted by the effect of strong disc warping at this latitude, and to the Galactic halo.     

Stellar mass estimation based on IRAC photometry for Spitzer SWIRE-field galaxies

We analyze the feasibility of estimating the stellar mass of galaxies by mid-infrared luminosities based on a large sample of galaxies cross-identified from Spitzer SWIRE fields and the SDSS spectrographic survey.We derived the formulae to calculate the stellar mass by using IRAC 3.6 μm and 4.5 μm luminosities.The massto-luminosity ratios of IRAC 3.6 μm and 4.5 μm luminosities are more sensitive to the star formation history of galaxies than to other factors,such as the intrinsic extinction,metallicity and star formation rate.To remove the effect of star formation history,we used g-r color to recalibrate the formulae and obtain a better result.Researchers must be more careful when estimating the stellar mass of low metallicity galaxies using our formulae.Due to the emission from dust heated by the hottest young stars,luminous infrared galaxies present higher IRAC 4.5 μm luminosities compared to IRAC 3.6 μm luminosities.For most of type-Ⅱ AGNs,the nuclear activity cannot enhance 3.6 μm and 4.5 μm luminosities compared with normal galaxies.Star formation in our AGNhosting galaxies is also very weak,almost all of which are early-type galaxies.     

Galactic and Stellar Dynamics: Limits and Perspectives

An elementary review about stellar and galactic dynamics is presented. Despite involving extremely classical Newtonian physics, stellar dynamics presents some fundamental difficulties rarely discussed in the literature, such as why the phase space distribution is assumed to be a smooth function of coordinates. Many systems are found to be unstable over intermediate time-scales, as more instabilities have been discovered over the years, so the old aim of describing equilibrium stable systems shifts presently toward understanding evolutive systems. From the linearized variational Boltzmann equation a distinction can be made between instabilities triggered by the chaotic part of phase space, and instabilities caused by steep gradients in the velocity part of the distribution function. The new challenges to include evolutive systems can presently only be studied efficiently with computer techniques. Future studies are likely to involve orders of magnitude more advanced computers in which parallelism will play a major role. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Algorithms for Stellar Perturbation Computations on Oort Cloud Comets

We investigate different approximate methods of computing the perturbations on the orbits of Oort cloud comets caused by passing stars, by checking them against an accurate numerical integration using Everhart’s RA15 code. The scenario under study is the one relevant for long-term simulations of the cloud’s response to a predefined set of stellar passages. Our sample of stellar encounters simulates those experienced by the Solar System currently, but extrapolated over a time of 10¹⁰ years. We measure the errors of perihelion distance perturbations for high-eccentricity orbits introduced by several estimators – including the classical impulse approximation and Dybczyński’s (1994, Celest. Mech. Dynam. Astron. 58, 1330–1338) method – and we study how they depend on the encounter parameters (approach distance and relative velocity). We introduce a sequential variant of Dybczyński’s approach, cutting the encounter into several steps whereby the heliocentric motion of the comet is taken into account. For the scenario at hand this is found to offer an efficient means to obtain accurate results for practically any domain of the parameter space.