SpitzerAGN

Spinning black hole is fastest on record - space - 20 November 2006 - New Scientist Space

2006-11-28T13:06:00.000-08:00

Spinning black hole is fastest on record - space - 20 November 2006 - New Scientist Space: "A black hole has been found to be spinning faster than ever seen before, a new analysis suggests. The finding supports the idea that only fast-spinning stars can collapse to create powerful explosions called long gamma-ray bursts."

PDF for astro-ph/0309404

2006-10-09T13:01:00.000-07:00

PDF for astro-ph/0309404

NED data for S5 0716 71

2006-10-09T12:55:00.001-07:00

NED data for S5 0716 71

2006-10-09T12:55:00.000-07:00

NED data for S5 0716 71

SPACE.com -- NASA Completes Survey of Nearby Supermassive Black Holes

2006-10-08T06:08:00.000-07:00

SPACE.com -- NASA Completes Survey of Nearby Supermassive Black Holes

ScienceDaily: Exploding Star Within A Star -- A Recurrent Nova

2006-04-15T18:11:00.000-07:00

This isn't about AGN but it does involve Spitzer.
ScienceDaily: Exploding Star Within A Star -- A Recurrent Nova

ABC News: One-way trip into black hole takes 200,000 years

2006-01-09T17:22:00.000-08:00

ABC News: One-way trip into black hole takes 200,000 years

The Hawk Eye Newspaper

2005-12-25T21:01:00.000-08:00

Real life application of infrared technology.
The Hawk Eye Newspaper

Black hole 'helps create stars'

2005-10-14T12:17:00.001-07:00

Black hole 'helps create stars'

2005-10-14T12:17:00.000-07:00

Black hole 'helps create stars'

What's Happening: Students and Teachers on a Mission to Discover

2005-09-25T08:43:00.000-07:00

What's Happening: Students and Teachers on a Mission to Discover

Moon, Sun and Yosemite Align for Photo

2005-09-12T21:29:00.000-07:00

This is the equivalent of CSI: Astronomy. Now if we could only get Osama to pose in front of a constellation...
Moon, Sun and Yosemite Align for Photo

ABC News: Scientists witness farthest known gamma-ray burst

2005-09-12T21:27:00.000-07:00

ABC News: Scientists witness farthest known gamma-ray burst

Pasadena Star-News - News

2005-06-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

Pasadena Star-News - News

An Introduction to Black Holes

2005-06-23T12:30:00.000-07:00

Calculating event horizons.

An Introduction to Black Holes

Infrared continuum

2005-06-23T06:47:00.000-07:00

An example of AGN modeling which explains the "bumps" in the infrared.

Infrared continuum

Source material for finder chart calibrations

2005-06-23T06:42:00.000-07:00

Worth citing in showing where the standard stars numbers come from.

3 Results

Active Galaxies Newsletter

2005-06-23T06:39:00.000-07:00

AGN Newsletter containing mostly abstracts of papers related to AGN.
Active Galaxies Newsletter

Monthly report for April

2005-05-01T14:04:00.000-07:00

Once per month I am required to write a status report about the state of our project.

First observation (of 2) scheduled

During April, our first observation was scheduled for May 14 using MIPS on Spitzer. The observation will be May 14 2005 10:40:36.400 UT, or 3:40 AM Pacific Daylight Time on the night of May 13th /morning of the 14th.

Recruiting of ground based observers

Jeff sent a recruiting email to a number of people (including Stephen Pompea) and others who may be able to observe our target. The cc list includes the observers and original participants. I have communicated with several of these people and added their questions and our answers to the web site.

Observing FAQ

A new observing FAQ was written and continues to be edited with the assistance of Mark Lacy and others. It is posted here: http://homepage.mac.com/dvhscience/SpaceAcademy/Projects/Spitzer/observingfaq.html. These instructions will help ground based observers contribute to our project.

Workshops

Jeff presented a workshop at Deer Valley High School using the infrared teaching kit to a small group of teachers and students. The workshop was well received, and resulted in several teachers borrowing the photocell-amplifier circuit for demonstration in their own rooms.

Jeff presented a very brief synopsis of the project to the Mt. Diablo Astronomical Society and invited them to participate.

Jeff has added a couple of workshops to the main project page including a session at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair next month.

Training meeting

Per Stephen Pompea and Doris Dao's instruction, Jeff asked everyone on the original team when a good time to meet would be (to learn how to reduce the data). We can get everyone except Linda on the week of October 4. Steve Rapp, Linda, and Mark: How about the week of October 31?

Student Involvement

Jeff's student Brielle Hinckley has taken an active role in pursuing the ground-based observation of our target. She has already taken approximately 10 images of 4C 29.45 over two different observing sessions, all using luminance (clear) filters. Several other students have assisted in collecting images using the New Mexico Skies system, sponsored by TLRBSE's school year observing program. Preliminary results from the data reduction will be available by the end of next month.

Because our finder charts and references have UVBRI filter data, we requested images from this set from our volunteer observers. We inquired with Steven Croft about obtaining enough time to do 4 observations with NM Skies using these filters, which come via a 4 hour overhead charge from NM Skies to change and align the filter wheel assembly from its usual RGB configuration. Consulting with Mark Lacy, Hinckley has been charged with making a decision about whether or not to use luminance + R from the RGB set, or to write a proposal to the telescope allocation committee to get time to make UVBRI observations. Mark Lacy advised us that R in RGB is comparable to R in UVBRI, which may be minimally sufficient for our purposes, but on the other hand the Spitzer science requirements are not exactly the same as the creation of a research project for the students independent of the teacher's work. When we decide what to do we'll notify the relevant parties. In any case, we hope to collect some UVBRI data from the volunteer observers, and set the project students to the task of reducing the images to data under the coordination of Hinckley.

Many thanks to the volunteer observers. If you have questions or advice, please don't hesitate to send either one. I would like to know from the volunteers if they would like a link back to their institutions and if they would mind having a name and email contact (using the name "at" domain format to reduce spam) posted on the project web page.

Next month

We are anticipating a second observation with IRAC later in the observing window, but we are proceeding at best possible speed on everything we can on the scheduled observation.

Additional workshops are scheduled as noted on the project page, including a large public display at the Contra Costa County Fair.

Jeff Adkins
Deer Valley High School
http://homepage.mac.com/dvhscience/SpaceAcademy/Projects/Spitzer/index.html

Monthly report for March

2005-04-10T19:30:00.000-07:00

...has been sent to the Spitzer Science Center. Here is what was transmitted:

I am required by the Spitzer Science Center to post a monthly update on progress related to the Spitzer AGN project we proposed. This is the report for March 2005.

Since my last general communication to you about this project, the following things have happened.

The project was approved by the Spitzer Science Center director. He selected one of our four potential AGNs as our primary target (GTN #7, 4C 29.45) and we edited the proposal to reflect this change. After this decision, Mark Lacy reworked the AORs to refine the time needed to gather the data.

This message from Mark summarizes the change in the AOR:
... I went in and
juggled the MIPS exposure times to make sure we get a detection at 160mu
(the least sensitive wavelength). I've kept the total length of the AOR
almost the same (in fact it's 10s shorter), but the MIPS AOR changed

old: 24mu 3s x 3 cycles
70mu 3s x 5 cycles
160mu 3s x 5 cycles

new: 24mu 3s x 1 cycles
70mu 3s x 1 cycles
160mu 10s x 3 cycles

IRAC was fine as is.

The new AOR was attached. Contact me if you want a copy.

The proposal has been sent to the scheduling team but as of this writing they have not contacted us. The optimum observing window is in May, therefore we expect to hear from them sometime in April.

In other news:

The project web page is up and running. The address is:
http://homepage.mac.com/dvhscience/SpaceAcademy/Projects/Spitzer/index.html

Jeff presented a talk at the Stockton Astronomical Society about the Teacher Observing Program and specifically this proposal. The presentation was well received and the amateur astronomers were invited to join the GTN and participate in the observations.

In April, both Jeff and Steve Rapp will be giving workshops on infrared science; Jeff at a local workshop within his district and Steve at the NSTA convention in Dallas.

Jeff's student Brielle Hinckley, a junior at Deer Valley High School, has started making telescopic measurements of the target object using the New Mexico Skies remote telescope facility. The TLRBSE remote observing program provided observing time, and most recently Brielle spent 3 hours observing the target using a variety of filters. A sample of one of these observations is posted on the web site and shows that 14" class telescopes can effectively measure this target. Other Deer Valley students are participating in the data reduction as an excercise.

New Scientist Breaking News - Violent past of Milky Way's black hole revealed

2005-01-27T18:44:00.000-08:00

Was the Milky Way a mildly active galaxy in the past?
New Scientist Breaking News - Violent past of Milky Way's black hole revealed

CNN.com - Blazing speed: The fastest stuff in the universe - Jan 18, 2005

2005-01-23T17:08:00.000-08:00

Blazars aimed at our heads reveal motions nearly equal to the speed of light.

CNN.com - Blazing speed: The fastest stuff in the universe - Jan 18, 2005

Joint Astronomy Centre - World's most powerful infrared camera opens its eyes on the heavens

2004-12-25T09:18:00.000-08:00

New infrared telescope commissioned at Mauna Kea.

FYI.

Joint Astronomy Centre - World's most powerful infrared camera opens its eyes on the heavens

Infrared Camera puts drunk driver in the hot seat

2004-12-16T22:08:00.000-08:00

Daily Local News:
"After listening to Henderson’s story, Metzler scanned the woods lining Telegraph Road to no avail. Then he pointed the device at Henderson’s car.

'We had to do our job and find the other person, or at least try,' Metzler said. Aiming the camera at the Neon’s seats 'was just our next option.'

The device showed the fire chief just one of the seats was warm, the driver’s seat. No one else had been in the car when it crashed, the chief concluded, just Henderson.
"

Article about IR SEDs of AGN

2004-12-08T16:12:00.000-08:00

Relevant reading here, shows the kind of data we may expect to find. Yet another example (seems like that's all I find) of a survey used to find AGN, not analyze them after they're detected.

http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/jason/science/uligs.html

Job assignments

2004-11-29T21:50:00.000-08:00

These are the tasks I sent out in a recent email, and a list of who volunteered to work with each subtask.

1. Determination of exposure times for AGNs on the list: Lauren is attempting to contact Jane Rigby to look into this.
2. Modeling of AGN SED as a function of aspect angle: Jeff is looking into this. A possible project is to determine the aspect angle of the target objects based on a model.
3. Find out what would be learned if we did simultaneous observing of the targets with an earth-based telescope system (Gordon has been asked this question and we are awaiting a reply.)
4. Set up a web page and posting system to archive our conversations in threads and provide document downloads of things we've created: Done- you're reading it.
5. Download sample data from a target which HAS been imaged by Spitzer, and see if we can obtain fluxes from actual images (which we'll need to do in the future with our targets which have NOT been observed.) This involves getting brightness counts and calibrating them against standard stars. Cindy Rae volunteered for this.
6. Find SEDS of target objects on our list in the literature: Linda S.
This will build a stronger science case if there is a hole in the far IR not previously completed.
7. Check all other surveys (2Mass, etc. ) and see what observations of our targets are available. ????

Target objects on our list with NM Skies and verify that students can observe them simultaneously and prior to the Spitzer observation (Jeff's student Tri Nguyen has done BL Lac. Once.) <-- Still unassigned. We do need to screen the list once again for objects with low declinations--these cannot be observed simultaneously by the GTN network (as far as I know they're all in continental U.S.)

Visual to Flux

2004-11-28T11:29:00.000-08:00

I was able to convert the listed visual magnitudes to flux densities using the conversion program on the Spitzer site. I was also able to produce a view list for up coming possible view dates. I will list them according to their numbers on the object list.
Visual Mag. -- Flux density Viewing dates (dased on RA/DEC)
#3 14.17 1.430 mJy 2/19/05 - 2/21/05 60 days
#4 14.85 0.765 mJy 3/25/05 - 5/02/05 38 days
#7 15.60 0.385 mJy 5/14/05 - 6/27/05 44 days
#12 15.50 0.421 mJy 9/04/05 - 4/21/06 228 days
#17 17.75 0.053 mJy 6/16/05 - 7/26/05 39 days
#18 16.71 0.134 mJy 6/12/05 - 7/26/05 43 days
#19 17.50 0.067 mJy 2/07/05 - 4/23/05 75 days & 6/21/05 - 9/08/05 78 days
#23 16.75 0.133 mJy 6/09/05 - 7/18/05 39 days
I have a lot to learn, but there must be a connection between the flux density and the SED of our objects. Both of which will/may have an effect on exposure times for the Spitzer insturments.

Welcome

2004-11-28T10:43:00.000-08:00

This is the posting and message board blog for the AGN-far infrared group.

The web site for the group is

AGN in the Far IR

I've never tried this with a group before, so post something to test the idea...