Catalogue of averaged stellar effective magnetic fields – II. Re-discussion of chemically peculiar A and B stars

This paper presents a catalogue and the method of determining averaged quadratic effective magnetic fields  〈 B _e〉  for 1212 main-sequence and giant stars, and 11 white dwarf stars. The catalogue includes stars that are members of several open clusters. We have compiled measurements of the longitudinal magnetic field for those stars, which were scattered in the existing literature. A new parameter, magnetization (MA), has been defined, and we present values of MA for stars of various spectral classes. Our sample includes a subset of 610 chemically peculiar early-type stars. We confirm the conclusion of our previous study that the number distribution of all chemically peculiar stars versus the averaged magnetic field strength is described by a decreasing exponential function. Relations of this type also hold for stars of all the analysed subclasses of chemical peculiarity. Magnetization tends to correlate with the effective temperature only at high MA, for He-weak and He-rich stars.     

A photometric and spectroscopic study of the brightest northern Cepheids — II. Fundamental physical parameters

We present a new Cepheid reddening and effective temperature scale based on the uvby photometry published in the first paper of this series. Using all available information about the companion stars in Cepheids with bright blue secondaries, we remove their light from the observed light and colour curves. The resulting corrections are as large as 0.05–0.15 mag in several cases for different colour indices. A new photometric approach based on the ( b  −  y ) versus ( B  − V ) two-colour diagram is tested with three other previous calibrations taken from the literature. Two uvby relations in earlier studies turn out to be the most reliable and consistent, and so they are used in deriving colour excesses. We determine systematically higher reddenings for Cepheids with a significant secondary light correction. The dereddened Stro¨mgren colours are calibrated in terms of T _eff and log  g using the most recent synthetic colour grids. Our temperature scale is very close to that of Kraft, which is supported by other recent temperature determinations using the infrared flux method or Geneva photometry. The photometric gravities fit some of the earlier theoretical and observational (mainly spectroscopic) results very well.     

New classification and basic stellar parameters of SU Equulei

The variable star SU Equulei was classified as a close binary with an eclipse light curve previously categorized as WUMa type. The aim of this paper is a review of this old classification on the basis of new observations and a new determination of variable star ephemeris as well as the determination of SU Equ spectral type and distance. New photometric observations in different colours allow a precise determination of the period of variability and yield more accurate light curves allowing a re‐classification of the type of variability. We find the best period of variability to be half the old value. The shape of the light curve is inconsistent with an eclipse curve but consistent with an RR Lyrae type c classification. From the B, V, and R colours we deduce a new spectral classification. SU Equulei is an RRc Lyrae type variable of spectral class A8 at a distance of ≈12.4 kpc instead of a late‐type eclipsing binary (© 2009 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

New classification and basic stellar parameter of SW Equulei

We review the classification of the variable star SW Equulei, formerly classified as a close binary of the W UMa type with a period of 0.83632 d and components of spectral types O–A or F–G and later. New observations indicate that the light curve is not that of an eclipsing binary but of a pulsating star with a period half of the old value. Further examination shows that SW Equulei is a double mode star of the RRd Lyrae type with a fundamental period of P = 0.560727 d and an overtone of P = 0.4181777 d at a distance of ≈ 7.1 kpc. (© 2013 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

主序星的Ⅴ波段经验质光关系

恒星质量是恒星物理以及恒星系统动力学研究中一个不可或缺的参量.双星轨道拟合是获取恒星(动力学)质量的最可靠途径,而绝大部分恒星的质量仍然需要通过恒星质光关系来估计,因此,通过拟合恒星动力学质量和光度数据得到经验质光关系的工作具有重要意义.尽管主序星的Ⅴ波段质光关系由于金属丰度的影响而具有一定的弥散性,但有研究表明这种影响主要限于恒星质量小于 0.6M_⊙的情况.对于较大质量的主序星,近年来的观测拟合研究积累了比较充分的动力学质量和Ⅴ波段光度数据,从而为显著改进上述质光关系提供了可能.利用一个能合理分配两个不同量纲观测量权重的拟合方法,根据 203 颗恒星的动力学质量和光度数据给出了主序星的Ⅴ波段经验质光关系,该结果对此前结果的改进不仅具有统计显著性,而且其对恒星质量估计的相对误差已达到约 5%.因此,该结果不仅可以用于开展有关恒星物理或恒星系统动力学方面的统计性研究,而且对具体实际多星系统的长期动力学研究和短期定位研究等也有应用价值.     

一种新的基于2维傅里叶谱图像的恒星光谱特征提取方法和深度网络分类应用

天体光谱分类是天文学研究的重要内容之一,其关键是从光谱数据中选择和提取对分类识别最有效的特征构建特征空间.提出一种新的基于2维傅里叶谱图像的特征提取方法,并应用于LAMOST (the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope)恒星光谱数据的分类研究中.光谱数据来源于LAMOST Data Release 5(DR5),选取30000条F、 G和K型星光谱数据,利用短时傅里叶变换(Short-Time Fourier Transform, STFT)将1维光谱数据变换成2维傅里叶谱图像,对得到的2维傅里叶谱图像采用深度卷积网络模型进行分类,得到的分类准确率是92.90%.实验结果表明通过对LAMOST恒星光谱数据进行STFT可得到光谱的2维傅里叶谱图像,谱图像构成了新的光谱数据特征和特征空间,新的特征对于光谱数据分类是有效的.此方法是对光谱分类的一种全新尝试,对海量天体光谱的分类和挖掘处理有一定的开创意义.     

Empirical calibration of the near-infrared Ca ii triplet – II. The stellar atmospheric parameters

We present a homogeneous set of stellar atmospheric parameters ( T _eff, log  g , [Fe/H]) for a sample of about 700 field and cluster stars which constitute a new stellar library in the near-IR developed for stellar population synthesis in this spectral region ( λ 8350–9020) . Having compiled the available atmospheric data in the literature for field stars, we have found systematic deviations between the atmospheric parameters from different bibliographic references. The Soubiran, Katz & Cayrel sample of stars with very well determined fundamental parameters has been taken as our standard reference system, and other papers have been calibrated and bootstrapped against it. The obtained transformations are provided in this paper. Once most of the data sets were on the same system, final parameters were derived by performing error weighted means. Atmospheric parameters for cluster stars have also been revised and updated according to recent metallicity scales and colour–temperature relations.     

Stellar Spectral Classification using Principal Component Analysis and Artificial Neural Networks

A fast and robust method of classifying a library of optical stellar spectra for O to M type stars is presented. The method employs, as tools: (1) principal component analysis (PCA) for reducing the dimensionality of the data and (2) multilayer back propagation network (MBPN) based artificial neural network (ANN) scheme to automate the process of classification. We are able to reduce the dimensionality of the original spectral data to very few components by using PCA and are able to successfully reconstruct the original spectra. A number of NN architectures are used to classify the library of test spectra. Performance of ANN with this reduced dimension shows that the library can be classified to accuracies similar to those achieved by Gulati et al. but with less computational load. Furthermore, the data compression is so efficient that the NN scheme successfully classifies to the desired accuracy for a wide range of architectures. The procedure will greatly improve our capabilities in handling and analysing large spectral data bases of the future.     

Stellar forensics — I. Cooling curves

The presence of low-mass, degenerate secondaries in millisecond pulsar binaries offers the opportunity to determine an age for the binary system independently of the rotational properties of the pulsar. To this end, we present here a detailed calculation of the evolution of a grid of low-mass (< 0.05 M⊙) helium core white dwarfs. We investigate the effects of different hydrogen layer masses and provide results for well-known optical bandpasses. We supplement the OPAL opacity calculations with our own calculations for low effective temperatures ( T _eff < 6000 K) and also provide fitting formulae for the gravity as a function of mass and effective temperature. In Paper II we apply these results to individual cases.     

Principal component analysis for spectral indices of stellar populations

We apply the method of principal component analysis to a sample of simple stellar populations to select some age-sensitive spectral indices. Besides the well-known age-sensitive index, H β , we find that some other spectral indices have great potential to determine the age of stellar populations, such as G4300, Fe4383, C₂4668, and Mg b . In addition, we find that the sensitivity to age of these spectral indices depends on the metallicity of the simple stellar population (SSP): H β and G4300 are more suited to determine the age of the low-metallicity stellar population, C₂4668 and Mg b are more suited to the high-metallicity stellar population. The results suggest that the principal component analysis method provides a more objective and informative alternative to diagnostics by individual spectral lines.     

Objective classification of galaxy spectra using the information bottleneck method

A new method for classification of galaxy spectra is presented, based on a recently introduced information theoretical principle, the information bottleneck . For any desired number of classes, galaxies are classified such that the information content about the spectra is maximally preserved. The result is classes of galaxies with similar spectra, where the similarity is determined via a measure of information. We apply our method to ∼6000 galaxy spectra from the ongoing 2dF redshift survey, and a mock-2dF catalogue produced by a cold dark matter (CDM) based semi-analytic model of galaxy formation. We find a good match between the mean spectra of the classes found in the data and in the models. For the mock catalogue, we find that the classes produced by our algorithm form an intuitively sensible sequence in terms of physical properties such as colour, star formation activity, morphology, and internal velocity dispersion. We also show the correlation of the classes with the projections resulting from a principal component analysis.     

Monte Carlo simulations of star clusters – II. Tidally limited, multimass systems with stellar evolution

A revision of Stodółkiewicz's Monte Carlo code is used to simulate evolution of large star clusters. The new method treats each superstar as a single star and follows the evolution and motion of all individual stellar objects. A survey of the evolution of N -body systems influenced by the tidal field of a parent galaxy and by stellar evolution is presented. The process of energy generation is realized by means of appropriately modified versions of Spitzer's and Mikkola's formulae for the interaction cross-section between binaries and field stars and binaries themselves. The results presented are in good agreement with theoretical expectations and the results of other methods (Fokker–Planck, Monte Carlo and N -body). The initial rapid mass loss, resulting from stellar evolution of the most massive stars, causes expansion of the whole cluster and eventually leads to the disruption of less bound systems ( W ₀=3). Models with larger W ₀ survive this phase of evolution and then undergo core collapse and subsequent post-collapse expansion, like isolated models. The expansion phase is eventually reversed when tidal limitation becomes important. The results presented are the first major step in the direction of simulating evolution of real globular clusters by means of the Monte Carlo method.     

Automated estimation of stellar fundamental parameters from low resolution spectra: the PLS method

PLS (Partial Least Squares regression) is introduced into an automatic esti-mation of fundamental stellar spectral parameters. It extracts the most correlative spec-tral component to the parameters (Teff, log g and [Fe/H]), and sets up a linear regres-sion function from spectra to the corresponding parameters. Considering the properties of stellar spectra and the PLS algorithm, we present a piecewise PLS regression method for estimation of stellar parameters, which is composed of one PLS model for Teff, and seven PLS models for log g and [Fe/H] estimation. Its performance is investigated by large experiments on flux calibrated spectra and continuum normalized spectra at dif-ferent signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) and resolutions. The results show that the piecewise PLS method is robust for spectra at the medium resolution of 0.23 nm. For low resolu-tion 0.5 nm and 1 nm spectra, it achieves competitive results at higher SNR. Experiments using ELODIE spectra of 0.23 nm resolution illustrate that our piecewise PLS models trained with MILES spectra are efficient for O ～ G stars: for flux calibrated spectra, the systematic offsets are 3.8%, 0.14dex, and -0.09 dex for Teff, log g and [Fe/H], with error scatters of 5.2%, 0.44 dex and 0.38 dex, respectively; for continuum normalized spectra, the systematic offsets are 3.8%, 0.12dex, and -0.13 dex for Teff, log g and [Fe/H], with error scatters of 5.2%, 0.49 dex and 0.41 dex, respectively. The PLS method is rapid, easy to use and does not rely as strongly on the tightness of a parameter grid of templates to reach high precision as Artificial Neural Networks or minimum distance methods do.