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Abstract:

We report the latest Planet Hunter results, including PH2 b, a Jupiter-size (R_PL = 10.12 \pm 0.56 R_E) planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a solar-type star. PH2 b was elevated from candidate status when a series of false positive tests yielded a 99.9% confidence level that transit events detected around the star KIC 12735740 had a planetary origin. Planet Hunter volunteers have also discovered 42 new planet candidates in the Kepler public archive data, of which 33 have at least three transits recorded. Most of these transit candidates have orbital periods longer than 100 days and 20 are potentially located in the habitable zones of their host stars. Nine candidates were detected with only two transit events and the prospective periods are longer than 400 days. The photometric models suggest that these objects have radii that range between Neptune to Jupiter. These detections nearly double the number of gas giant planet candidates orbiting at habitable zone distances. We conducted spectroscopic observations for nine of the brighter targets to improve the stellar parameters and we obtained adaptive optics imaging for four of the stars to search for blended background or foreground stars that could confuse our photometric modeling. We present an iterative analysis method to derive the stellar and planet properties and uncertainties by combining the available spectroscopic parameters, stellar evolution models, and transiting light curve parameters, weighted by the measurement errors. Planet Hunters is a citizen science project that crowd-sources the assessment of NASA Kepler light curves. The discovery of these 43 planet candidates demonstrates the success of citizen scientists at identifying planet candidates, even in longer period orbits with only two or three transit events.

Abstract:

We use multiwavelength (0.12-500 μm) photometry from Herschel-ATLAS, WISE, UKIDSS, SDSS and GALEX to study 23 nearby spheroidal galaxies with prominent dust lanes (DLSGs). DLSGs are considered to be remnants of recent minor mergers, making them ideal laboratories for studying both the interstellar medium (ISM) of spheroids and minor-merger-driven star formation in thenearby Universe. The DLSGs exhibit star formation rates (SFRs) between 0.01and 10M⊙ yr-1 with a median of 0.26M⊙ yr-1 (a factor of 3.5 greater thanthe average SG). The median dust mass, dust-to-stellar mass ratio and dust temperature in these galaxies are around 107.6M⊙, ≈0.05 per cent and ≈19.5K, respectively. The dust masses are at least a factor of 50 greater than that expected from stellar mass loss and, like the SFRs, show no correlationwith galaxy luminosity, suggesting that both the ISM and the star formationhave external drivers. Adopting literature gas-to-dust ratios and star formation histories derived from fits to the panchromatic photometry, we estimate that the median current and initial gasto- stellar mass ratios in these systems are ≈4 and ≈7 per cent, respectively. If, as indicated by recent work, minor mergers that drive star formation in spheroids with (NUV - r) > 3.8 (the colour range of our DLSGs) have stellar mass ratios between 1:6 and 1:10, then the satellite gas fractions are likely =50 per cent. © 2013 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Abstract:

In order to understand the physical mechanisms at work during the formation of massive early-type galaxies, we performed six zoomed hydrodynamical cosmological simulations of haloes in the mass range 4.3×1012 ≤Mvir ≤8.0×1013M at z=0, using the AdaptiveMesh Refinement code RAMSES. These simulations explore the role of active galactic nuclei (AGN), through jets powered by the accretion on to supermassive black holes on the formation of massive elliptical galaxies. In the absence of AGN feedback, large amounts of stars accumulate in the central galaxies to form overly massive, blue, compact and rotation-dominated galaxies. Powerful AGN jets transform the central galaxies into red extended and dispersion-dominated galaxies. This morphological transformation of disc galaxies into elliptical galaxies is driven by the efficient quenching of the in situ star formation due to AGN feedback, which transform these galaxies into systems built up by accretion. For galaxies mainly formed by accretion, the proportion of stars deposited farther away from the centre increases, and galaxies have larger sizes. The accretion is also directly responsible for randomizing the stellar orbits, increasing the amount of dispersion over rotation of stars as a function of time. Finally, we find that our galaxies simulated with AGN feedback better match the observed scaling laws, such as the size-mass, velocity dispersion-mass, Fundamental Plane relations and slope of the total density profiles at z 0, from dynamical and strong lensing constraints.© 2013 The Authors.