This week on HST

HST Programs: June 7, 2010 - June 13, 2010

Selected highlights

GO 11556: Investigations of the Pluto System

Hubble Space Telescope image of Pluto, Charon and the two new moons, Nix & Hydra

Pluto, one of the largest members of the Kuiper Belt and, until recently (still, for some), the outermost planet in the solar system, has been in the news over the last year or two. Besides the extended "planet"/"dwarf planet" debate, Pluto is the primary target of the New Horizons Mission, and Hubble observations in 2005 led to the discovery of two small moons. Together with Charon, itself only discovered in 1978, these additions make Pluto a 4-body system. Christened Nix and Hydra, the two new moons are 5,000 fainter than Pluto itself, implying diameters as small as ~30-50 km if the surface composition is similar to Pluto itself. The present program aims to better characterise these bodies through multicolour observations with WFC3. The observations are phased with a cadence that samples the different orbital periods: 6.4 days for Pluto/Charon; 24.9 days for Nix/Pluto; and 38 days for Hydra/Pluto. The goal is to identify systematic photometric variations that might probe the rotation period, testing whether these moons are in synchronous rotation with Pluto itself.

GO 11707: Detecting Isolated Black Holes through Astrometric Microlensing

A rather spectacular version of black hole lensing.

Gravitational lensing is a consequence of general relativity. Its effects were originally quantified by Einstein himself in the mid-1920s. In the 1930s, Fritz Zwicky suggested that galaxies could serve as lenses, but lower mass objects can also also lens background sources. Bohdan Paczynski pointed out in the mid-1980s that this offered a means of detecting dark, compact objects that might contribute to the dark-matter halo. Paczcynski's suggestion prompted the inception of several large-scale lensing surveys, notably MACHO, OGLE, EROS and DUO. Those wide-field imaging surveys have target high density starfields towards the Magellanic Clouds and the Galactic Bulge, and have succeeded in identifying numerous lensing events. The duration of each event depends on several factors, including the tangential motion of the lens and its mass. Long-term events are generally associated with a massive lens. Duration alone is not sufficient to identify a lens as a black hole - a source with very low tangential motion relative to the Sun can produce the same effect. However, microlensing not only leads to flux amplification, but also to small astrometric motions, caused by the appearance and disappearance of features in the lensed light. Those motions serve as a mass discriminant - higher mass lenses produce larger amplitude motions. The expected astrometric signal from a black hole lens is > 1.4 millarcseconds, just measureable with HST. This program aims to capitalise on this fact by searching for lensing by black holes in the Galactic field. The observations target long-duration lensing events in the Galactic Bulge.

GO 11720: Detailed analysis of carbon atmosphere white dwarfs

Basic structure of a white dwarf star

White dwarfs are the final evolutionary stage for stars with masses less than approximately seven times that of the Sun. Following extensive mass loss along the red giant branch, the asymptotic giant branch and, finally, as planetary nebulae, the original stars have shrunk to a total masses that are typically around 0.6 to 0.7 that of the Sun and, since they're composed of degenerate material (usually C-O), to sizes comparable with that of the Earth. The outer skin of the white dwarf forms a very thin atmosphere. In most cases, the atmosphere either is hydrogen-rich, and Balmer lines dominate the optical spectrum, or helium dominated. However, in 2007 a handful of white dwarfs were discovered that appear to have atmospheres where the dominant constituent is carbon, with little or no trace of either hydrogen or helium. As yet, the evolutionary path leading to this unusual composition remains unclear. The present program aims to use COS to obtain spectra at near-ultraviolet wavelengths. Those data will serve to probe the surface gravities, and hence the masses, of these stars, set finer limits on the atmospheric composition, and perhaps shed light on the past evolutionary history of these curious objects.

GO 11734: The hosts of high redshift gamma-ray bursts

Artist's impression of a gamma-ray burst

Gamma ray bursts are events that tap extraordinary energies (1045 to 1047 joules) in remarkably short periods of time. Several thousands bursts have been detected over the last 30+ years, and analyses indicate that they can be divided into two classes with durations longer or shorter than 2 seconds. The short bursts appear to release more high energy radiation, so the two subsets are known as long/soft and short/hard bursts.The short/hard bursts appear to arise from coalescing binary systems (probably pairs of neutron stars or black holes), but the long/soft bursts appear to originate in the collapse of very massive stars. The latter sources are therefore almost certainly associated with star formation, so they act as signposts to active star-forming regions in the high redshift universe. Many of these bursts are sufficiently bright that ground-based spectroscopic observations allow reliable measurement of the redshift. In many cases, ground-based observations at later epochs are insufficient to detect the underlying host galaxy, and characterise its properties. This program targets such systems at redshifts z>3, and aims to use WFC3 and ACS observations to reveal the host galaxy.