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Daily # 4223



 
 
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Old October 20th 06, 04:30 PM posted to sci.astro.hubble
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Default Daily # 4223


HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE - Continuing to collect World Class Science

DAILY REPORT # 4223

PERIOD COVERED: UT October 19, 2006 (DOY 292)

OBSERVATIONS SCHEDULED

ACS/WFC 10816

The Formation History of Andromeda's Extended Metal-Poor Halo

We propose deep ACS imaging in the outer spheroid of the Andromeda
galaxy, in order to measure the star formation history of its true
halo. For the past 20 years, nearly all studies of the Andromeda
"halo" were focused on the spheroid within 30 kpc of the galaxy's
center, a region now known to host significant substructure and
populations with high metallicity and intermediate ages. However, two
groups have recently discovered an extended metal-poor halo beyond 30
kpc; this population is distinct in its surface-brightness profile,
abundance distribution, and kinematics. In earlier cycles, we obtained
deep images of the inner spheroid {11 kpc on the minor axis}, outer
disk {25 kpc on the major axis}, and giant tidal stream, yielding the
complete star formation history in each field. We now propose deep ACS
imaging of 4 fields bracketing this 30 kpc transition point in the
spheroid, so that the inner spheroid and the extended halo populations
can be disentangled, enabling a reconstruction of the star formation
history in the halo. A wide age distribution in the halo, as found in
the inner spheroid, would imply the halo was assembled through ongoing
accretion of satellite galaxies, while a uniformly old population
would be a strong indication that the halo was formed during the early
rapid collapse of the Andromeda proto-galaxy.

ACS/WFC 10880

The host galaxies of QSO2s: AGN feeding and evolution at high
luminosities

Now that the presence of supermassive black holes in the nuclei of
galaxies is a well established fact, other questions related to the
AGN phenomena still have to be answered. Problems of particular
interest are how the AGN gets fed, how the black hole evolves and how
the evolution of the black hole is related to the evolution of the
galaxy bulge. Here we propose to address some of these issues using
ACS/WFC + F775W snapshot images of 73 QSO2s with redshifts in the
range 0.3z0.4. These observations will be combined with similar
archival data of QSO1s and ground based data of Seyfert and normal
galaxies. First, we will intestigate whether interactions are the most
important feeding mechanism in high luminosity AGNs. This will be done
in a quantitative way, comparing the asymmetry indices of QSO2 hosts
with those of lower luminosity AGNs and normal galaxies. Second, we
will do a detailed study of the morphology of the host galaxies of
both QSO types, to determine if they are similar, or if there is an
evolutionary trend from QSO2s to QSO1s. The results from this project
will represent an important step in the understanding of AGN
evolution, and may also introduce a substantial modification to the
Unified Model.

ACS/WFC 10881

The Ultimate Gravitational Lensing Survey of Cluster Mass and
Substructure

We propose a systematic and detailed investigation of the mass,
substructure, and thermodynamics of one hundred X-ray luminous galaxy
clusters at 0.15z0.3. The primary goal is to test our recent
suggestion that this population is dominated by dynamically immature
disturbed clusters, and that the observed mass-temperature relation
suffers strong structural segregation. If confirmed, this would
represent a paradigm shift in our observational understanding of
clusters, that were hitherto believed to be dominated by mature,
undisturbed systems. The key observation to this endeavor is Hubble
imaging of cluster cores to identify robustly tangential and radial
multiple arcs and measure the shape of faint galaxies. These strong
and weak lensing signals will give an accurate measure of the total
mass and structure of the dark matter distribution that we will
subsequently compare with X-ray and Sunyaev Zeldovich Effect
observables. The broader applications of our project include 1} the
calibration of mass-temperature and mass-SZE scaling relations which
will be critical for the calibration of proposed dark energy
experiments, and 2} the low redshift baseline study of the
demographics of massive clusters to aid interpretation of future high
redshift {z1} cluster samples. For this ultimate cluster survey, we
request ACS SNAPSHOTS through the F606W filter drawn from a target
list of 143 clusters.

ACS/WFC 10886

The Sloan Lens ACS Survey: Towards 100 New Strong Lenses

As a continuation of the highly successful Sloan Lens ACS {SLACS}
Survey for new strong gravitational lenses, we propose one orbit of
ACS-WFC F814W imaging for each of 50 high- probability strong
galaxy-galaxy lens candidates. These observations will confirm new
lens systems and permit immediate and accurate photometry, shape
measurement, and mass modeling of the lens galaxies. The lenses
delivered by the SLACS Survey all show extended source structure,
furnishing more constraints on the projected lens potential than
lensed-quasar image positions. In addition, SLACS lenses have lens
galaxies that are much brighter than their lensed sources,
facilitating detailed photometric and dynamical observation of the
former. When confirmed lenses from this proposal are combined with
lenses discovered by SLACS in Cycles 13 and 14, we expect the final
SLACS lens sample to number 80--100: an approximate doubling of the
number of known galaxy-scale strong gravitational lenses and an
order-of-magnitude increase in the number of optical Einstein rings.
By virtue of its homogeneous selection and sheer size, the SLACS
sample will allow an unprecedented exploration of the mass structure
of the early-type galaxy population as a function of all other
observable quantities. This new sample will be a valuable resource to
the astronomical community by enabling qualitatively new strong
lensing science, and as such we will waive all but a short {3-month}
proprietary period on the observations.

ACS/WFC 10917

Afterglows and Environments of Short-Hard Gamma-Ray Bursts

Discovery of the first afterglows of short-hard bursts {SHBs} has led
to a revolution in our understanding of these events, strongly
suggesting that they originate in the mergers of compact-object
binaries. Capitalizing on this progress, we propose to pursue the next
generation of SHB observations with HST, tracking the decay of all
accessible SHB afterglows to late times and pinpointing the location
of several more within the context of their host galaxies. These
observations will allow quantitative analysis of progenitor lifetimes
and short burst environments, enable direct confrontation with
population synthesis models, and provide updated event rate estimates
for the LIGO and VIRGO gravitational-wave detectors that are now
coming on-line.

NIC2 10825

The Formation Epoch of Early-type Galaxies: Constraints from the
Fundamental Plane at z=1.3

Field and cluster surveys both show a ~50% decrease in the number of
early-type galaxies at redshifts near 1. Galaxies that have either
recently transformed into early-types or undergone star formation
should have younger appearing stellar populations. The resulting
change in the mass-to-light ratio can be detected by the offset in the
fundamental plane with redshift. We will use the fundamental plane to
test whether a significant fraction of early-type galaxies have
evidence of recent star formation, using a sample of ~20 z=1.3 cluster
and field early-type galaxies. This is 7 times larger than the sample
previously used at this redshift. We already have the high
signal-to-noise 12-20 hour long Keck spectra for these galaxies we
need for velocity dispersions. To use the fundamental plane, we
require sizes and surface brightnesses. We propose 12 orbits of NICMOS
Camera 2 imaging to measure the sizes and surface brightness
distributions of these objects in a rest-frame optical passband. These
data will provide high quality surface brightness profiles out two ~2
half-light radii, at wavelengths comparable to previous fundamental
plane studies. When combined with our spectra, the HST data will
establish the mass-to-light ratio evolution for massive early-type
galaxies from the fundamental plane. We will define the epoch of last
star formation for these z=1.3 galaxies, directly testing the claims
of strong evolution at z=1.

WFPC2 10744

WFPC2 Cycle 14 Decontaminations and Associated Observations

This proposal is for the WFPC2 decontamination. Also included are
instrument monitors tied to decontamination: photometric stability
check, focus monitor, pre- and post-decontamination internals {bias,
intflats, kspots, & darks}, UV throughput check, VISFLAT sweep, and
internal UV flat check.

FLIGHT OPERATIONS SUMMARY:

Significant Spacecraft Anomalies: (The following are preliminary
reports of potential non-nominal performance that will be
investigated.)

HSTARS:

10473 - GSACQ(2,1,2) failed, Search Radius Limit Exceeded on FGS 2

GSACQ(2,1,2) at 292/09:21:02 failed due to Search Radius Limit
Exceeded on FGS 2 at 09:26:22. OBAD data prior to GSACQ showed RSS
attitude correction of 11.71 arcseconds, OBAD map after GSACQ failure
showed RSS error of 1.83 arcseconds.

REAcq (2,1,2) at 292.10:54:20 failed due to Search Radius Limit
Exceeded on FGS 2 at 10:58:59. OBAD #1: RSS = 812.99 OBAD #2: RSS =
8.84 OBAD MAP: RSS = 8.44


COMPLETED OPS REQUEST: (None)

COMPLETED OPS NOTES: (None)

SCHEDULED SUCCESSFUL
FGS GSacq 08 07
FGS REacq 08 07
OBAD with Maneuver 32 32

SIGNIFICANT EVENTS: (None)


 




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