More Like this

1. The Arecibo Pisces-Perseus Survey: Goals, data reduction, and initial results from declination strips 23 and 33

   Luna, Omar ; Craig, David W. ; Jones, Michael ; Haynes, Martha P. ; Koopmann, Rebecca ( January 2019 , American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting)

   The Arecibo Pisces-Perseus Supercluster Survey (APPSS) attempts to detect the infall of galaxies onto the Pisces-Perseus Supercluster (PPS). The ALFALFA survey has greatly augmented the known redshifts across the region. APPSS sources will complement the ALFALFA sources, with the goal of building a large enough sample to make a high confidence measurement of infall and backflow onto the PSS filament via peculiar velocity estimates from the Tully-Fisher (TFR) and Baryonic Tully-Fisher (BTFR) relations. APPSS galaxies are selected using photometric data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), aimed to detect low-mass, nearby gas-rich objects below the ALFALFA detection limit. Themore »L-band wide receiver at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is used to obtain a five-minute ON-OFF measurement for each galaxy. Since the candidate galaxy redshifts are unknown, the receiver and spectrograph system are used in a search mode that spans the expected frequencies of HI emission from PPS galaxies. We will describe the goals, target selection, and data reduction process for the survey. Our collaboration has divided the PPS into two-degree wide declination strips for data reduction; we report preliminary results for strips 23 and 33. We have made the initial data reduction on more than 200 targets, and determined the systemic velocity, line width, integrated flux density, and HI mass for each candidate detection. We will compare results on our two declination strips, and point out interesting detections found along the way as examples of the data reduction process. This work has been supported by NSF grants AST-1211005 and AST-1637339.« less
2. The Arecibo Pisces-Perseus Survey: Goals, data reduction, and initial results from declination strips 23 and 33

   Luna, Omar ; Craig, David W. ; Jones, Michael ; Haynes, Martha P. ; Koopmann, Rebecca ( January 2019 , American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #233, id.356.07)

   The Arecibo Pisces-Perseus Supercluster Survey (APPSS) attempts to detect the infall of galaxies onto the Pisces-Perseus Supercluster (PPS). The ALFALFA survey has greatly augmented the known redshifts across the region. APPSS sources will complement the ALFALFA sources, with the goal of building a large enough sample to make a high confidence measurement of infall and backflow onto the PSS filament via peculiar velocity estimates from the Tully-Fisher (TFR) and Baryonic Tully-Fisher (BTFR) relations. APPSS galaxies are selected using photometric data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), aimed to detect low-mass, nearby gas-rich objects below the ALFALFA detection limit. Themore »L-band wide receiver at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is used to obtain a five-minute ON-OFF measurement for each galaxy. Since the candidate galaxy redshifts are unknown, the receiver and spectrograph system are used in a search mode that spans the expected frequencies of HI emission from PPS galaxies. We will describe the goals, target selection, and data reduction process for the survey. Our collaboration has divided the PPS into two-degree wide declination strips for data reduction; we report preliminary results for strips 23 and 33. We have made the initial data reduction on more than 200 targets, and determined the systemic velocity, line width, integrated flux density, and HI mass for each candidate detection. We will compare results on our two declination strips, and point out interesting detections found along the way as examples of the data reduction process. This work has been supported by NSF grants AST-1211005 and AST-1637339. Publication: American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #233, id.356.07 Pub Date: January 2019 Bibcode: 2019AAS...23335607L« less
3. Preliminary results on the Arecibo Pisces-Perseus Supercluster Survey

   Cortes, Rosemary ; Lebron, Mayra ; Jones, Michael G. ; Koopmann, Rebecca A. ; Haynes, Martha P. ; APPSS Team, Undergraduate ALFALFA ( January 2018 , American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting)

   The Arecibo Pisces-Perseus Supercluster Survey (APPSS) aims to exploit the Baryonic Tully-Fisher Relation to derive distances and peculiar velocities of galaxies in and near the main ridge of the Pisces-Perseus Supercluster (PPS), one of the most prominent features of the Cosmic Web in the nearby Universe. The sample of galaxies contains ~ 600 sources in the low-mass range (8 < log MHI / M⊙ < 9). The source selection was based on the ALFALFA HI survey, SDSS and GALEX photometric data. The sample galaxies have HI masses just below the ALFALFA detection threshold, and were selected to be blue diskmore »systems (low surface brightness sources from optical photometry data). The HI data were obtained at the Arecibo Observatory between the years 2015 and 2016. With this sample, the nature of the galaxy population in and around the PPS will be investigated. The HIMF to log MHI ~ 8.0 along the PPS filament will be measured and using the Tully-Fisher relation it will be possible to make a robust measurement of the infall and backflow onto the filamentary structure.APPSS is collaborative project between more than 10 Undergraduate ALFALFA Team institutions in which each group contributes to the analysis of a subset of the HI PPS data. In this poster, we will present the contributions of the U.P.R. team to the APPSS project. We will show the procedure used for the Arecibo HI data analysis, including some examples, and will show our preliminary results.« less
4. Systematic Differences in the Calculation of Stellar Mass for ALFALFA Galaxies

   Burhenne, Clare ( January 2019 , American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting)

   To create a Baryonic Tully-Fisher Relationship (BTFR) for the ALFALFA galaxies, we require a corresponding catalog of optical photometry to produce reliable stellar masses to complement their HI masses. Different methods of calculating stellar mass have been used in derivations of the BTFR depending on the sky distribution, prior redshift information or multiwavelength photometry of the sample galaxies. In order to obtain stellar masses for all of the ALFALFA galaxies in the SDSS photometric footprint, we use a crossmatch file between the α-100 catalog and the SDSS DR14 database to produce a reliable catalog of optical photometric properties for usemore »in the stellar mass calculation and inclination-dependent corrections. For the stellar masses, we use the methodology set forth in Taylor et al. (2011), specifically, the modeled mass to light ratio estimated from the g-i color index. In order to compare stellar masses derived in this way with results obtained by other authors in the literature who used Petrosian and Sersic masses available in the NASA Sloan Atlas (NSA) to derive stellar masses, we investigate the differences in stellar mass and the corrections for inclination and extinction between values complied in the NSA and ones obtained using our α-100-SDSS cross-match. We investigate systematic differences in stellar mass estimates based on photometric properties such as color, surface brightness and concentration and on others such as distance, velocity width and HI richness. This research is supported by the Brinson Foundation for the Arecibo Pieces-Perseus Supercluster Survey (APPSS) and NSF grant NSF/AST-1714828 to M.P. Haynes.« less
5. Targeted HI Line Observations of Low Mass Galaxies in the Pisces-Perseus Supercluster: Results for the Declination Strip 30° < Dec < 32°

   Kumagai, Samuel F. ( January 2019 , American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting)

   The Arecibo Pisces-Perseus Supercluster Survey (APPSS) is an observing project undertaken by the Undergraduate ALFALFA Team that aims to detect HI in galaxies in the Pisces-Perseus neighborhood and analyze the dynamics and the properties of the galaxies. The galaxies targeted in APPSS are suspected from their optical properties (color, morphology, surface brightness) to lie in the Pisces-Perseus Supercluster (PPS) but are below the detection threshold of the ALFALFA blind HI survey. Here we present results for galaxies targeted in a strip across the PPS region in declination from 30o to 32o. This region is along the main filament of themore »supercluster and includes objects such as the Pisces Cluster. The data was recorded by the L-Band Wide receiver of the Arecibo Observatory. Data reduction was done using routines derived for the APPSS in IDL. After baselining the spectra and sifting out radio interference, we fit either a gaussian or two-horned profile to their 21-centimeter line to measure the HI line flux density, velocity, and velocity width. From these parameters we calculate distances, hydrogen gas mass, and rotational velocities. As expected, the galaxies analyzed in this slice of declination have consistently lower mass than the ALFALFA detections thus extending the sampling of galaxies within the PPS. The combined ALFALFA and APPSS HI line detections will be used for future applications of the Baryonic Tully-Fisher Relation in this region. This research has been supported by NSF grant NSF/AST-1714828 to M.P. Haynes and by the Brinson Foundation for the Arecibo Pisces-Perseus Supercluster Survey (APPSS).« less