Search for: All records

This demo will showcase updates made to the ‘robot-ready spoken dialogue system’ built on the Retico framework. Updates include new modules, logging and real-time monitoring tools, integrations with the Coppelia Sim virtual robot platfrom, integrations with a benchmark, improved documentation, and pypi environment usage. 

Context. Planetesimal belts are ubiquitous around nearby stars, and their spatial properties hold crucial information for planetesimal and planet formation models. Aims. We present resolved dust observations of 74 planetary systems as part of the REsolved ALMA and SMA Observations of Nearby Stars (REASONS) survey and archival reanalysis. Methods. We uniformly modelled interferometric visibilities for the entire sample to obtain the basic spatial properties of each belt, and combined these with constraints from multi-wavelength photometry. Results. We report key findings from a first exploration of this legacy dataset: (1) Belt dust masses are depleted over time in a radially dependent way, with dust being depleted faster in smaller belts, as predicted by collisional evolution. (2) Most belts are broad discs rather than narrow rings, with much broader fractional widths than rings in protoplanetary discs. We link broad belts to either unresolved substructure or broad planetesimal discs produced if protoplanetary rings migrate. (3) The vertical aspect ratios (h=H/R) of 24 belts indicate orbital inclinations of ~1–20º, implying relative particle velocities of ~0.1–4 km/s, and no clear evolution of heights with system age. This could be explained by early stirring within the belt by large bodies (with sizes of at least ~140 km to the size of the Moon), by inheritance of inclinations from the protoplanetary disc stage, or by a diversity in evolutionary pathways and gravitational stirring mechanisms. We release the REASONS legacy multidimensional sample of millimetre-resolved belts to the community as a valuable tool for follow-up multi-wavelength observations and population modelling studies. 

ABSTRACT Spatially resolved images of debris discs are necessary to determine disc morphological properties and the scattering phase function (SPF) thatantifies the brightness of scattered light as a function of phase angle. Current high-contrast imaging instruments have successfully resolved several dozens of debris discs around other stars, but few studies have investigated trends in the scattered-light, resolved population of debris discs in a uniform and consistent manner. We have combined Karhunen-Loeve Image Projection (KLIP) with radiative-transfer disc forward modelling in order to obtain the highest-quality image reductions and constrain disc morphological properties of eight debris discs imaged by the Gemini Planet Imager at H-band with a consistent and uniformly applied approach. In describing the scattering properties of our models, we assume a common SPF informed from solar system dust scattering measurements and apply it to all systems. We identify a diverse range of dust density properties among the sample, including critical radius, radial width, and vertical width. We also identify radially narrow and vertically extended discs that may have resulted from substellar companion perturbations, along with a tentative positive trend in disc eccentricity with relative disc width. We also find that using a common SPF can achieve reasonable model fits for discs that are axisymmetric and asymmetric when fitting models to each side of the disc independently, suggesting that scattering behaviour from debris discs may be similar to Solar system dust. 

Context. Molecular filaments and hubs have received special attention recently thanks to new studies showing their key role in star formation. While the (column) density and velocity structures of both filaments and hubs have been carefully studied, their magnetic field (B-field) properties have yet to be characterized. Consequently, the role of B-fields in the formation and evolution of hub-filament systems is not well constrained. Aims. We aim to understand the role of the B-field and its interplay with turbulence and gravity in the dynamical evolution of the NGC 6334 filament network that harbours cluster-forming hubs and high-mass star formation. Methods. We present new observations of the dust polarized emission at 850 μ m toward the 2 pc × 10 pc map of NGC 6334 at a spatial resolution of 0.09 pc obtained with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) as part of the B-field In STar-forming Region Observations (BISTRO) survey. We study the distribution and dispersion of the polarized intensity ( PI ), the polarization fraction ( PF ), and the plane-of-the-sky B-field angle ( χ B_POS ) toward the whole region, along the 10 pc-long ridge and along the sub-filaments connected to the ridge and the hubs. We derived the power spectra of the intensity and χ B POS along the ridge crest and compared them with the results obtained from simulated filaments. Results. The observations span ~3 orders of magnitude in Stokes I and PI and ~2 orders of magnitude in PF (from ~0.2 to ~ 20%). A large scatter in PI and PF is observed for a given value of I . Our analyses show a complex B-field structure when observed over the whole region (~ 10 pc); however, at smaller scales (~1 pc), χ B POS varies coherently along the crests of the filament network. The observed power spectrum of χ B POS can be well represented with a power law function with a slope of − 1.33 ± 0.23, which is ~20% shallower than that of I . We find that this result is compatible with the properties of simulated filaments and may indicate the physical processes at play in the formation and evolution of star-forming filaments. Along the sub-filaments, χ B POS rotates frombeing mostly perpendicular or randomly oriented with respect to the crests to mostly parallel as the sub-filaments merge with the ridge and hubs. This variation of the B-field structure along the sub-filaments may be tracing local velocity flows of infalling matter in the ridge and hubs. Our analysis also suggests a variation in the energy balance along the crests of these sub-filaments, from magnetically critical or supercritical at their far ends to magnetically subcritical near the ridge and hubs. We also detect an increase in PF toward the high-column density ( N H 2 ≳ 10 23  cm −2 ) star cluster-forming hubs. These latter large PF values may be explained by the increase in grain alignment efficiency due to stellar radiation from the newborn stars, combined with an ordered B-field structure. Conclusions. These observational results reveal for the first time the characteristics of the small-scale (down to ~ 0.1 pc) B-field structure of a 10 pc-long hub-filament system. Our analyses show variations in the polarization properties along the sub-filaments that may be tracing the evolution of their physical properties during their interaction with the ridge and hubs. We also detect an impact of feedback from young high-mass stars on the local B-field structure and the polarization properties, which could put constraints on possible models for dust grain alignment and provide important hints as to the interplay between the star formation activity and interstellar B-fields.