Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies

Collapsars as Sites of r-process Nucleosynthesis: Systematic Photometric Near-infrared Follow-up of Type Ic-BL Supernovae

One of the open questions following the discovery of GW170817 is whether neutron star (NS) mergers are the only astrophysical sites capable of producing r-process elements. Simulations have shown that 0.01–0.1 M $_ødot$ of r-process material could be …

Keck Infrared Transient Survey. I. Survey Description and Data Release 1

We present the Keck Infrared Transient Survey, a NASA Key Strategic Mission Support program to obtain near-infrared (NIR) spectra of astrophysical transients of all types, and its first data release, consisting of 105 NIR spectra of 50 transients. …

Tidal Disruption Event Demographics with the Zwicky Transient Facility: Volumetric Rates, Luminosity Function, and Implications for the Local Black Hole Mass Function

We conduct a systematic tidal disruption event (TDE) demographics analysis using the largest sample of optically selected TDEs. A flux-limited, spectroscopically complete sample of 33 TDEs is constructed using the Zwicky Transient Facility over 3 yr …

A ubiquitous unifying degeneracy in two-body microlensing systems

While gravitational microlensing by planetary systems$^1,2$ provides unique vistas on the properties of exoplanets$^3$, observations of a given two-body microlensing event can often be interpreted with multiple distinct physical configurations. Such …

A Ubiquitous Unifying Degeneracy in 2-body Microlensing Systems

While gravitational microlensing by planetary systems can provide unique vistas on the properties of exoplanets, observations of such 2-body microlensing events can often be explained with multiple and distinct physical configurations, so-called …

Science with the Ultraviolet Explorer (UVEX)

The Ultraviolet Explorer (UVEX) will undertake a synoptic survey of the entire sky in near-UV (NUV) and far-UV (FUV) bands, probing the dynamic FUV and NUV universe, as well as perform a modern, all- sky imaging survey that reaches 50 times deeper …

The Palomar Transient Factory Core-collapse Supernova Host-galaxy Sample. I. Host-galaxy Distribution Functions and Environment Dependence of Core-collapse Supernovae

Several thousand core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) of different flavors have been discovered so far. However, identifying their progenitors has remained an outstanding open question in astrophysics. Studies of SN host galaxies have proven to be …

The Palomar Transient Factory Core-Collapse Supernova Host-Galaxy Sample. I. Host-Galaxy Distribution Functions and Environment-Dependence of CCSNe

Astro2020 Science White Paper: Are Supernovae the Dust Producer in the Early Universe?

Whether supernovae are a significant source of dust has been a long- standing debate. The large quantities of dust observed in high- redshift galaxies raise a fundamental question as to the origin of dust in the Universe since stars cannot have …

Mapping the Interstellar Reddening and Extinction toward Baadetextquoterights Window Using Minimum Light Colors of ab-type RR Lyrae Stars: Revelations from the De-reddened Color-Magnitude Diagrams

We have obtained repeated images of six fields toward the Galactic bulge in five passbands (u, g, r, i, z) with the DECam imager on the Blanco 4 m telescope at CTIO. From more than 1.6 billion individual photometric measurements in the field centered …