Finally found some time to work on the tables and the text of the paper that I need to send back to the journal after responding to the referee's comments. I did not finish, but updated the numbers in the table and added some more text on the abundances. Need another day to finalize the text and new figures. I made the new figures a couple weeks ago, but did not generate the final plots for the paper.
Marianne asked for a copy of my old review of accretion disks models. I sent her a pdf file, but need to post it on astro-ph finally. Some people are still using it which is great.
Quasar Tea was interesting today. Andy presented his results on silicon absorption in Compton thick Sy2 nearby galaxies. In his carefully selected sample of 20 sources the silicon absorption seems to be related to the dust in the host galaxy, not the torus. High optical depths of the silicon line are seen mainly in the disturbed/merger type galaxies which do show a lot of optical dust features in the images.
Bozena arrived this afternoon. We'll work on quasars variability next week.
Jan. 26, 2012
Today was the deadline for MERLIN proposals and yesterday I spent time working on the one with Magda. We asked for 4 hours to observed one of our CSS radio sources that is in the core of a bright X-ray cluster. We discovered the cluster in our Chandra observations in Dec.2011. It is exciting, because the compact radio sources are rare in clusters, and this is only the second one known. However, we do not know whether the source is really compact and does not have some large scale radio structure which is invisible in the current radio data. The new data should provide us with a better view and also give spectral information for the structure. Hope we get this approved!
I also went to the morning meeting and talked about Sherpa things. We need to improve the calculations of flux and flux errors. Of course things are working o.k. but the user interface is confusing. Need to spend some time on running the code and figuring out what do we really want here.
Also, yesterday Tom finally started looking back at the background model. We may finalize the model for contrib pages, but it needs testing and documentation, which will take a day*pi.
Meeting with Malgosia and talked about the sample of obscured AGN observed in hard X-rays. Our radio galaxy shows very low scattering fraction indicating the small opening angle of the obscuring "torus". There are several sources similar to ours in the sample. We do need to spend some time on learning about this sample and possibly get better data. It is interesting to think about the Sy2 torus being physically different than Sy1. Sy2 apparently do not show any dependence on the viewing angle and this would indicate departures from the unification model. Interesting!
Giulia selected two targets for the initial analysis of the young radio sources. First she looked at the galaxy but it was a bit confusing for this first step. We decided it is better to start with two quasars, so we know that they could be beamed and detectable by Fermi. Curious to see the results.
I have only a little time to finalize the abundance tables for the paper. All the calculations are done with the code, and the first step in creating a latex table is done in Python, but then the final tweeks to the latex table require manual work which is long. But the table is done. The main result shows the high abundances in the central regions and low everywhere else, which is typical to an elliptical galaxy.
Decided about the big project. We have to study the full sample and start with the optical properties of the sources before selection for Chandra observations. Sent email to the group.
I also went to the morning meeting and talked about Sherpa things. We need to improve the calculations of flux and flux errors. Of course things are working o.k. but the user interface is confusing. Need to spend some time on running the code and figuring out what do we really want here.
Also, yesterday Tom finally started looking back at the background model. We may finalize the model for contrib pages, but it needs testing and documentation, which will take a day*pi.
Meeting with Malgosia and talked about the sample of obscured AGN observed in hard X-rays. Our radio galaxy shows very low scattering fraction indicating the small opening angle of the obscuring "torus". There are several sources similar to ours in the sample. We do need to spend some time on learning about this sample and possibly get better data. It is interesting to think about the Sy2 torus being physically different than Sy1. Sy2 apparently do not show any dependence on the viewing angle and this would indicate departures from the unification model. Interesting!
Giulia selected two targets for the initial analysis of the young radio sources. First she looked at the galaxy but it was a bit confusing for this first step. We decided it is better to start with two quasars, so we know that they could be beamed and detectable by Fermi. Curious to see the results.
I have only a little time to finalize the abundance tables for the paper. All the calculations are done with the code, and the first step in creating a latex table is done in Python, but then the final tweeks to the latex table require manual work which is long. But the table is done. The main result shows the high abundances in the central regions and low everywhere else, which is typical to an elliptical galaxy.
Decided about the big project. We have to study the full sample and start with the optical properties of the sources before selection for Chandra observations. Sent email to the group.
Jan.24, 2012
We had astrostatistics meeting today. The first meeting after the winter break. Vika described the problem we plan to work on this semester. It is a detection of a break in the spectrum with upper limits. Alex sent a list of papers to consider for the stats method. Most importantly Xiao-Li said that this is an interesting statistics problem and worth considering. Vika will do some reading and I need to start looking at the data.
Exciting!
I also decided to rerun all the fits and update the table in the paper to include abundance information.
Runs not take too much time. I just needed to update the scripts.
Exciting!
I also decided to rerun all the fits and update the table in the paper to include abundance information.
Runs not take too much time. I just needed to update the scripts.
Jan. 23, 2012
Had a meeting with a potential summer student and discussed projects related to Chandra.
March 15, the Chandra proposal deadline is getting closer. I decided to go ahead and submit a notice of intent for the X-ray Very Large project on jets. A final decision on the observational strategy is going to be tough, but the initial plan is to engage the team in the conversation next week. This week is devoted to the EVLA proposal and John is leading it.
Malgosia is working on a final draft of the paper describing the X-ray properties of the nucleus of our radio galaxy. The analysis are done! The issues related to IR emission and dusty torus we have been discussing over the last few weeks are still unresolved. We need more IR data from the nucleus to learn more on this, so the current paper is going to be focused on the X-ray properties. The Chandra results are new, showing some details of the absorbed AGN with surprising X-ray luminosity given the strong, extended radio structure.
Jan. 22, 2012 - Research Notes
In old days researchers recorded their work in notebooks, diaries or journals. Now we have computers and some of us keep records on hard drives or internet blogs. The modern way...
I am entering the new era and plan to record my research days here in this blog.
Not much happened today, because it is Sunday, but I still think about issues of metal abundances in hot medium of the radio galaxy I observed with Chandra. Most of the ISM in this galaxy shows extreme, close to zero values and only the central regions have abundances close to Solar or even higher than the Solar. Yesterday I rerun fitting code and got the final numbers for the paper.
Last week was the Fermi proposal deadline. On Friday Giulia finished and submitted the proposal for a small sample of quasars to study their gamma-ray properties and SEDs.
I am entering the new era and plan to record my research days here in this blog.
Not much happened today, because it is Sunday, but I still think about issues of metal abundances in hot medium of the radio galaxy I observed with Chandra. Most of the ISM in this galaxy shows extreme, close to zero values and only the central regions have abundances close to Solar or even higher than the Solar. Yesterday I rerun fitting code and got the final numbers for the paper.
Last week was the Fermi proposal deadline. On Friday Giulia finished and submitted the proposal for a small sample of quasars to study their gamma-ray properties and SEDs.
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