scholarly journals Proper Motions with respect to Galaxies (Invited Paper)

1974 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 193-200
Author(s):  
A. N. Deutsch ◽  
A. R. Klemola

At Lick the second phase of the proper motion program is in progress. In addition to generally selected stars, as was done for the first phase, so far over 30000 stars of special types of astro-physical interest and about 29000 AGK3 stars have been selected for measurement.In accordance with the Pulkovo program, second-epoch photography with galaxies is being continued at Pulkovo, Moscow and Tashkent, and proper motions with reference to galaxies are derived.Analyses of proper motions at Pulkovo and Lick show agreement in some instances and disagreement in others. The same applies to comparisons with fundamental catalogues. The analyses suffer to some extent from absence of proper motions in the zone of avoidance and in the southern part of the sky.In the southern hemisphere, first-epoch photography of 164 fields with galaxies has been completed using the Maksutov double-meniscus telescope at Cerro El Roble in Chile, and a complete coverage of the sky has been started with the same telescope; this work is being done jointly by the Soviet and Chilean astronomers. On the Yale-Columbia southern program, the first-epoch photography is nearly completed with the double astrograph at Leoncito in Argentina. There are plans at Lohrmann Institute, Dresden, to take photographs with the 2-m Schmidt telescope at Tautenburg, thus providing first-epoch plates for proper motions with reference to galaxies.

1995 ◽  
Vol 148 ◽  
pp. 267-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Schilbach ◽  
R.-D. Scholz ◽  
S. Hirte

AbstractThe combination of Tautenburg plates and automatic measuring machines provides a powerful tool to obtain photometry and proper motions of a great number of stars for statistical investigations of our Galaxy. Photographic photometry with an accuracy of about 0.07 mag can be obtained provided two plates of the same colour and a sufficient number of photometric standards are available. With two plate pairs and a 20 years baseline, a proper motion accuracy better than 4 mas/year can be achieved for stars over a wide range of magnitudes. Outside the Galactic plane proper motions are determined with respect to hundreds of background galaxies.


1991 ◽  
Vol 148 ◽  
pp. 491-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
H.-J. Tucholke ◽  
M. Hiesgen

Currently, we are measuring the absolute proper motions of the Magellanic Clouds relative to background galaxies, using plates taken with the ESO Schmidt Telescope. In spite of the small epoch difference of about 15 years, an accuracy of 0.5-1.0 milliarcsecs (mas) may be achieved using large numbers of stars and galaxies. Measurement and reduction procedures are presented; a preliminary solution for the absolute proper motion of the LMC from the measurements of three plates gives a result similar to the independent study of Jones et al. (1989).


1970 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 26-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. E. La Bonte

The Automated Proper Motion Survey (APMS) has three broad goals-accuracy, completeness, and efficiency in the discovery and measurement of stellar proper motions on pairs of red-sensitive photographic star plates taken with the forty-eight inch Schmidt telescope. The specific range of motions sought is from 0.1 to 2.5 seconds-of-arc per year. The lower limit of 0.1 arc sec/year is consistent with the inherent uncertainties in the photographic emulsion and the typical epoch difference between plate exposures. At the opposite end of the scale, extension of the search radius beyond that corresponding to 2.5 arc sec/year would result in a prohibitively large number of spurious matches and a significant increase in processing time while yielding extremely few (though individually interesting) additional stellar motions. The specific range of stellar magnitudes sought is from 12 to 19 red. Significant motions for stars brighter than the limit mred = 12 are already fairly well documented and the corresponding bright Schmidt images begin to show extensive contamination from diffraction spikes, “blazes” radially away from the plate center, and photographic “bloom”. At the other limit, although images of stars fainter than mred = 19 are visually discernible on the plates (the plate limit is typically mred= 20), inspection of the faintest images reveals that they are amorphous and often quite asymmetric clusters of photographic grain. Thus, both the motion limits and the magnitude limits for the survey have been selected to cover the range of reliable and largely unexplored data on the plate material. The implementation of APMS, then, is tailored to these goals and ranges.


1970 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 131-145
Author(s):  
C. A. Murray ◽  
S. V. M. Clube

With the imminent completion of AGK3 in the northern hemisphere, and the prospect of results from the SRS programme in the southern hemisphere becoming available within the next few years, we may regard the problem of the establishment of a fundamental reference frame for proper motions down to about mpg = 11 as, in principle, solved. This reference frame, through the large number of stars involved, will be readily accessible to photographic observers, with carte-du-ciel type, and even longer focus telescopes, for the reduction of relative proper motions to an absolute system.


1988 ◽  
Vol 133 ◽  
pp. 451-454
Author(s):  
E. Schilbach

The programme for the determination of proper motions with reference to galaxies for 6000 stars on 17 fields near the main meridional section of the Galaxy is presented. For each field there are 2 or 3 first-epoch plates taken with the Tautenburg Schmidt-telescope before 1970. In preliminary investigations the mean error of an individual proper motion was found to be per century both for bright (8m–12m) and for faint (16m–18m) stars.


2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (S248) ◽  
pp. 303-309
Author(s):  
T. M. Girard

AbstractAn overview of currently available, large-area, proper-motion catalogs is presented. These include the well-known catalogs based on historical Schmidt-telescope surveys as well as other projects that make use of observational material the primary purpose of which, from inception, was the determination of proper motions. The various catalogs are characterized and compared, with an emphasis on their limitations and their appropriateness for various astrophysical uses.In addition to allowing for the maintenance of a practical celestial reference system, absolute proper-motion surveys provide the raw material from which a better understanding of our Galaxy's structure and kinematics can be built. Several examples will be cited in which large proper-motion surveys are used to probe and describe the distinct stellar components that comprise our Milky Way Galaxy.


1998 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 551-551
Author(s):  
N. Zacharias ◽  
M.I. Zacharias ◽  
C. de Vegt ◽  
C.A. Murray

The Second Cape Photographic Catalog (CPC2) contains 276,131 stars covering the entire Southern Hemisphere in a 4-fold overlap pattern. Its mean epoch is 1968, which makes it a key catalog for proper motions. A new reduction of the 5687 plates using on average 40 Hipparcos stars per plate has resulted in a vastly improved catalog with a positional accuracy of about 40 mas (median value) per coordinate, which comes very close to the measuring precision. In particular, for the first time systematic errors depending on magnitude and color can be solved unambiguously and have been removed from the catalog. In combination with the Tycho Catalogue (mean epoch 1991.25) and the upcoming U.S. Naval Observatory CCD Astrograph Catalog (UCAC) project proper motions better than 2 mas/yr can be obtained. This will lead to a vastly improved reference star catalog in the Southern Hemisphere for the final Astrographic Catalogue (AC) reductions, which will then provide propermotions for millions of stars when combined with new epoch data. These data then will allow an uncompromised reduction of the southern Schmidt surveys on the International Celestial Reference System (ICRS).


2018 ◽  
Vol 619 ◽  
pp. A78 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. J. Lennon ◽  
C. J. Evans ◽  
R. P. van der Marel ◽  
J. Anderson ◽  
I. Platais ◽  
...  

A previous spectroscopic study identified the very massive O2 III star VFTS 16 in the Tarantula Nebula as a runaway star based on its peculiar line-of-sight velocity. We use the Gaia DR2 catalog to measure the relative proper motion of VFTS 16 and nearby bright stars to test if this star might have been ejected from the central cluster, R136, via dynamical ejection. We find that the position angle and magnitude of the relative proper motion (0.338±0.046 mas yr−1, or approximately 80±11 km s−1) of VFTS 16 are consistent with ejection from R136 approximately 1.5±0.2 Myr ago, very soon after the cluster was formed. There is some tension with the presumed age of VFTS 16 that, from published stellar parameters, cannot be greater than 0.9+0.3−0.2 Myr. Older ages for this star would appear to be prohibited due to the absence of He I lines in its optical spectrum, since this sets a firm lower limit on its effective temperature. The dynamical constraints may imply an unusual evolutionary history for this object, perhaps indicating it is a merger product. Gaia DR2 also confirms that another very massive star in the Tarantula Nebula, VFTS 72 (alias BI 253; O2 III-V(n)((f*)), is also a runaway on the basis of its proper motion as measured by Gaia. While its tangential proper motion (0.392±0.062 mas yr−1 or 93±15 km s−1) would be consistent with dynamical ejection from R136 approximately 1 Myr ago, its position angle is discrepant with this direction at the 2σ level. From their Gaia DR2 proper motions we conclude that the two ∼100 M⊙ O2 stars, VFTS 16 and VFTS 72, are fast runaway stars, with space velocities of around 100 km s−1 relative to R136 and the local massive star population. The dynamics of VFTS 16 are consistent with it having been ejected from R136, and this star therefore sets a robust lower limit on the age of the central cluster of ∼1.3 Myr.


2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (S245) ◽  
pp. 351-354
Author(s):  
Katherine Vieira ◽  
Dana Cassetti-Dinescu ◽  
René A. Méndez ◽  
R. Michael Rich ◽  
Terrence M. Girard ◽  
...  

AbstractA proper motion study of a field of 20′ × 20′ inside Plaut's low extinction window (l,b)=(0o, −8o), has been completed. Relative proper motions and photographicBVphotometry have been derived for ~ 21,000 stars reaching toV~ 20.5 mag, based on the astrometric reduction of 43 photographic plates, spanning over 21 years of epoch difference. Proper motion errors are typically 1 mas yr−1. Cross-referencing with the 2MASS catalog yielded a sample of ~ 8700 stars, from which predominantly disk and bulge subsamples were selected photometrically from theJHcolor-magnitude diagram. The two samples exhibited different proper-motion distributions, with the disk displaying the expected reflex solar motion. Galactic rotation was also detected for stars between ~2 and ~3 kpc from us. The bulge sample, represented by red giants, has an intrinsic proper motion dispersion of (σl, σb) = (3.39, 2.91)±(0.11, 0.09) mas yr−1, which is in good agreement with previous results. A mean distance of$6.37^{+0.87}_{-0.77}$kpc has been estimated for the bulge sample, based on the observedKmagnitude of the horizontal branch red clump. The metallicity [M/H] distribution was also obtained for a subsample of 60 bulge giants stars, based on calibrated photometric indices. The observed [M/H] shows a peak value at [M/H] ~ −0.1 with an extended metal poor tail and around 30% of the stars with supersolar metallicity. No change in proper motion dispersion was observed as a function of [M/H]. We are currently in the process of obtaining CCDUBV RIphotometry for the entire proper-motion sample of ~ 21,000 stars.


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