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1. Introduction The main goals of the collaboration chltectun for the RO computer net-
Remote obsenring (RO) from ESO- were: w o k and communication system.
Garching is by now a well-establishd The study. design and irnplementa- me implementation of a "second"
seaice providedfar the user community tian of a portable kit, including fiard- generation of RO software, based on
by Em. So far it has been concerned ware and sohare for m o t e obser- UnIx and workstations hardware. An
with instrummb located either at the vations with the ESO NlT from a important part of thls was the exten-
CAT or at the 2.2-m telescope at IA European astronomical institute. sion of the real-time database of the
Silla, operated from Garching shce The definition of the hardware ar- to a geognphidly dlstritwtd
1987. The advantages of this o b m i n g
mode include reduced travel times, the
possibility to accommodate shorter and
regular long-term monitoring observing
programmes, the possibility for students
to participate in the observation and the
facilities (people, Ilbrary and computers)
normafly available in a European as-
tronomical institute 11].
In order to create a new remote ob-
senring environment for the EMMl and
SUSl instruments on the N7Ttelescope,
a collaboratron with the Astronomical
Obsewatoryof TriHe, Italy, was started
In 1989. The Tdeste Observatory has a
k q experience In h a field of Unix-
based workstations and on distributed
mvironments.
The project was based on the
philosophy of a multi-telescope, multi-
instrument system addressed by many
usem in parallel in e ftexlbla scheduling
environment compatible with the auto-
-
mattc execution of complex observing Figure I ;ASWIMIWS and w'sitwsin the Trlesteremote obsmtngmm d n g during s Iang
pqrammes. NTT exppsum.
La SIlIa Observatory ESO IIeadquartars Astmnodd Institutes image system is uslng only one fifth of
Chile &mote Control Centw Ilmnote O k l n g Sitos I..# the available bandwidth. Thirdly, a data
Germany Eumpn channel connects the local a m net-
works of ESO-Garching and La Silta via
routers. A dedicated local area network
?sf
(LAN) has been created at €SO-Gmh-
Voice ing for remote o h w i n g . This network
uses a =patate Interface on the rovter,
while all other nodes connected to the
general IAN use another interface. Any
'\ disturbances on the general IAN are
thereby isalated from the remote ob-
serving n e m .
A dedicated room at €SO-Qmhing
MTT local has been allocated as the NIT remote
control control room. It houses the remote con-
systom trol station and care has been taken to
create an ergonomic kstallatian. The w
mote controt computer is a Unix work-
station supported by two additional X
terminals. Normally one of these X sta-
LEVEL 0 LEVEL 1 LEVEL 2 tions is allocabd to telescope control,
one to instrument control and one to
Flgum 2: Block &gram of communbtion system, quiok look a d image pmcedng using
MIDAS. A large videa monitor displaying
video images is installed above the 3(
terminals. At both ends of the cantrol
telescope/instrument pafameten' pilot project for the VLT. In particular station 1s a PC, which the user normally
database @?oat). new computer technologies, m a w does not interact wlth very often. One is
I The availability of the same software (user interface, on-line databases) and for video control and the other for re-
and features for remote obsenring operational procedures should be aeiving meteo data from the GOES
both at the first level site (ESO- tested, which are of Impattame for the satellib. Lastly a movable voice unit
Garching) and at a second level slte VLT oontml system In general and not cwrtainFng a microphone and a toud-
(user's Institute). only for remote observations. speaker implements access to the voice
While the compl&e development af ll is foreseen to repeat the second system.
the project t o k three years, the first level remota amwing run from other The N l l local controt system ts bawd
milestcne was reached with t b de- institutes in Europe, poTtlng to them the on two main computers runnlng the
vdopmmt and test of the remote ob- set-up, which has been produced as a RTE-A operating system. In addian a
sewing system of first level in Garching result:of the ESO-AOT collaborafion and UnIx wwkstatIon Is used for scientific
This sptern Is now in the final test leasing jointly a link to Garching. data acquisition. The main characteris-
phase and tbe *ration team Is being tics of the software architeaurn are a
W n d . R is foreseen to offer routine decoupllng of the conk11tasks from the
rerrrote observing from ESO-Garehlng 2. SystemArchibetwe user inkface by means of a database
on the MT with EMMWSI W i n g in
2.1 #atLevel Remote Observing and a command handler. The database
April 1993. and command handler, togather with
Meanwhile, the retevant hardware had ESO-Garchlng Is permanently Ilnked the TCPAP protocol suit, provldes the
b e n procured and several tesis took to La Silla via a 64 kbps leased satelllre software bridge between the 1-1 and
placa, whib arrangements were made link 121. During remote observing #he remote sites.
for the installation of the 64 kbps Pnk bandwidth is subdivided, using time dl- The remote control software architec-
from Garching to TrlesW. vislon multiplexing, Into three parallel ture b discussed in d d l In (31 and only
The final mllestbne was reached when channels. A voice channel Implements a s brief overvW is given here. The dad-
the second level remote obselvlng run point-to-point voice link between the buted database (Xpool), implemented
took place, from the 9th to the 1lth of night assistant at the M l and the re- according bthe d m senrer model and
June 1992, at the Astronomical Obaer- mote obsenrer at ESO-Gmhing. A vid- using TCP sockets, allows remote read
vatory of Trieste, Italy, during three eo image channel atlows the remote ob- and wrlte access. R is responsible for
nights dlocated for remote observatlm sewer to select one vldeo source (e.g. prwiding &us Information t~ the re-
with the WIT telescope. The present field acqubition, dlt viewer) for transfer mote control computer m a
nd to allow de-
article repork on the resub of this run, in slow-scan-television made. Dm to finil5on of set-up parameters from the
which proved Mat the chamn concept the fad that video Images obtalnd by remote control computer. The com-
and implemmtatIon were not lust work- the acquWtion camwas are normally mand handler, Implemented In a slm tlar
ing but already quite reliable at the pres- very slmple, conststing of only a few way, is ~ p o n s l b l efor routing com-
ent stag& The systwn was in fact USA sou^ on a black background, the mands, repties and asynchronous
for about 30 hours for dmronomical compression algorithm works very well. status and a l m messages between
obmatlons by a team of eight as- Using a bandwidth of 12 kbps the nor- processes residing on different hosts.
tronomers. mal frame repetltlon rate Is one frame These two mechanisms allow a fully In-
The aim of this project was not slmply every 3 seconds. This makes R pmlble teractive m o t e control, providing the
to build a remote obmnring environment to use the video i m w system as f e d - remote user with the same functionality
for the MT, but right from the beginning back for interactive control, 0.g. offset- available locally at La Silla.
It was conceived by E m to serve as a ting the telescope, even when the video Scintlficdata handling makes use-of
Teritative Timetabla
of CouncB SeWans
and &mmWe M d n g s
w l 2 - 1 9 WWtWb'F-
hnndnws
N o W W T I ~ - ? ~ %r~#c4mn$lt&
Mwnk-27 Qbswhh
gmesm-
-14 Cald
AU~war*plBQeR&&ng.
k
, ,, . .. .. ..
,r~tin-ura~u*rmt.rr- -&&-s2 . . ,
. , , ,
, ,
, L ..,- .. 1-
Figure 4: Example of the Pegasus User Interface for orhe control af the lnsmment (EMMI/SUS/Jand of the mlescope.
The software had to be ported from and prwlde the possibility of dedicating J. Ksrr of CFHT supported us in the
the remote control camputer in ESO (an part of the LAN to the remote observ- inltial use of the Pegasus user intetfaca.
HP-720) to the OAT HP-425. No prob- ing~ tasks in addition to the astronomi- G. A n d m i and the people from the La
lem at dl was encountered during this cal interest in participating in such an Silla operation group gave their support
procedure. A porting of Xpool package experiment. The communication equip- during installation and commissioning,
on SUN and Sylicon Graphics was also ment could be provided by ESO for the and M. Piuaro acted as the perfect
put into effect,for test purposes, In the purpose of a first test. night assistant during the three test
months preceding the final test. The joint procurement of the leased nights.
On the first night ten hours were de- link to Garching is another condition to The project has been financially
voted to preliminary tests and to identify be fulfilled, and further pdiminary day- supported, for the Italian side, by the
and fix some software bugs. From 4.00 time tests and remote test nights will be Italian Council for the Astronomical Re-
UT astronomical obsmations could be- necessary. search C.R.A.
gin and continued until 11.00 UT. The h an independent parallel activity the
second night started wM some minutes first level remote obseming system is
of delay due to some minor software now getting its final touch. The opera-
problemsandlasted till 11.00 UT.The hst tion team Is being trained and user References
night was entirely devoted to astronomi- guides are being produced. It ia planned [I] D. Baade, "Three Years' Experiencewith
cal observations. On the whole, more to start offering remote abservlng with Routine Rernote Observlng at the Euro-
than thirty hwrs were entirely devoted to EMMVSUSI to the user community In pean Southern O b ~ a t o r y "In, Pmead-
ings of Workshop on Remote Obsmlng,
astronomical observations. Eqht OAT April next year. Tucson, USA, April 1 m.
astronomers used this time to carry out 121 A. Wallander, "New Communication Link
various scientific observations. It should 5. Acknowfedgements between Garchlng and h Sllla", in 7he
bestressedthat whileanobservationwas Messenger No. 60, June 1990.
going on, the astronomers were able in Many people have participated in the [3J A. WalIander, 'Remote Control of the
remote MIDAS sessions to have a quick development of the described system. ESO New Technology Telescope", In Pto-
look at the previouslyacquired images in The ITIT (local) control system was d ~ + ceedlngs of Wwkshop on Remote Db-
order to evaluatethevalidityof their data. veloped within the Electronics Depart- swing, Tucsan, USA, April 1992.
ment at ESO-Garching. Major contribu- I4
1 A. BJestra et al., 'Remote O w i n g Ac-
Accordingly, if necessary, the transfer of
tivities at the Waste Astronomical Obser-
the images from La SIlla to Trieste could tions to the implementation of the re- vatory: f h e E S O M Second Level Re-
then be carried out. mote control system were made by 0. mote Observing and the Galilea Tele
Gilli and J, Brynnel. scope P r o w , In Proceedings of Work-
At the Astronomical Obsemtoy of shop on Remote Obaenring, Tucson,
4. Conclusions Trieste M. Pucillo was one of the de- USA,Apdll992.
This project was successful In proving signers of the second level hardware 15l R Bstestra et al., T h e ESO/OAT Second
the feasibility and reliability of second and software architecture and partici- Level Remote Observlng Prom. Final
level remote observing already at this pated In the software developornent, Test on ESO/NTT: 9-11 June 1992",
stage. and C. Vuerli implemented most of the Technical Report OAT PubIicetlon No.
1443, June 1992.
During the three nights of the final test software utilities. The help of P. Mar- 161 M. Comln, J. Kerr, "A P r o t w for the
over 30 hours were devoted to as- cuccl and R. Smareglia is also acknow- VLT user Interface", in Proceedings of
tronomical obmations and, as can be ledged. C. Carte gave his precious Conference on Progress in Telescope
inferred by the users' comments, the support during the set-up of the second and lnstnrmentation Technology, ESO-
system proved to be very easy and flex- level observing room. Garehing, April 1982.
ible to operate, considering also that
mast of the obsems had no experi-
ence fn the use crf EMMI.
In view of the success of the experi-
ment it has been decided not to stop
here but to p m d along two lines:
A Fourth VLT Instrument Science
To study and Implement a special
hardwardsoftware system for on-
Team
line data compression technique, in At its May, 1992 meetlng the €SO Scientific and Technical Committee
order to reduce the quick-look time approved the two Ultraviolet-Visible Echells Spectrogmphs (UVESI and
(at present of the order of minutes) UVES2) for the Nasrnyth foci of the second and third VLT telescopes. The
and obtain an almost completely in- ESO staff responsible for buildlng these Instruments is now proceeding wlth
teractive environment.
To identify other interested institutes
in Europe to repeat a second level
copy (resolution-sllt width product -
the design studies of this major facillty which wilt do high-resolution spectres-
40,000) in the 300 to 1100 nm
wavelength range. At the same time an Instrument Sclence Team has been
remote observing run from there, in formed for this facility. Its members are:
order to test portability and reliability
of the present set-up. This can also B. Gustafsson (Uppsala)
be useful to test operationally the H. Hensbe~e(Brussels)
feasiblii of remote access during P. Moiaro (Trieste)
flexibh scheduling, where mow than P. Nissen (Aarhus)
one observing team can be active
during the same night from different The team wlll select its chairman at its first meeting on December 9. As is
institutes. the case for the other VLT instruments (see The Messenger 68, page 8), the
The modalities are currently under de- ISf members end myself welcome your Input on scientific matters relatingto
finition. The candidate institute should these Instruments. J. M. BECKERS,ESO
haw a network of Unix workstations,
"Remote" Science with the NTT from ltaly
PRELIMINARY SCIENTIFIC RESULTS
M. FRANCHINI, P. M O M RO, M. NONINO, F. PASIAN, M. RAMELM, G. VLADILO,
OsservatorioAstronomico, Trieste, ltaly
M. CENTURION, Institute de Astro fisica de Canarias, Tenerife, Spain
P. BONIFACIO, Scuola lnternazionale Superbre di Studi A vanzati, Trieste, ltaly
I.
Introduction CCD THX 31 156 (ESO #18) with ticular, Sz 68 belongs to a sample of f
We report here on the preliminary 1024x1024 square pixels, 19 pm In Tauri stars for which the velocity fields in
analysis of the observations carried out size. The instrument is described In the circurnstellar environment are under
with the N n telescope during the final Dekker et at. (1991). This detector has investigation. Sz 68 has shown clear
test of the "Second Level Remote Ob- been used for all the observations de- variability of the Nal D line profiles: mul-
serving Project" at the Astronomical 0b- scribed in this paper. With a slit of 1.2 tiple blue-shifted absorption compo-
sewatory of Trieste (OAT). The test took arcsec, a resolution R-25,000 is ob- nents are present, with variable intensity
place during the nights of 9, 10 and tained; this can be verified from well- and position. This might indicate the
11 June 1992. Detalls on the "remote separated lines of a thorium comparison existence of a complex circumstellar
observing" project can be found in the spectrum. Wavelength calibratlon was structure, varying with time.
article by Balestra et al. on page 1 of this performed for each order by a polyno- So, the spectrum in Figure 1 can be
issue of the Messenger. mial, fitted to 12 lines at least; the r.m.s. compared -taking Into account the dif-
A preliminary constraint to the plan- of the residuals is about 0.5 kms-'. ferent instrumental resolution - with
ning of the observations was imposed Figure 1 shows the spectrum of Sz 68 preceding obsarvations, made in I985
by the people responsible for the test, (V=10.5),in the region of the Nal D (Finkenzeller and Basri 1987), in 1989
who required frequent changes be- doublet. With an exposure of 1 hour, a (Franchini et al. 1992 a), and in 1991
tween different Instrumental configura- S/N ratio of about 200 has been (Franchini st al. 1992 b). White the actual
tions, In order to better evaluate the achieved. This object is a target of a configuration appears to be rather simi-
response of the distributed system to a more general research, concerning the lar to the ones observed in 1991 and
heavy load. Furthermore, tune-up and basic observational parameters of T 1985 (with the blue-shifted component
communication problems occurred at Tauri stars: projected rotational veloci- at about the same u , d , the same cannot
different times of the test nights requir- ties and inclination angles, spectral be said for 1989 (when the main blue-
ing elther a reshuffling of the scheduled types, luminosities, effective tempera- shifted component - relative to the star
observations or the loss of some cali- tures, element abundances, etc. In par- - was at more than -90 km s-'). Clearly
brations and/or astronomical targets. In
particular, several exposures which
were planned durlng the dark time at the
end of one night were postponed to
grey time of the following night.
We believe however that, during the
test nights, an acceptable compromise
was reached between the technical re-
quirements of the test Itself and the wish
of a full use of the nights for real as-
tronomical work.
All the targets pointed were selected
within research projects currently ongo-
ing at the OAT. These projects are: T
Tauri stars (MF), Lithium abundance
(PM), high velocity clouds (GV, MC),
Planetary Nebulae (FP, PB), Seyfert
galaxies (MN), distant clusters of galax-
ies (MN, MR), gravitational lenses (MN,
MR). The following is a brief description
of the research projects and an assess-
ment of the quality of the data obtained.
2. The Observations
2.1 Nal D Variability in the T Tauri Star
Sz 68
We have performed echelle spectros-
copy of a T Tauri Star (Sz 68) with the lambda (angstroms 1
NlT using the EMMl spectrograph in the Flgure 1 : NormaIized Nal D doublet of T Tauri star Sz 68,Radial docities (in km s-7 of blue-
REMD mode: grating #lo, grism #5, shiited absorptions are relative to the interstellar component which Is clearly recognizable in
decker 5 arcsec. The detector was a the St9/1# pr0fiI~s.
the time intervals between these obser-
vations are too wide to allow a complete
reconstruction of the evolution of a giv-
en absorption component. However,
more detailed analysis of the present
data, together with those of 1991, may
provide a quantitative Interpretation of
this variability, In terms of mass ejection
events andlor sudden changes in the
physical properties of the circumstellar
material.
radio (VLA and VLBI observations; Rao rather than ldentlfy and/or separate the leased by an AGN could trigger star
and Subrahmanyan 1988, Subrahma- possible optical components of the formation in the surrounding galaxy.
nyan at al. 1890, Jauncey et al. 1991). radio source. In fact, as far as angular This interrelation may reflect in pecullar
The separation of the two radio lobes is resalution is concerned, our obsewa- morphologies and/or colours in regions
1 arcsec. The shape and spectra of the tions cannot compete with those of surrounding the nucleus. With this prob-
radio 'lobes' (ME and SW) suggest that Djorgovsky et al. from the N I l with lem in mind we started a programme to
PKS 1830-21 1 is a strong Einstein Ring SUSI (0.1 3 arcsec/pixel) and a seeing of observe both in the infrared and optical
(Rao and Subrahmanyan 1988, Sub- 0.75 arcsec. However, their nigM was bands galaxies hosting AGN. Pitot ob-
rahmanyan et al. 7990, Jauncey et al. not photometric and magnitudes were servations were conducted during this
1991). This kind of gravitational lenses only roughly estimated. test: targets am selected from the CfA
are particularly interesting since they We have taken 5 frames In the 1 band llst (Huchra et al.), 5 galaxies were
can be very powerful cosmological centred on the position of the radio selected on the basis of observing time
tools, allowing, in principle, the determi- source PKS 1830-211. Each frame has constraints and because we already
nation of the Hubble constant and the been exposed for 10 minutes, After the have multi-aperture photometry in J, H,
mass distribution of the lensing first three exposures we have offset the K infrared bands for these objects. Im-
galaxies. telescope 4'' (or 10 pixels) eastward. ages were taken in V and R bands with
Optical observations of PKS 1830- A preliminary analysis of the fields exposure times ranging from 120 to 420
211 have failed, so far, to reveal the shows that the PSF has a FWHM sec; the seeing was =. 1 arcsec; prelimi-
counterparts of the two radio compo- slightly smaller than 1 arcsec and that nary analysis shows that we reached at
nents (Subrahmanyan et a t 1990, Djor- we have reached I= 18.5 in each frame. least 26 mag arc* In shorter exposures.
govsky et al. 1992). Djorgovsky ei ak Unfortunately, this is not faint enough
(1992) have recently presented the for our purposes. The reason is that the
Acknowledgements
whde set of data they used in search for brightnessof the sky was too high at the
optical counterparts of the candidate time our observations took place: the The authors are grateful for the oppor-
radio ring. The optical data include CCD moon was still up, even if very tow. tunity they were given to perform scien-
Images taken with the ESO 3.6-m (BVR tific observations on the MT in the
bands) and ESO NIT (BRI bands) tele- framewok of the ESO/OAT technologi-
2.7 Seyfert Galmfes cal project on "second-level" remote
scopes and with the Palomar BOO-inch
telescope (K and Gunn 'it bands). One of the most interesting questions observing. They would like to thank h
We had planned our remote observa- in extragalactic astronomy is what trig- particular A. Balsstra, C. Corh, P. Mar-
tlons wlth SUSI, which, however, was gers the activity in the nuclei of some cucci, P. Santin, R. Smareglia and C.
not available for the test run. We de- galaxies (AGNs): 0.g. Norman et al., Vuerli of OAT, and M. Cornin and A.
cided to use EMMl in the RlLD config- Scoville et al. suggested a relationship Wallander of ESO who, through their
uration (sw section 2.5). Our primary between AGNs and starburst activity In hard work, set up at OAT a temporary
goal with EMMl was to reach a falr the sense that the starbursts are the but absolutely functional and efficient
depth and obtain good magnitudes for evolutionary precursor of AGNs; on the clone of the ESO remote observing sys-
the objects in the field of PKS 1830-211, other hand (9.g. Daly) the energy re- tem. Special thanks to S. D'Odorico,
who gave some very important sugges- D. Fabricant et al., 1991,Ap.J. 381,39. PA. Maaali el al., 1992, A&A In press.
tions on MT Instrumental set-ups and R, Fdet, A. Vidal-Madjar, C.Gry, 1985,Ap.J. S. Moehfer, U. Herber, K.S. de Eloer, 1990,
obswing p r d u r e s , and to the IA m,838. A&A 299,285.
Sllla night assistant M. Plzzaro who U. Rnkenesllw, GG.Basrl, 1987, Ap,J. 318, P. Mofaro, f 991, Mem. S.A.lt 62, 17.
played an essential role for the success 023, C.D. Morton, J.C. Blades, 1986, M.N.R.A.S.
M. Franchini et al., 1992a, A&A 2S. 525. 220,Q27.
of the observing run. M. Franchinl et al., 1992b, in preparation. R. Nescl el al., A&A 252,13.
8. Oarill1et al., 1992, RJ. in press. C. Norman, N. Scovflle, $988,ApJ, 33a, 724.
References I. Gloia et al., 1990, ApJ-S. 72.567, A.P. Rao, R. Subrahmanyan, 1988, M.N. 231,
A Batestra et al. l a , OAT Publ. No. 1443. P. Henry et al., 1992,4 . J . 356, U5. 229.
R. W o n et al., 1990, A I A 237, 79. J. Huehra, R. Burg, &.JJ 1992 393,90. S,G. Ryan, J.E Norris, M.S. w,1991,
Ciardullo et d., 1991,Ap.J. 388,487. Jamby et al., 1990,4 . J . 368,332. AJ. lOa, 303.
R. Daly, 1940, Ap.J. 356,416. D. Jauncey et al., 1991, lVatwe 952,132. N. Scovllle, C.Norman, ?98!3, &J. 332,163.
H. Dekker et al., 1491, ESO Operating Manu- F.P. Keenm et al., 1988, A I A 192,295. J.T. Stocke et al., 1991,ApJ.S. W , 813.
al No. 14. B. Lelbundgut et d., 1%I, M.J. 971, L23. R. Subahmanyanet al., 1990, M.N. 240,283.
S. Djorgovsky et al., 1942, preptint. M. Lemoine et at., 1992, The Messenger67, B.P. Wakker, H. van Woepden, l W l , A I A
A.E. Evrard, 1990,Ap.J. 343% 349. 40. 260,503.
During the three nights devoted to the which set very important constraints on the feature is R = 21.5 and its surface
test of the 'second level remote observ- the model itself. brightness is 2 5 YO of the sky). The
ing' we observed the cbster EMSS We moreover note that at least one spectrosccrpy of the arc would reveal
2137-23with MTT and EMMI. This clus- substructure of the main arc is probably the nature of the lensed object, sorne-
ter is a rather bright EMSS source and bright enough to be observed spectres- thing that has been possible only in four
has a redshift z = 0.32. These charac- copicaly (the integrated magnitude of cases so far.
teristics make EMSS2137-23 a perfect
candidate for the study of the relation
between the gas and the galaxian com-
ponents of a non-local cluster. We
wanted to obtain photometry for the
galaxies of the clusters in order to build
a magnitude limited sample. Details of
the observations are found in the article
by Franchini et al. in this issue.
The choice of the cluster was very
fortunate, since our images also re-
'vealed a giant gravitational arc and sev-
eral arclets su&unding the cD galaxy of
the cluster. However, after our observa-
tions had taken place we learned that
this arc had already been discovered by
Fort et al. in 1991, also with the N3T.
(Seealso the artlcle by G. Soucail in this
issue of the Messenger.) Our images of
the arc are of gaod quality (see the
figure),
I
Because of our original project on this
cluster we also have redshifts for about
50 galaxies in the field (the redshifts are
available to us thanks to a collaboration
with Dan Fabricant at the Center for
Astrophysics). The fact that the arc is in
a cluster for which we have such a com-
plete set of optical and X-ray informa-
tion makes the study of this arc particu-
larly interesting for the determination of
the mass distribution within the cluster
This image s h ws ~ the compact cluster of galaxies EMSS2137-23and the 15 arcsec long "giant
and for the verification of the model of
arc': just rwrlh of the centre of the cluster. as obtained in June 1992 wlh the ESO 3.5-m New
the lens. Before building the model, in Technology Telescope (m and the lESO Multi-Mode Instrument ( M I ) during remote
eollabomtion with Emilio Falco (CfA),
deeper images will be needed in order
to confirm the several candidate arclets,
-
observations from the Trieste Astronomical Observatory. The frame is a combination of 5
exposum in V, Rand I, with a tot81eexposure time of 95 min. The w i n g was 1.0ammond.
1 pixel=0.44 amsecond. The rield measures 7 D x 9 arcsee; north is up and east is to the left.
The Squeeze is on the La Silla Obsewatory
H. VAN DER LAAN, Director Getqeral, ESO
Visiting ta Silla in early August, it grammes running now. While I have re- have maintained a high service quality
struck me again how our observatory distributed resources for La Silla some- while coping with the greatly augmented
and its staff are squeezed between two what over the several departments h quantity of telescopeinstrument mode
developments in ESO, developments the Obsenratory, the total manpower re- combinations. It b an impressive in-
which by their nature tend to continue sources have actually decreased slightly crease in productivity which is now ap-
and which must be adjusted soon If we in the last five years. Yet our teams there proaching its limits.
are to maintain a healthy working cli-
mate on l a Slla. In a talk to all staff on
the mountain I raised these and some
other issues. The relevant developments
are: (1)the increase in both quantity and
technical complexity of the hard- and
software in the domes,and (2)the slow
but steady reduction of resources in
favour of the VLT Obsenratory now
under construction. Actually thew is a
third tendency which is laudable but
makes matters mow difficult still, name-
ly the increasing ambition of our users
community,manifest in increasing pro-
posal pressure and more subtly in in-
creased expectations if not demands of
services to be provided by ESO/Chite I
staff. CCD ILR'I
The circumstances can be partly in- Cdss Otrert Imagery CCO tcoated GECl 1
ferred from the two accompanying ta- Cass B & C Spectr~graph
btes, which give the menus offered to
visiting astronomers just five years
apart. They are from the Announce-
Polarrmeter
Infrared Photometer
Bolometer
In Sb Detector 1
Rettcon
ments for Period 41 and Period 51 re-
spectively, issued in August five years Cass 8 & C Specfrograph - CCD (coated GECl
ago and this year. Close inspection of Ll.!jm 1 Erheler Spectrograph
these two menus reveals how much a Coude' Spectrograph CCD IlR-I 1
major observatory changes in just five Camera 11 itamera //I
years, over and above the addition of CES Short Camera
the WIT with all its sophbtication and CES long Camera
CfD IHR'I I
corresponding technical fragility. Nearly Scanner
all detectors on the major telescopes
have been renewed, thanks to industrial
developments and a large effort by the
nI
Infrared Photometer Bolometer I
Instrumentation Groups In Garching to Sjnq/e Channel in ~b Detector 1
stay on top of this evolution. The readi-
ness maintenance for all these detectors
on la Silla Is no small task. The power PM RCA 31031
and versatility of EFOSC on the 3.6-m
have spawned the second EFOSC now
PM EM/ 9789 QB
on the 2.2-m telescope as wdl as EMMl P M &HI 96S8
on the NTT and DEFOSC, ready next
year for the 1.54-m Danish telescope. 61cm I 1 Sinple Channel Photometer
EMMl is a veritable suite of instruments BOCHUM _I
all rolled into one compact multi-mode CCD Camera
device. Infrared capacities on La Silla Photography 1 I
have dramatically improved with the
renovated IRSPEC on the MT and LR -Low Resoluhon RCA
the tRAC2 imager on the 2.2-m. Next SOcm ] uvby HO Photometer 11 5 12 .I20 prxds jU-3Or
year the 10-micron spectrophotornster DANlSH
TlMMl adds another infrared state-of-
the-art capability to the 3.6-m. '~chrnidtl . with ~rtsrn
For Perlods 39 and 40 (1 April 1987 - GPO I 1 ~ t t h o u tPrism 1
31 March 1988) there were 670 propos-
als while for Periods 49 and 50 (1 April
1992 - 31 March 1993) there were 880.
with in addition two dozen Key Pro- Table I.T8Ieswpes and Available Auxiliary Equipment l p W 4 1. 1 April- I October 1W).
ESO Headquarter resources are now In the Scientific-Technical Committee "caught between a rock and a hard
predominantly directed towards the de- a discussion is to take place on the p l a c l and if we do nat make choices
sign and construction of the VLT Obser- options for containing the La Slla staff's then the compromisesthat are the worst
vatory. Readers of the Messenger are workload. It is clear that quality and choice of all will arise by default. And so
well aware of the new observatory's reliability cannot be compromised. In- the squeeze on La Silla will be diverted,
scope and the multiplicity of its tech- stead, the menu of what is offered in any to a squeeze on the STC and subse-
nological systems. They are unpre- one period must be simplified. Instru- quently on Council, the next Executive
cedented In the hlstoty of ground-based ment changes, with the attendant align- and ultimately on ESO's users. All for
astronomy. They are also a daunting ment, stabilization and calibration tasks, the sake of the exciting prospects cre-
challenge for the whole of ESO and our are the prime source of technical work- ated on C e m Paranal. I am sure they
partnm, Industrial and institutional. I loads. I have asked the heads of the are worth it1
have had no choice but to divert to the Technical Research Support and of the
VLT all the resources that could In my Astronomy Support Departments to
view be possibly spared In the Science preparea paper for the November meet-
Division and on La Silla We have now ing of the STC. We astronomers are
reached the stage where users have to notoriously incapable of deciding what
be confronted with resource limits, we do not really need; as a community
where the present opportunities on La
Silla wlll be cwtailed for the sake of
we usually behave like the character in
the popsong who asserts that "1 want it
New ESO Scientific
futum opportunities on Paranal. all and 1 want it now". But ESO is Preprints
-
(June August 1992)
1 1-a
1*52m
Cars. B&C Spectrograph
1. Introduction tectors in spectroscopic and photomet- procedure (choice of sky, centring) than
The study of double stars, apart from ric techniques. in #e case of slngle Jars may be desir-
long being recognized as a basic key to The importance of studies of visual able to obtain high-quality data.
the understanding of star formation and double stars lies not only in the tradl- -
To the extreme other end of the range
evolution, actually deserves particular tional determination of stellar masses in In separation, the interest for the very
attention for many additional reasons: orbital pairs - however fundamental close binary systems (visually non-
(1) the ratio of known double to slngle -
these may be but also in the determi- separable) arose during the last decade
stars Is continuously upgraded and the nation of the characteristics and the fre- because of the physically interesting
rate of detection is steadily increasing, quency of double stars in different stel- underlying mass transfer problem. In
bh from ground-based and space ob- lar populations and evolutionary stages. these cases, global photometty Is per-
servations; The distributions of the characteristics formed.
(2) space obsewations (Hlpparcos, typical of double stars such as periods, -
The technbal difficulties of observing
HST) significantly improve the quality eccentricities, mass ratios, relative two images in close proximity to one
and the Importance of stellar samples. ratios of double and multiple star sys- another are especially pronounced in
They permit to better take into account tems are actually not sufliciently well carrying out conventional photoelectric
some of the former selection effects as known to provide valuable constraints photometry for the remaining class of
they reveal a lot of new double stars, on the different star fmation double stars with separations in the In-
especially among the close visual pairs; scenarios. termediate range. This class of objects
(3) the high-quality astrometric (and In order to acquire this knowledge, has therefore largely been neglected in
partly photometric) data that will be the astrophysical information available past photometric programmes. When
made available for a large number of from magnitudes, colourg, specrral available, global photometry in oombi-
double stars by the space results should types and velocities is fundamentally nation with visual or photographic es-
be matched accordingly wlth accurate needed. The usefulness of photometry timates of the magnitude differences are
and homogeneous complementary as- of visual binaries is especially obvious in not mciently precise to match the ac-
trophysical Information such as colour applications concerning, for example, tual requirements and the accuracy
indlces and spectral types. luminosity calibrations, the mass- achieved in other techniques.
(4) Such accurate ground-based In- luminosity relationship, mass-ratio de- With the introduction of CCO detec-
formation for each of the components of termination from differential mag- tors on photometric telescopes. it now
close visual double stars (angular ssp- nitudes, age and evolution detemlina- also appears feaslble to obtain accurate
aratlons less than some h n arcseconds) tlon. But the type and the accuracy of photometric data for each of the com-
is almost nonexistent on a large scale - the photometric Information depend ponents of close visual double stars
e.g. the astromhc "Catalogue des very strongly on the separation of the with angular separations between 1 and
Composantes d'Etoiles Doubles et MJ- binary components: 12".
tiples" (CCOM; Dornmanget, 1989) con- - Wide visual double stars (with sep-
tains over 65,000 systems but fewer arations larger than 12") present no
2 The Scientific Justification
than 10 % have accurate and reliable difficulty to conventional photoelectric
photometry -, but is recently made pos- photometry. Individual data are easily A comprehensive catalogue of phys-
sible with the breakthrough of CCD de- secured, even though a more careful ical pairs - from the very close to the
Double stars - South data on all the components of a double formation, evolution and structure of the
or muItlple system. A programme nf Waxy. Indeed, ground-based and
systematic and homogeneous acquisf- space obwations reveal that at least
- tion of precise cdour indices for several half of the stars bbng to double and
thousands of components of double multiple systems but w ent theories
and multiple systems has k n defined still cannot explain the formation of such
In both hemispheres, with the foilowing a large number of systems.
priormas:
(1) to supplement the Hippmos mag-
nitudes by aslmphysically significant 3. The Obsewatlonal Programme
- colwr indlces providing the additional The sdecfhn of the prNramme stars
- physical p m e t e r s such as tempera- Qblak and Lampens, 1992) was W e
ture and gravity: amongst I1,434 double systems, 1960
(2) to complete the photometric infor- trlpte systems, 538 quadruple systems
mation for the components not Included and 237 multiple systems from Annex 1
D in the Input Catalogue. fhts Is important of the Hlpparcos Input Catalogue, con-
1 3 5 7 9 1 1 1 3 1 5
since accllrafe miormetric data for the taming objects to a distance of $00 pc
Angular separation (")
wider pairs may indicate whether or not (Turon et al,, 1992).
Figure 1: DisMbulb of the angular sqwa- the components are optical. Our princi- In v l w ofrepeated photometric cam-
t h s ~ f h e ~ s o f f h e d o u W pal e scientific objective is to provide the paigns distributed over both hemC
s t a r s f o r M e S W t h e m ~ C ~ + l misslng
~. photometric data needed to spheres the ohwational programmb
supptement the high quality end exten- m i s t s of a northm (declination of the
sive astrometric curd photometric data primary component 3 -1 0) and a swth-
on known and newly detected dwble em sample (8 A 5 + 10). fhe omlap-
very wkk- ones - with a maximum stars in order to b able to adequately ping Zone in declination -10 c B A I
number of sstromtric, spct~osmpic study the medmlgms of formation wd + 4 0 b only o m observed according to
and photometric good-qualtty data evolution of double and multiple star Mslbilii.
would be a highly valuablsastrPphysical systems. S l m both classfcat photometry and
tool bmause R woukl contain several Such a Iess-biasd survey is urgently CCO are cansidered, the selection fur-
clues comemlng the mode of star for- needed to improve current theuries on ther included splitting according to
mation and oonsequentty also the struc-
ture and the evolution of ow galaxy.
The wm€mction05 such a basic sam-
ple of double stars is now within reach,
thanks to the ground-based technologi-
cal progress as well as to the huge
preparationalwork and flne resuhs from
the Hippama space rnissbn. On one
side, its systematic all-sky sunrey has
permitted the detection of a large
numbm of new double stars, with sep-
arations small mwgh to partially fill the
known "gap" b m the spectros-
copic and the visual double stam, On
the other side, the mission will provide
accurate parallaxes and proper motions
for dl thB dwble stars included In the
Hipparcos Inpuf Catalogue (mthan
10 %), allowing to precisely define the
distance-limited samples but dso to
recognize more surely optical systems.
Morea~er,diffemnt groups have almdy
addressed the spectroscopb aspect
(ESO Key Pmgmmmes far radial velo-
citii) of the Hippmos stars, containing
at least partially the basic sample we
w M to inmtigate.
The alm of thls group, wl taborating in
the f m of a European network of
laboratodes (Oblak et at., 19321, Is to
contribute to a systmadalc and unbiased
phobmetric survey of the cornpnents
of doubIe and multiple stars.
The available photometric data, ob-
tained at ground-bawd obsewakoriesor
In space programma, ere mostly con- .. .
m e d with the global system. To ots- H5 214
tatn the relevant astrophysical informa- Rgure2: C C D ~ f o r h s t a r s H D 2 4 4 4 5 : q = 8 22,, - 1 8 . & V@)= 10.6,htheIIlItsrand
tion we need the Individual photometric HD87238:p-613, VtA)-9.4 V#-9.6, In the V#tw(OHP-m?hg-P, OeGemberISW).
angular separation and dMerential mag-
nitude. For separations large$ than 12",
individual magnitudes and colours are
easily obtained from classical photome
try on small telescopes. For separations
smalbr than 15", CCO photometry is
more Micient and adequate as long as
the difference in magnitude is smaller
than three. Astrmetric information is
obtained as a by-product. The overlap-
ping range In separation has been con-
sidered for calibration purposes be-
tween two very different techniques. A
comparison with the "Catalogue Photo-
mettique des Systhes Doubles et Mul-
tiples" (CPSDM; Oblak, 1988) allowed to
identify those systems lacking individual
photometric information.
Observations have already started In
various observatories located in both
hemispheres Calw Alto, Jungfraujach,
Observatoiw de Haute-Pmvence and La
Palma (Argue et a!., 1992) for the north-
em part and La SHla for the muthem
Plvt.
The ESO Key Programme has been
introduced to obtain photomatry (occa-
sionally astmmetty) In the Cousins VRI
bands for those selecied systems of the
southsm hemisphere lacking such pm- 215 220 225 230 235 240
cise information (Fig. 1)- The observa- Position
tions are made with the CCD detector ngun 3: CCD image of the double star HD 74 194 obsewed wNh t
Introduction
teleeope with its Cassegrain spectro- of their data, using either MlDAS or
Counting the observatories that on graph Carelec, and the other three used IHAP or both. The prediction by the or-
the territories of the ESO member coun- the high-resolution coudd spectrograph ganizers that during the School sleep
tries still operate several telescopes with Aureiie of the 1-5-m telescope. These would a? best be optional was amply
up-to-date instrumentation, requires the two instruments, too, deploy a CCD as confirmed, especially in the night before
fingers not even of one hand. Accord- the detector. the last day in the morning of which
ingly scarce are the opportunities for The director of the OHP, Phillppe V&- each group had to present its results to
students to get practical observing ex- ron, had in his welcoming address em- the other participants.
perience before thls experience is really phasized the observatory's efforts in the The diversity of scientific subjects
needed. The scope of the ESO/OHP previous weeks to save some good was quite considerable: rotation curves
Summer Schools is to help alleviating weather for the Summer School. These of spiral galaxies and triaxiality of their
this deficiency. For obvious practical efforts proved, in fact, quite successful. bulges, a search for inhomogeneities in
reasons neither La Silla and certainly not Only one group had to depend on one of the internal extinction of a planetary
Garching are suitable sites for this pur- the spare nights for a second attempt to nebula, the optical identification of
Po=. obtain a useful set of direct images. The ROSAT X-ray sources, photometry of an
One of the few remaining obser- amount of observations kept the stu- open star cluster in search for S Scuti
vatories in Europe is the Observatoire dents more than busy with the reduction stars and the detection of the spectros-
de Haute-Provence (OHP). It is named
after one of the most attractive regions
in the south of France. However, be-
tween July 15 and 25 the focus of the
attention of 18 graduate students from
nine different countries was not on tour-
ism but on the OHP where the third
ESOIOHP Summer School took place.
Their aim was to partly flll in the obser-
vational void in the standard university
curriculum.
Practical Work
The layout of the School followed the
scheme that had proved useful already
In 1988 and 1990 (cf. The Messenger
No. 53, p. 11, and No. 61, p. 8). Seven
tutors (Claude Chevalier, Denis Glllet,
Sergio Ifovaisky, and Philippe Prugniet
from the OHP, Alain Jorissen, Werner
Zeilinger and D.B. from Garching) had
designed six small observing pro-
grammes for as many groups of three
students each. The preparation started
already the flrst afternoon, only in-
terrupted by a small reception and the
subsequent dinner, because the flrst
observations were to be done the Figure 1: In the break ofHans Dekker's talk, students, ttrtws, and organizers assembled in the
shadow d a tree for a group photogmph. First row (fmm Iefl to right): Math;hs Kunz, Hans
following night.
Dekker, Nadlne Rons, Jeslls Gallego, lardanka Horissova, Christian Surace, Simon Porlegies-
Each group had one night at the Zwart; sitting: LUtz Wlsotzkl;second row: Jean-Phllippe Beaulieu, Sandro Badelli, Helmut
1-2-m telescope for direct Imaging with Jwjen, Salvatore Scuderi, Susanne Vogel, Mira V h n : third and fwrth row: Dietrich Baadw,
a CCD camera. For the spectroscopic Roland Reiss, Richard DaNler, Eugenio Carretta. Nancy Ageorges, Mikael Sahrling, Vdker
part,three groups worked at the 1.93-m Ossenkopf,Wemer Zeillnger, Alain Jorlssen, Marc Ferrarl, Karlne Bocchialini.
Rgum 2: Data red~tlmaccounted forrna$t of the wwk ddne by the students. (4&@o IloWsky shows Mathias Kunr, W m m a i n ] , and
SImS M (Yrom M to rm0 how to sweep blemishes from a CCD Image. Tutor PhilIppe Pnrgneel and st- V&
m k o p f md A d s Gallego (fnnn leff to righo seem to ham slightly d i t b w t views of the mze of kWYrtKtg tO use PWNmT.
copic signature of high-order nonradial had the opportunity to discuss subjects Relaxation
pulsation in such stars, follow-up pho- which were of particular interestto them
tometry of some recent supemovae, the in more depth. Ray Wilson also demon- An important contributor to keeping
rejection of an earlier suggestion of strated at the 1,2-m telescope what can the level of the intensity of the work as
shocks in the atmosphere of a brlght be deduced about a telescope's aberra- high as it actually was were a few social
low-amplitude fi Cephei starI a search tions From an image of its pupil. At the activities which were much enjoyed by
for technetium in red giants and candi- same telescope Roland Reiss together everyone. On Sunday, July 19th, a full-
date-AGB stars, and a new detmina- with the students measuredthe readout day ex~ursianwas organized by Philip-
tion of the velocity dispersion in an etlip- noise and gain of the CCD camera and pe Prugniel to the town of Gordes which
tical galaxy which now is in much better its controller. is rnagnlficsntly set on a steep hill and to
agreement wlth the general veloc'm dis- Unfortunately, a sudden health prob- the neatby 12th-century Abbey of
persion-absolute magnitude calibration. tern prevented Pierre tena from giving Senanque and the museum village des
However, the purpose of the School his lecture on high-resolution imaging. Bories with its curious houses made of
was not to give the students deep ln- However, on s short notice thls gap piled-up natural stone plates. The Gor-
sights into these subjects. Rather, the could be filled by the kind agreement of dian knot had to be cut only a few days
topics had been chosen as an illustra- Jean-Paul Schneider of the Atmospher- later during the Petanque (Boule) tour-
tion of how an observing programme is ic Research Group and Michel Grenon nament (also arranged by Philippe h-
to be carried out from its definitionto the of the Genwa Observatory to demon- gnU) when the book keeping of the
fornulation of the results and the esti- strate the LIDAR experiment for the de- results of matches between many teams
mate of their signlflcance. The aim was termination of the ozone contents of the of ever &anging compositions de-
that after these exercises the students upper atmosphere from the back- manded the utmost of I t s organizers.
would be in a posltion to conceive and scattered light of a laser beam and the However, there was unanimous agree-
conduct observing programmes of their CORAVEL stellar radial velocity measur- ment that a team formed by three ladies
own. ing engine, respectively. from the OHP hotel (Maison Jean Perrin)
Of course, competence in handling an beat all other teams by their outstanding
instrument and reducing the data ob- performance. This certainly is explained
Theoretical Reinforcement by all three team members being locals
talned with it can only be an intermedi-
In order to providethe students with a ate goal for an astronomer. The Inter- and thereby having grown up with thls
more systematic introduction to the pretative power of cleverly designed ob- national pastime of the south of France.
tools they were using, a number of ex- senratlonal experiments and a thought- However, a more relevant inference is
perts had been Invlted to give a one- ful analysis of their results was beautiful- the level of quality which the parti-
and-a-half hour lecture (cf. box). Most ly demonstrated by Gustav Tammann in cipants enjoy& in the services providd
speakers kindly agreed to stay for an a lively talk given in his typical, unmis- by the kitchen.
extra day or two so that the students takable style. Judging by the feedback provided by
the students, all of them got something
out of their stay at the OHP, although
tectunrrs subjects everyone differently according to per-
sonal kckgroond and inter& On be-
H. Oakker (EN): Concept and Oeslgn d Optical Instnlments half of the students, we cordially thank
J.-M. Lecantel (Nice): High-resolution Speckosoopy our numerous colleagues who in addi-
S. Ortofani (Padova): Crowded meld Photometry tion to their usual workload and in many
R. Relss (ESO): Charge-coupledDevises different ways have made essential con-
a.A. Tamrnmn [Basel): The h
lExtragalactjcand Cosmic Expanston Rdd tributions to what appears to have been
M. VBron (OHP),D. Bmde (ESO): Data Reductlonfechnlques
R. Wilson (ESO): Modem Telescope Layout
a successful summerschool in the prac-
L WboWi (Hamburg): Low-resolutbn and Slitless Spectroscow tice of astronomical observing tech-
niques.
Visiting Astronomers
-
(October 1,1W2 April 1,1993)
Observim time has now been allocated for 3.5 rn-WIT m b s r 1992: Barblei et al. (2-007-
-
Period 50 (October 1, 1992 April 1, 1993).
October 1992: De G r w w et al. (9-003-
As usual, the demand for telescope time was
49K), Capacclol~/Pe~f~rini/Plotto/Amcio/ January f sS3: ZljlstmlLoup/Waiem/
again much greatw than the time actually
Hanwn, D'Worlco et al. (2-013-49K), fiams/Omont/de Jong, Nota/Origlia/Ctam-
available.
Awpardi/ B ~ c h a r / ~ u De ~ Lappa-
~ x , plnAeitherer. Andersen M. I./Jsnch-%Pen-
The following list gives the namm of the
rent et d. (1-003-43K), Bergeronet al. (1-012- san/Jergensen, ~ l o < k / ~ e r t l n / ~ d d ~ k o o d /
visiting astronomers, by telescope and b
chronological order. The m p l & IM, with 4310, Bender et al. (1-004-43K). RuppncM/ MmetI/vd Bergh, Qennefeld/
dates, equipment and programme tittea, Is Bdler / Meurs, Dennefeld / Boller / Meurn,
November 1W: Bender et al. (1-004-43Q, Carollo/Danziger, Ferraro/Testa/Fusi Peccl/
avanable from €SO-Garchlng. Oliva/M~~orwwrd/Origlia, Ki4ufl/Rosa/Vis- Origlia / Buonanno ICorsi, WoH / Stahl I
gas, ~cIolVPeliegrlni/Piotto/Aparlcio/ SrelM/Mandd/Dckgraf/Sterkm.
3.6-m Telescope Hansen, Meylan/AnopaKli/Dubath/Le-
queux, Stwm/Della Valte, Miiey et al. (2-MI-
October 1992: De Qraauw et al. (9-003- 434, Lorenz H.IBbhm/CapaecloIi/RIchter,
49K), Mazure/Rheg et d. (1-014/005-43K), M~/famorani/Cimattr/Mlgnoli/Welli.
Vettotani et al. (1-019-47K), BergvalllR6nn-
backIMelnick, Danzlnger et al. (8-003-451C). December 1992: Damiger/Bouchet/
G o u ~ / L u c y / F r a n s s o n / M ~ l / D e l l aVal-
November 1#2: Danzigw et 4.(6-003- 1% Kudrittkl / h n o n / Husfeld / H e m I
45N, Gouiftes/l)gelman/~ugUsteijn, J a - Gabler, Clauaen/StMm/Tobin/ HIIdiih/ Hill/ March 1993: C o u r v o i s i e r / B ~ / B l e -
ner/Bachek/Stahl/WoIf, Wagner, Maochet- GlmBnez, S p i i F.ISpite M./Franpols/de cha/Orr/ValWa, van der HuchtiW~lliamsl
to/Giavallsm/Sparks, Warren/lovino/Shav- Bow, Wampler et al. (2-01045W, Paqua/ Yudlawati Anggraenl/Bouehet /F'rusti/Platta/
er/Hewett, Mellier/Fortm4athezNeaiI JAr- Davies / Bender, Tolstoy / GMths 1 Miley, Palla, Pnrstl/Henning/Whii, C w r v o l s t /
naud, BMringer et al. (1-023-49K), DBnriger / West /HeinautlMafsdenlSmette, Warren/ Bouchet/Blecha/Orr/V8R80la, Surdd et at.
B d e t / Gcwiffss / Lucy / Franmn/Maz- Theuns, MelterlWarren, Reipur!h. (2-003-43Q.
zali/Della Valle, Westwlund/kopardi/
Breysa. January 1993: Gmbel/Bwnans/Bhatia/
Mateo, Lagrang~Hsnn/Beust/BeAt/De-
December 7gQ2: Westertund/APPpadii leuit/ Gry / Ferlet / Vldal-Madjsr, Mherer /
Mysacher / Danniger / BwcM I Gouiffes / Clampin/Nota/Origlia, Siebenmorgen/Pele- 1.5- Spectrographic Telescope
Lucy/Fransson/ ManaIi/ Delia Vale, Cour- tier, Shearer / Redfern IPedersen I Cullurn, October 1992: Danaiger et al. (6-003-45K),
wisler/ BDuchd/BIecha/OPr/V&oja, Petit- WanglWamplw, Foort el al. (3-015-45K), Ramella/ Da Cd~/Fmerdl/Geller/Nmino.
jean/Carswell/Raueh, Wampler & al. (2-010- PakulVMotch.
45N,Oamlger / Bouchet / Gwifles / Lucy/ Nowmber 1992: RamellalDa Cmta/
Fransson/MaaalilDella Valb, Caulet/Kiiufl/ February 1993: Pamsce/Fenari/Roberto/ FoearUt/Getler/Nonino, Baade/Kolb/ Ku-
McCaughm, Melnick/Gopal-Krishna / Al- Clampln, Zeilingw/Meller/Stiavelli, Danzi- drWi/Sirncn, Gerbatdi et at. (-004-43tQ
tieri / Slspw, Testw / Schild I Lortet / gerlM~ueci/Willnger,DanrigetlBouch8tl Peletier/Burkert, Hwellou/Casali/ Duprar,
Nlemela. Gou~es/Lucy/Fransson/M~~~a!i/Della Val- Lango/BusmllalRrfatto/Rlchter/Tenjm.
le, Piotto/CapaOcioll/Shvelli/Zaggh, W&/
January I Q : LagagdCabrit / W h / Halnaul / Maraden / Srnette, M i r a b l / Duc, December 1992: Thblde Winterlvan den
Olofsson~Pantin, lagage / Pantin, Cour- Ancker, Favata/Sclortlno/Mlwla/Schaeh-
Chincarinl / Bunonl l Motlnari I LonghMl,
voisier / Bouchet/aecha/Orr/Valt8@a, Dan- Campusano/Clawes/Melnlck. terl EMS, De Rultedhb, ICinkel, Testor/
ri~rlBouchet/Gou~es/Lucy/Franssan/ Schild, Bues/Karl/ Pragal.
March 1083: Pothsch S. R./Mmchado/
MaParllDella Valte, Turatto et al. (4-004- January lm: Bues/Karl/Pragal, North/
4.54, Goulffes / helman / Augusteijn, Gre- Oarcia-Lario/Sahu K. C., Walsh/Meabum/
Gtagolevsklj, Saggwissl Moffat/Turbide,
nier / Qouiffss/l)gelman, MelnicklGopal- Gehrlng, Nussbaumer / MOrset / Schmid / MOW/Leitherer / Drissan/ Hubeny/ Langer /
KrishnalMlerl/Steppe, Danzingw/Bouchet/ Schmutr, DIOdwim et al. I2-013-49K), NotalRabertlSt-LwislSchmutz, Zweiglel
Goum~/~/Fransson/Maaali/Della Val- Peterson I D'Odoriw JTarenghi /Ydshf / Silk,
Kreysing / Dl& / Grewllng, Proust /
le, T d b et al. (4-004-45K), ZweIgIef Tammsnn et at. (1-022-47M, Kudrltzkl/Roth/
Men&/Giardulkr/Jacoby, Turatto at al. Maurogordato/Cappi, Cwnrolslm/Bouchet/
Diesch/Kreystng/Grewing, Werner/Dmizler/ Bleeha, Pasquinl/BellonVSchmk.
Heber/Hunger/Rauch, Hensberge et aal. (4-004-45W, Surdej et al. (2-003-4K),
(5-005-45K). DubathIMeytan.
reasonably reliable distances and Inter- Then came chargs.coupled devices a range of over two orders of mag-
stellar reddening$ for these objects. (CCOs). Suddenly it became possible to nitude. FortunateIy, VandenBerg and
Also, approximate metalticities could be carry out photometry with substantially Bell (1085) and Demarque and his col-
determined. This work culminated in the higher precision owing to the stability leagues have carried out the calcula-
publication of the book, Atlas of Galac- and the linearity of these marvelous de- tions needed to predict the location of
tic Globular Clusre# wjth Colour M g - tectors. especially at b w light levels. isclchrnnes in the tonger wavelength
nitude Diagrams (Alcalno 1973). Also, the sensitivity range extended be- bands whew there is much less metallic
The early photometry was carded out yond I micron making it possible to absorption than in the blueviolet.
arduously In several steps. First, a do- work with ease In more colours than Other advantages are r e a l i d by
zen or so stars were measured photo- and V which had been the workhorse working into the wd and infrared: an
electrically (UBV usudly) covering as wavelength bands for many years. enlarged colour baseline results which
wide a range of mlour and magnitude One of the weaknesses of the BV enhances effects seen less clearly and
as possible. Then photographs were ta- system is that metallic line absorption In less accurately with a smaller range in
ken and star images measured with an the blue and violet can be signEcant, colour, Additionally, observational un-
iris photom~tersuch as had been de- especially for metal-rich clusters. The certainties are reduced by having sever-
vetaped by Cuffey and which had been inteqmhtion of observations In the al Independently derived colour-mag-
loaned to us by ESO. On some tele- context of stellar evolution theory rests nitude diagrams of the same cluster.
scopes a thin-wedge prism could k heavily on model stellar atmospheres With the separate evaluations of the age
placed before the objective thereby pro- which must correctly predict the effects of a single cluster, one not only can
ducing a second, much fainter image of of this metallic absorption in stars where assess more reliably the accuracy of the
each star. Thus, in a boot-strap manner, the metalllcity Is aften not well known. It final result, but also can deriveages with
the relatively bright photmlectric se- should be emphasized that the metal- a higher precision than attained previ-
quence could be extended to fainter Ilcity of globular clusters. usually ously or with only two colours.
magnitudes. expressed by the parameter Ir;e/tl] has Since the mid-1980s we have had
The majority of our cluster data has
been collected with either the 3.6-m, the
2.2-m (Max-Planck), and the 1.54-m te-
OPEN CLUSTERS lescopes at ESO La Silla. Much of the
recent observing and reduction work
NGC 183 M67 has been dons expertly and efficiently
* + by our colleagues at the Institute, Frank-
lin Alvarado and Erich Wenderoth. Be-
sides being now very well known and
highly respected at La Silla, they have
- 47 Tuc often assisted others in the sopllisti-
cated data reduction techniques avail-
able to visiting astronomers.
To date we have published multi-col-
NGC 6362 our results for the galactic globular clus-
- NGC 2808 GLOBULAR CLUSTERS
ters NGC 104 (47 Tucanae), 1851,2298,
NGC 1261 2808, 3201, 4372, 4590, 5139 (Omega
NGC 3201 Centauri), 5946, 6121, 6362 and 6809.
NGC 1851 We also have accumulated data for a
M4
large number of Magellanic Cloud clus-
- NGC 2298
ters. In all we have published over
w Cen 100 articles in Astronomy and Astro-
NGC 4372 physics, the Astronomical Journal, and
NGC 6809
the Astrophysilcal Journal.
One of the most significant results of
this on-going research programme is
shown In the accompanying figure
HALP COLLAPSE where we have plottd the age versus
metallicity of the galactlc globular elus-
ters that we have analysed plus these
same quantities for the two oldest
known open clusters, M67 and
NGC188. It can be seen that the ages
derived for alle these objects are 16*2
Gys; hence it is still an open question if
AGES (Gyr) the time scale of the galactic coltapse
was brief or as long as 4 Gys. These
Figure 3: The age versus metaIIIcity of the galactk globular clusters that we have so far
ages set a lower lmR for the age of the
Universeand an upper limit fw the Hub-
a n a m , plus thme same quantities for the two old& known open clusters, M67 and
*
-
NGC ISg, N can be seen that the ages derivedforall these objmts are 16Y2 Gys equivalent to
H, = 61 2 8 km s-' ~ p c - '(& 0).
ble constant of H, = 61 8 km s-'
Mpc-I , assumlng q, = 0.
Sporty ESO
7he victorious €SO Teams are fear& by the competifors!
No, this is neither th@translation of a phrase in a Latin reading book, nor does it refer to the technotogical and sciwntific
achievements of our organization. It describes how sporty ESO staff members have repeatedly destroyed the common
myth that astronomy is the realm d d d men who stumble over long and white beards!
Football has always been one of our strengths and ESO teams on two continents have taught their advemries many a
lesson. ESO-LaSilk tennis players are reputed to have the Wtest serves above 2300 metres, and long-distance ESO-
runners have been seen on many a m d in Chile and Germany.
Bicycling, that noble art ofecological propagation, is in the coming, and €SO people are among the pimeem. At the ESO
Headquarters just outside Garching, more and more of these elegant machines are seen, shining in all mlours and In a
great variety of shapes. Concerned car-drivers [a few are still left) have noticed an increasing spill-over onfo the sparse
parking space. New speed records are being set during the early morning race f m Garching to the ESO Headquarters.
And there are unconfirmed rumours that some &SO staff members spend an important part of thelr free time, riding along
the beautihl mads in the hi/& Bavarian countryside.
But nowhere has the impact been so great as in the 4th region of Chik! Read the following stow to Ieam how the
ferocious La SiIIa mntainbike team conquered the hearts of the Chitean public, won (almostj all of the honours at Tololo,
all while ~presenthgESO in the best possible way. Racing up (and down) the mountains in the dty Atscam deserf, they
haw shown the world that at €SO power, transmission and response refer to more than t e l e s c w and CCD's.
Because of the international nature of our organization, the International Astronomical Union some years ago decided
that ESO astmnom~ts participating in international IAU meetings may be registered as belonging to '%SO: rather than to a
particular country.
It Is at this moment not known whether the lntmtidnal Olympic Committee will follow this example, when the first €SO
athletes show up. . . and what about the anthem? Another Aficionado
There used to be a time when driving ago, this activity on the present scale is It all started with the arrival of the
a ear up to La Silla one would hardly new for La Sitla. So what's behind the rnountalnbikes in Chile. As a robust and
meet a living soul, and the only occa- display of these hairy legs? A sudden all-terrain version of the traditional bike,
sional obstacles of appreciable size increase of Interest in a healthy pastime, a mountainbike is particularly well suited
were some donkeys. Not anymore. Sev- or does It go further than that7 to wheel on unpaved roads. Although
etal La Silla vlsitwa and most of the La The answer is in fact better known by the unpaved parts of the access road to
Silla staff have lately seen cyclista on the the amateur cyclist of the 4th Region In La Silla are among the best maintained
local roads, any time of the day, and Chile than by many of the €SO staff and of Chile, they are still unsuitable for
golng quite a bit faster downhill than visitoas. Since about a year and a half race-bikes with narmw tires. Hence
uphill. ago, these €SO mountainbikers have some of the ESO personnel with interest
Although a solitary cyclist could be won all competitions that have been or- in biking brought such a mechanical
obswved here and there already years ganized in this area. piece of art up to La Sllla, and a couple
about 30 volunteers made this day a real
treat. Now on their own territory,
ten ESO pedallers participated. The
success of the organization itmtf was
fully cornplernent;ed by the results of
these racers: again Hans Gemperbin
comfortably first, Luis Wendqass sec-
ond, EIjc Allaert third, Walter Rosenfeld
seventh (and first senior), Andrea Moneti
eighth, Eduardo Matarnom eleventh,
Bruno Altrwl sixteenth, WuEudo Ro-
bledo twenty-second, Ricardo Otto tfiir-
ty-third and Rainer Donmkl thltty-
eighth. Many of the outside participants
stlll talk wonders about the organization
of thls event, where "nothing nor no-
body was left unattended*. Which is not
surprising conslddng the effotts of the
organizers and the support of the ESO
management.
But success has its price: if you want
ngm i: sfad of 70 cyclists at the gate d Cetro Tobb Intmmerican Obsewtory. Photos I to keep it up, you must do something for
and 2 by Claudi~Rsforga; photos 3 and 4 by Nelson Muiior). it, 1.9. keep on training, more, longer,
harder. That didn't seem to bother many
of We iron-horse enthusiasts. €specially
not during Chiteen summer, when the
after-work training consisted in riding to
of them actually staMd using R a few miJion for the organization of a similar La Frontera, to have a cold beer and a
t i m a week. A similar situation was event on the ESO premises. sandwich, w to the world-famous t e b
seen in other parts of this country, phone booth in Cachiyuyo. And the
abounding with dirt tracks, and espe- good results kept on coming: Luis Wm-
cicllly also in Tololo.
The La Silla Continuation degas$ won the 1st La Serena mountain
It didn't take too long to convina tbe race (August 1W1), Hans Gempedeln
decision takers, and off went the sports the 1st race to Andacollo (November
The Tolola Experience commission to organize t his went. 1991), Eric Allaert the Cendyr circuit in
Things became a little more serious in Followed many letters and phone calls La S m a (February 1992) and the 1st
the beginning of 1991, when Tololo peo- pleading for spomship, collaboration -
race Vicufia El Pangue march 1992).
ple talkedaboutorganizinga blke-race on and/or participation, meetings to set up DIGEDER, the sports department of the
the Tololo roads. The original rdea came regulations and the like, 'fV interviews, Chilean government, awarded Hans
from Bob Willlams, director of Tololo and text processingof all documents, etc. A Gemperfeinas the best rnwntainbiker in
lifefirneJqger.More than a real race, he lot of manhours later, on the 20th of 1991 far the fourth region.
saw It as a personal challenge for all the W o b a 1991, La Silla opened its doors So what about the second race to
participants. Induding htmdf. Knowing for its biggest non-astronomical event Tololo? Postpond for the absence of
how tough an exercise this is, he stated: ever: 60 cyclists, 120 companions, and its inventor, Bob Williams, and en-
"Thisla where the realmenare separated
from the ordlnwy guys". He couldn't
knowthen that also women would parttcl-
pate, even some of his own female em-
ptoyees. M e r e are you, ESO girls?
Not exactly unfamiliar wlth this type of
road, six ESO cycllsts quickly Inscrlbsd
for this test. At the time of the event, end
of April 1891, some of the ESO partl-
cipants had been rlding a mountainbike
for only a week or so. Which was of
course'st~~~ a lot better than most of the
55 particlaants. The 34 km m e , from
the-TOIOIOgate up to the top of the I
there is some work to be done on La
Silla!
-
Figure 3: The (unquiet)ESO bike team just before the start of the La SiNa race.
tion. In their constant effort to offerheal-
thy and active entertainment on La Silla.
the sports commission would like to ex-
press its gratitude towards the ESO
management for its continuous support.
Of course we should not forget the main
actors of these events, i.e. the fine
sportsmen who defend the ESO colours
also when the subject is not astronomy,
dangered by El Niiio - a periodic Pacific tougher than ever, and the distances and their colleagues for the encourage-
ocean stream spelling rneteoro!ogical between the participants are vanishing. ment. Also thanks to alt the car drivers
disaster - this race was finally So do not take it for granted that ESO who take care and slow down on the La
scheduled for the 21st of June 1992, racers will keep on winning for ever. Silla roads, because there might be a
Expectations were high from many After all, between the training sessions cyctist just behind the next curve!
sides, as ESO racers had better-than-
ever preparation, but at the same time
were looked at as the ones to beat.
Tololo Again!
The night before the big event, again
L
~oberto Rojas k an- ESO carry-all
(thanks, bass!), the ESO racers had no
one to blame in the case of a defeat.
Nobcdy really worried, as Hans had said
he was "feeling pretty good", quite
opposite to all the other races. Where he Figure 4: The (smiling winners at La Si+a, ,
had won anyhow. Halfway it didn't look
bad at all with 3 racers a few minutes
-
ahead: Hans, Eric, and wait a minute -
an unknown guy hanging on the rear
wheel of Hans. Half an hour later Eric
had to let the two other ao: "Either 1
hook off and get up there, ;or I hang on
and drop dead 1 krn further." This Alive and Kicking into the 90's
scenario continued until about 250 m
before the finish. In a spectacular sprint
Hans left his opponent 20 seconds be- During the past decade in Germany, ciently and successfully, besides giving
hind. He finished exhausted in about 10 ESO has established for itself a reputa- a lot of fun.
minutes less than last year. When asked tion of a dynamic and successful organi- Some of the matches against the
how he felt, he barely lifted his head to zation, with a relatively young staff of strong team of the Universitats-Stern-
see who dared to ask him such a mis- highly motivated people. Apart from the warte Miinchen, led by its powerful di-
placed question. Eric came in third, astronomy field, this found confirmation rector R. Kudritzki, have not been re-
4 minutes behind Hans, Walter 4th on several occasions on the Bavarian corded in the Annual Report of the Or-
(I 1 min), Luis 6th (12 rnin), Eduardo 8th football fields. The ESO team integrated ganization, but are part of the legacy
(19 min), and Bruno 19th (42 min). Al- the best of the different national styles that we are passing to the future ESO
though a real fine result, this one was and proved that this can be done effi- generations, together with EFOSC, the
NTT and the quality
. - of the food in the La
Sllla cafeteria.
I
Entering the W s , we started to fear
that the driving core of tl-ta team was
softening with increasing age, that motC
vations were on the low side, that new
arrivals did not integrate in the possibly
obsolete working schemes in short that
we might not be up to the new
challenges that ESO is facing.
On a hot Saturday in July. on the
Max Planck field in Garching, an €SO
team wlth a shaken self-confidence and
an average age dangerously approach-
I
ing 40, entered the ASTRO CUP, a one-
day mmpdtion wlth the teams of our
neighbours and friends of the Max
Planck Institutes fiir Astrophysik and fiir
Extraterrestrische Physik and of the
Obsewatory of the University of
Munich.
At the end of the day, after four
strenuous games where w scored 5 I I 4-11
L
- r W I W J W - ~ ~ Lvrllpmm
~ ~ ~ - "--", Ulrl rC1
goals and suffered 2, we stmd as Gouiffea, a visitof to ESO, E. ZoN (a friend from NW,A+ W~ltander,E Koeh, J. -tie;
Iw nmua, ".
baHered but winners with cup b0tlom: L Noethe, Zigmnn, BB, belabre, & D ' m , #. mttn*#. , 6asbiItr (ofher team
at our feet and glases of ext3ellent G.fishw, P.
m m b m not includ& in this pictwe: B. Buzzoni. D. Chittim, A, van Dijs~~Idonk,
Bavarian beer in our hands (both cour- Fmnpis, 8. Jevgensen, P. Mellm T. Oostedm and R. Wannets).
tesy of the sponsor CONVW). We might
well lose the Cup next year to one of our
excellent contenders, but we are satis- have energies to spend when needed. tivities of the Organiratlon, but it does
fied to have proved this time that we are We are too realistic to claim that this not hurt to secretly play with this feeling.
not at our wit's end and that we still victory is a good omen for other ac- LongliveESO! S. D'ODORICO, ESO
Astronomical research is strongly de- be presented to the IAU during the 1994 history, but only in the last decade the
pendent on the availability of a unique General Assembly in The Hague. practical realization of this concept be-
all-sky reference frame though most as- came feasible through the mature tech-
trophyslcists do not explicitly take nique of VLBl radio astrometry.
notice of this complex astrometric 1. Main Properties of the New Using a global net of suitably distri-
problem. Reference Frame buted radio telescopes, positions of
However, the necessity of very pre- these primary radio sources can now be
cise pointing of new generation large Contrary to the present fundamental determined in a routine way to milli-
telescopes from ground or space and system which is based on the positions arcsecond (mas) precision and an abso-
the unambiguous identification of very -
and proper motions of bright stars the lute global reference frame can be es-
faint objects in all spectral regions ac- basic FK5 contains 1535 bright stars -, tablished and maintained for the future.
cessible from ground and space, in par- the future extragalactic system will be At the same time the high angular
ticular in the radio and infrared region, based primarily on the positions of a resolution of VLBl provides comprehen-
has sensltired the astronomical com- carefully selected small number of corn- sive informationon source structure and
munity to this problem. pact extragalactic radio sources;almost their temporal changes with sub-mas
During the IAU General Assembly in alt of these sources will display optical resolution.
Buenos Aires a resolution by the Work- counterparts, mainly quasars and BL A second group of objects is of equal
ing Group on Reference Systems has k c ' s but also some compact galaxies. importance for solving this problem;
been adopted (IAU 1992) which de- This choice is based on the generally namely selected radio stars, the cm
scribes the properties of a new, inertial, agreed assumption of cosmic distances radio emission of which has to be strong
extragalactic reference frame and a new of these objects with the consequence and steady enough to be measured with
intercommission working group has of negligible proper motions and there- mas precision by VLBI, the VLA and
been established to provide a practical fore fixed space directions for a long future VLM-net on a routine basis.
solution within the corning three years to period. This idea already has a long Absolute positions, proper motions
trornstric history is therefore included in
the programme stars: for a recent over-
view see (A & A, 1992).
Thus the HIPFARCOS mission will
provide automatically a homogeneous
and fairly dense stellar net of about 2.7
stars/sq. deg., maHy in the magnitude
0 Quasars BL- Lac 373 Intmal 7-1 0 (see Fig. 3).
Furthermore, the Tycho Mission will
100 add some 500,000 falnter stars with pre-
cise photometry although reduced as-
trometric accuracy. However, If we re-
call for example that already the AGK3
on the northern hemisphere and the
CPC2 on the southern hemisphere pro-
vide stellar densitlee of r 10 stars/
sq.deg. it Is obvious that the HIPPAR-
50 COS net shoutd swn be made denser
and extended to much fainter limiting
magnitudes by further catalogue pro-
jects to keep up with the needs of large
tetescopes with their small-fleld, highly
sensitive area detectors.
AGN's ...) should be as large as posst low catalogue density of about 1 star/ final HIPPARCOS-based plate solution.
bte with the result that possible 30 sq.deg. will provide only a vanishing It should be recalIed here that most of
differences of the emission centres in probabilrty to find a fundamental star In the IRS stars are already among the
the various wavelengths will hopefully the telescope field (<< 1 deg. dim.) HIPPARCOS programme stars.
average out. The same situation obvi- together with the target object and in
ously will be met with radio stars, al- additlon no detector can handle the
though here the source geometry is enormous magnitude differences, A
3. Astrometry of Source Plates
easier to evaluate. Using ESO Telescopes
multi-step approach therefow has to be
Any successful link methad therefore used. In the first step we are using high To obtain high-precision &strom~ric
must be a statistical approach, because preclslon wide field astrographa in both plates for the radio sources, we have
no ideal objects do exist with point hemispheres to provide a dense system used the 3.6-rn telescope in the prime
source properties h all wavelength re-
gions.
In our long-term programme to estab-
-
of secondary referencestars in the mag-
nitude m, 12-14. The primary refer-
ence stars to be used for the astrograph
focus mode very su~cessfullyand cur-
rently am using the ESO-Schmidt tele
scope, becausethe 3.6-m telescope un-
lish a VLB1-based reference frame plates solutions are taken from the fortunately is no more available for di-
(Johnston et al., 1991; de Vegt ei al., AGKBRN and SRS catalogurn in the rect photography. Although both tete-
1991) we have bmn using long expo- northern and southern hemispheres re- scopes provide the necessary limiting
sure plates to determine positions of spectively. magnitude and plats field size to
compact radio sources from this pri- These transit circle based catalogues guarantee a sufficient number of secon-
mary VLBl mt in the FK5 optlcaI funda- form the main body of the global IRS dary reference stars for the d&ermEna-
mental system. Figure 2 shows the referen- -em and are transformed iion of precise positions of the target
source distribution as presently to the IAU FK51J2000 system. source, the much larger scale of the
selected for this reference frame. A sub- The reference stars are mostly from 3.6-m and the plane image field are
set of these objects has already been the magnitude interval m, = 6-9 with an more favourable for precise astrometry
used successfully for the orientation of a average densrty of 1 star/sq.deg. Both than the Schmidt, although #me accu-
first high-pmlsionVLBl referenceframe astrographs are used with a &mag oh- racy can be regained by averaging a
catalogue. (Ma et al., 1W0). Although jective grating, therefore we can mea- larger number of Schmidt plates. How-
the optical positions are less precise by sure first-order diffraction images of dl ever, concerning possible object struc-
about a factor 10 (some 0.01 arcsec) reference stars together with their cen- ture and problems with crowded fields
than the corresponding radio positions. tral images and also diffraction images there is no compensation for the favour-
the large number of sources available of the 1-3 FK5 stars which offen will be able s c a l ~of the 3.5-m telescope.
(some 100) will allow to determine the in the astrograph field also. The plate
R.A. zero point, also with mas precision. constants obtained therefore allow to
3.1 3.6-m Prime Foous dstromethc
As Figure 1 clearly demonstrates, determine the positions of the sewn-
Model
most optical counterpahs are fainter dary referem stars very precisely In the
than 18th magnitude. To link these ob- FK5 system. As a very important addi- The 3.6-rn was used with the 3-lens
jects directly to the FK5 system is im- tional step we are measuring all red-triplet corrector w h i h provides a
possible becawa almost all FK5 stars HIPPARCOS programme stars in the usable field of about 50 arcmin diameter
are brighter than 6th magnitude and the astrograph field (about 80-100) for a and a flat image ptane, 24 x 24 cm,
Tabfe 1. Mahr F w ~ T toBllnk~ tb
~ HIPP- #8t to b ExWgaLctIe Syst8n~ 3-2 Schmidt Plates
Objectclass Technique M M Orientation Rowon
Global astrometric modelling of
~ a d stars
b VLBl <20 0 Ym W Schmidt plate gecrmetry is a malor prob-
ViA <I00 D yes w lem and In addition different solutions
Extragal. wdio aouE%E vLB1 <a00 I YW Partly may be required for the dlffwent optical
with opt W~ntetpa1CB Opt. ~WO~IWQ configurations of varbus Sohmidt tele-
H ' - q u ~ - ~ VLBl < 100 1 partly scopes. At least one fact is obvbus: any
yes swwssful solution wqulrea a dense net
opt,m r n e t r y
HST-FGS of very accurate reference stars whlch In
Uck pm. stars Opt.astromehy ~20,000 D no addition have to be chosen from a mag-
Yes nitude range where the dlffmction
(mainly N. Hm.)
--
N approximate number ofo h j w avallable.
splkes of Schmidt plate imagea are neg-
ligible which meansthat theae mfemce
-
M M&e D = d l w Ilnk (&loots 0b - In bath systems),
I lndlrect l i i(objectsam not HlPPAROOS proerammestam). sfam should be at least > ? a h mag-
nitude for practical mutposure ~0nditi~ns.
Unfortunately a pmlse global reference
star catalogue In thls magnituderange is
1-5-rnm thick Kodak 098-04 ptates have (standard coordinates XI, mA; plate sflll lacking, although definlte plans are
been used. However, the corrector in- measurements x, y: unknown plate con- avallable but on hold -use of recent
troduces a strong thirdsrder regular stants a, b, c, a, b, c, L, U, V; 1% 3rd- financial problems (de Vm, 1989,
geometric distortion term which has to order distortion term, U, V compensa- last).
b& taken into account in the plate tion for sera point of distortion). In our application we &e on& in-
mode!, Asuccasskl application of thls model terested in modelling the central plate
Furthermore, there Is no posslbllity to b only poselbk because d the large area of about I x I deg. As in the case-
calibrate the intersection of the optical number of reference stem (50-100) of the 3.6-m, our s w r n of secondary
axis on the plate, therefore two additim- available in the plate fleld. F d e r m o m reference st- is perfectly suited for
al terms for the zero point of h e dlstor- we are only Interested in obtaining the this purpose, Because of the small size
tion have to be induded. Because of the target pasttlon which Is at the ptate of the 3rdsPder twm and the r&rlcted
limited field size and the position of the centre. The complete astPomIdc mod- fiJd size, a statistically signmeant d&w-
target object very dose to the plate elllng of the whole plate fleld turned out rnlnstlon of the distoftlon zero point
centre, a 6-constant affine plate model to be much more complex, because of terms is not podbta Furthermore, as
(de Vagt, 1991) will be sufficisnt for additional 5th order regular distortSon practical experience has shown, even
modelling diimtial refraction and and Imgular field distortions Increasing the third-order term can be pre
aberration and the usual p r a w n onto to the fleld edge, In addltbn the distor- corrected rivitbt affdlng the position
the tangentiat plane. tion terms depend an the position and of the central target abject significantly,
The linearized plate mod4 therefore optlcal qualtty of the filter also. provkded the odgh of the m n g u l w
39: plate measurements x, y is carefully ad-
X I - = +by + c + L X { $ + Y Z ) - U ( ~ X ~ + ~ ) - V ( ~ X ~ ) justed to the plate centre a priori.
? 3 A= aix + b'y + c' + Ly($ + y2) U(2xfl - - V P + 3f) The appropriate choice of t h plate ~
model can he limited themfore to a
&constant dine model, with a possible
extension to the Srd-order term, if the
geometty ofthe partbular Schmidt tele-
scope is not well known at the bqin-
n i ~or, the adopted pIateflIter m b i -
nation changes (see above-quoted
model, wlthaut the U, V terms).
In the o m n t Schmidt obsenring pro-
gramme high quality plates for 29
sou- have already been obtained
Normally 3 plates/ob]& are Wen using
a 098-04*QG5513 emulsion-filter com-
blnation. Plafes are unhypered, expo-
sure times are 5 4 0 minutes each. All
plates are measured on our modemlzed
WF-MANN comparator whlch uses a
CCD camera for dlrect image digitiza-
tion (for detalls see Winter et &I., 1992).
A measuring a a w c y of 0.5 microns is
obtained in routine operation. In addb
tion, a new type of astmrnehic measur-
ing machine is under development
which wiH allow to digitize a complete
Schmidt plate In less than 1 hour wlth
0 submimn accuracy.
6 7 8
Figure 3: Magnitude Distribution ofHipperms Programme Stm.
9 1011 12m, -
As an example of our current work,
results tsar the QSO 748+126 (m, 17 3 ,
z = 0.889) are presented. This primary
refemnce frame radio source shows a parison polnts, as will be pmvlded by de Vegt Chr., Zacharias N., Johnston K.J.,
stellar appearance on the plates. Using our reference frame prwramme Is re- 1891, Adv. Spece. RB. 11,133.
the quoted reduction model, a m.e. of quired for a more detailed conclusive Johnston K.J., Russell J.L, de VVegt Chr.,
unR weight for the plate solution of analysis. Zacharias N., Hindsley R., Hughes J.,
c0.1 arcsw: could be obtained. The fi- Jauncey D.L, Rwnolds J.E, Nieholm
G., Ma C., 1931, Pmc. IAU Cdl. 127,123.
nal FWJ2000 position, based on 3 de vwt Chr., 1991, Astmph*. Space Sci-
plates, Is Acknowledgements
erne ln,3 = P~OC. IAU COII+ 100.
RA(32000) 7h 50m52.051'; The author wants to thank H.E. 6 Vegt Chr., 1989, Conference on Digitired
DEC(J2000) +12' 31' 04.84" Schuster and 0. Reipurth of ESO for Sky Surveys, Geneva Bull. Inf. CDS 97,
Using the corresponding Vtsl posi- their continuous help with the observing 21.
tion from (Ma et al., tQ90),the system programme. Flnanclal support by BMFT de Vegt Chr., Winter L, Zacharias N., 1992,
diffwence In 'the sense "optical minus under grant 1000018-3 (HIPPARCOS) is DlgitkedQptleal Sky Sump = Astrophys.
radlo" then is: gratefully acknowledged. Spaca Sc, Ub. 174, 115 (Kluwer h d .
DAcWEC) = +0.073 a r ~ e c ; Publ.).
OOEC = M.01 arcsac References Wlnter L, da Vegt Chr. SMnbach M.,
which Is in good agreement with earlier NU, 1992, IAU Inf. Bull. 87 (Jan. 1992), 7, Zacharias N., 1W2,ibd. p. 123.
results (Johnston et at., 1985) and the Resolution 4. Johnston K.J., de Vegt Chr., Florkowski D.,
recently quoted flrst prellmlnary results A & A, 1092, Asiron. Astrrrphys. 25B,No. 1, Wade C.M., 1985, A J. 90,2390.
of a HIPPARCOS-FIG comparison tn (May I), speclat HIPPARCOS Vol. Ma C.,Shafler D., de Vegt Chr., Johnston,
that sky region (Undegren, 1992). HOW- Froeschlb M., Kwalevsky J., 1982, Asrm. K.J., R u s d l J., 1994 A J. 9Q,1284.
ever, a dense grid of some 100 corn- As&@@. 11689. Undegren L., 1992, ESA SP-349, in press.
The European Southern Observatory The many thousands of observations It is interesting to note that in the very
was established in 1962 to operate the at ESO have inevitably produced quite a near future ESO is likely to rank fifth
powerful La Sllla observatory for the few discoveries. However, there is a long (behind Heidelberg, Crimea, Palomar
benefit of many fields of astronomy and way from the detection of a new solar and the Anderson Mesa Station of Low-
astrophysics. Only a few programmes system object until it can be definitively ell Observatory) on the list of the most
were directly concerned with the survey numbered and named. The new planet successful minor-planet discovering ob-
of the solar system and the discovery of has to be observed in - at least - three servatorles. In the ranking list of the
minor bodies like comets and minor oppositions before it can be numbered. most successful discoverers of minor
planets. In many cases, observations of Therefore, the majority of new detections planets of all times, Henri Debehogne
these objects were made only as valu- remain in a "dormant" stage in the Minor now occupies the 13th glace - one
able by-products of other campaigns. It Planet Center's computer files. In some place ahead of the famous visual planet
was especially the wide-field tete- cases it is possible to identify new posi- hunter A. Charlois in Nice, who detected
scopes, the 1-rn ESO Schmidt and the tions with planets observed earlier; this some 99 planets between 1887 and
40-cm GPO Astrograph, which yielded shortens the process. Nowadays, it is a 1904.
an enormous amount of positional data. rare exception when a newly discovered The right to name a minor planet
During the last decades ESO has always planet can be quickly identified with a essentially belongs to the discoverer. As
maintained a leading position in the long series of prior observations. can be seen from Table 1, only a small
world, as far as the number of minor The statistics show that until July fraction of ESO discoveries honours
planet observations is concerned. 1992, some 186 ESO discoveries have ESO astronomers. This has to be done
In 1988, Commission 20 of the IAU reached the status of "established", i.e. by other colleagues, and there are in
established a special study group to elu- numbered, minor planets. Table 1 re- fact a lot of names which together con-
cidate the meanings of minor planet cords these objects in ascending order stitute a kind of "ESO minor planet sky".
names.Thlsendeavour, which comprises together with the name (or preliminary While it is very easy to extract all ESO
a lot of data for the first 5012 minor designation), the year of discovery and successes from the data base, it is near-
planets numbered until the end of 1991, the discoverer(s). Whereas the great ly impossible to find among the 4,000
has now reached completion {L.D. majority was found by Belgian as- exlsting minor planet names those
Schmadel, Dictionary of Minor Planet tronomer Henri Debehogne during spe- which have been accorded to ESO offi-
Names, X+687 p., Springer-Verlag,1992). cial surveys for minor planets, most cials, staff astronomers, etc.
Since all information in this work has others ware found by chance, malnly The list in Table 3 gives all those
been archived in a computer-readable with the Schmidt telescope, and during which are rnentloned in the book about
data base, it is very easy to extract the various ESO atlas projects. A total of the ESO history, recently written by
material which directly or indirectly per- 16 astronomers earned discoverer Adriaan Blaauw. Still, it cannot be con-
tains to ESO. t have here used the data merits; they are shown in Table 2 to- sidered to be a complete compilation. It
base and some recently published, addi- gether with the overall numbers of dis- shows, however, that it is not very ex-
tional material to illustrate the "ESO coveries and co-discoveries (in paren- aggerated to speak about the ESO
minor planet sky". theses). minor planet sky!
Table I: DXsroverles of numbered minor planets made at ESO
(2052)Tarnma 1976 R. M. West p673) Holmberg 1S82 C.4. ~ s r k v l a t
[2053) Nukl 1Q76 R. M. West (3610) 1981 H. Debehgne md
(21os)audV 1076HrESdWStW B. De D e I 8
p115) lrakll 1976 R. M. West (36251Francastom 1984 W. Fw&
(21 18) Mtskhettr 1B76 R. M. West W 1 ) Slgyn 1987 E . W . W
(2117) Danmak 1$78 R. M. West (3634) lwan lea0 C.-I. hgerlN1st
(2146) -3 1976 R. M. West (3646)1885 RK4 1W5 H.Debehqne
(2146) Stentor I976 R. M. West 4367Q 1984 DT 1984 H. Oebehogne
(2147) m e 1976 R. M. west W89) ~auinmn 1W7 W. md~&
lal4s) E w 107%R. M. West (3705)1984 ETl 1984H.I)ebehogne
(21 87) ta Sllla- 1976 R.M. West (5740) Menge 1W1 H. D&ahoQnemd
paw)schmadel 1977 H.-E. Schu- 0. De Sands
(2275) 1 MH 1979 H.-E S&USW @778)RegW 1884 W. RW
(23231Orthos 1976 H.-E SefKlSter (STas) 1986 QM3 1988 H.Debehogne
Q3M)Sailliar 1978 H. Oebehcgm (5820) 1984 DV 1884 H. W o g m
P46l) C l a d 1981 H. t)ebetrogneand (3821) 1985 RC3 7 Q05H.Deb&ogna
G. De Sands (5848) 1982 FH3 7 0 2 H.Debehogne
(a5261AlIsaiy 1079 R. M. West @W) IW7 D M I W H.Debehogne
(2S43) MmWo IQB0 H. Debehagne (S866) 1988 AY4 1988 H.Debehogne
[256t) ma 1979 0, P l z m and G. Pizarro (SW)1988 BH4 1988 H,DeMwgne
(2589) Daniel 1979 C.-I. Lagethist (98'PO) Mayrd 1808 E. W. Elst
mso) Mourio 1980 H.oebehogne @871)Wz 1Q82R. M. West
(2595)G~dlachvlll 1970 R. M.West (SBW) l9W PA 1W H.-E. S d t W
g596)Vdnu Bappu 1970 R. M,West pal8) 1981 QM 1981 H. Debehogne
@see) sen- 7978 H.-E. Schuster pH9)19840s 1W4 H. Oebehogne
(28x3)Losslgnot 1980H.Debshogne 8m)m g a ] 1#6 R. M. West
@W)
Rno Torime 1879 C.-I. Lagwhist (9984) 1984 SB8 IQW H.Oebehogne
(2707) U m l Is81 H.Mbehogne (4018)Sambm tQ79 H, hhhogne snd E R. Metto
(2765)Dinant T98l H. Oebehogne and (403q1B84 E01 1984 H. Oebehom
Q. De Sanctls (4036) t 987 D M '1887 K Oebehogne
Q7W Nsnm 1981 H.aebehogneand (4f!#) Kristina 1987 E. W. Etst
Q. De Sanctls (40BO) WPYb '1987 E. W. Ust
(27%) Lepage 1979 H. Oebekgne and E R. NMo (4061) Martell1 la88 W. Rrreri
(2814) Viein t982 H.Oebehogne (4099)t988AB5 1988 H. hbehogne
ma mm 1981 H. Dehhagne (4120)1985RS4 1985 H. Debehagna
(2902) Westerlund tQ80C.4. Lagerkvlst (4123) 1988 QPt lR86H.Oebehogn-a
(2928) Caldelra 1980 H. Dehtwgne (418Q)CelJus 1Q M C.-l. Lagerkvlst
@=I Naefum 1876 R. M,West (4172) 1982FCS 1982 f l , D e M w p
Psss)&etltO tg81 H. Debefwgne and (4191) 1980 H. Debefwgne
Q. De Sanetls (4192) m e h e r 1QSt H, D-ne and
(3- Dekalle 1982 H. D e b e m Q. De Sandls
(3m ) DD
1976 i970 R. M,West (4199 1983 RXZ 1989 H. Debehogne
flaw ~~ 1979 C.-I. @&lst (4202) 1985 CB2 IQ85H.Da~e
(3016)Meuse f 881 H.Oebhogne and (4206) 1986 QL 1988 H. Dehhgne
(31. De Sanetla (4210)1887 DY5 1987 H. DeWtogne
(3121) Tarnines i081 H,Oebehogneand (4211) 1887RT 1087 H. ~ ~ n e
Q. De -1s (4216) Neunklrchen 1988 H. Debbgne
(3'138)Clnray 1g8O H. D e k h g n e (4218) Demomi 1488 H. OeMogne
(5175) Netto 1979 H. Debeftowe and E. R. NeHo (4252) i985 RG4 1485 H. Debekgne
(32%) Metohior 1981 H. Debehogne and (431U) Wmholm 1978 C.-I. hgerkvlst
Q. DeSanctls (4313) Bouchet 1979 H. bbehogne
@see) t a78 PA 1978 H.-E. Schuster (4328)1982SQ2 1982 H. Oabehogns
(3288)De Sanctb 1981 H. Debehpsne and (4334)1983 ROS 1983 H. Dekhogne
(3. D8 SandlS (4942) F m d I987 E. W. €hi
(3271) 1932 RB 3982 H-E. Schuster (4344)BuHehude 1W EW.Elst
0274) Mlllen i#l H. Debehogne (4345)Rachmaninoff 19M E W. Bst
(3288)S & ~ M ~ B 1982 H.-E Schuster (4349)Tlburclo 1989 W. Landgmf
@w
FWWi T981 H. Debehogneand (4378)Vdgt 1988 W. Lsndgraf
G. Do Sanctis (4398) f B84 HC2 1ga4 W. Rmrl
(33s1) KV~- I979 C.4, Lagerkidst (4443) I985 RD4 1W6 H. Debehopne
RBcogne '1985 H. Debehogne (4444) I986 SA 1B85 H. U. NergrsaK1-Nletsen,
(3374)Mamur 1980 H.Deb&- L Hansen and P. R. Christmn
(3S8s) S k o t 1W H. D&ehogna (4474) 1981 Q22 l g 8 i H. Debgtwgne
(3390) Oemanet 1W H.Debehogns (4478) Bianm $984 W.Farmrl
(3398) 1978 PC 1878 H.-E. Schuster (4479) 1985 CP1 t B 8 5 H. Debehogne
( U t I) Debemcourt 1980 H. Debehqne (4601) hrywtm 19W E. W. Elst
(34WDarnmanget 1gag H.Debehogne (4535) 1BM QV2 1986 H. Debehogne
(3466)1985 RS2 1885 K Debehogns (4645) 1989 $81I 1080 H. Oe-ne
(3457)1985 RA3 1985 H. Debehagne (4546) Fmck 19gO E. W. E M
@45f3)1985 F1T3 1986 H. Debehogne (4571) G r u m ~ x 't985 H. Dabehogne
01884 SP6 1984 H. bbehagne (4503) Wpurth f 980 C.-I. &-st
Ma3 -1 1879R.M.W& (4590) iB85RZ2 1985 H. Debekgns
W9e)AvfesD f 977 WE. Sehuster (4600) 1885 RE4 1985 H. bbehogns
(3519) 1984 00 j984 H. Debehogne (4608) laS8sw3 1988 H. Oebhogne
(4609) P h m 1888 E. W. Dst (4- 1886 CQl 198%H. Debehugne
(4811)VulhmM 1989 M.G&felt (4939) 1986 QLt 1988 H. Debehogne
(4627) I N 5 RT2 1985 H. Debehogne (4942) 1987 DU6 1087 H.Debehogne
(4633) 1988 AJ5 19643 H.Debehogm (4985) 1979 QKA 1879 C.4. Lsge3.kvisl
(4836)Chlb 1988 E.W.EM (4993) 1883 GR 1Q83H. Debehogne end
(4688)1987 OX5 1487 H. Debebgne GI. De Sanctls
(4684) 1978 GJ 1978 H. Debhwne (49943 1 m R K 3 1983 H. DebAogne
(4695)1986 RU3 1985 H. Debehogne ( 4 W ) MPC 1987 E.W. Elst
(4897) 1986 QO 1986 H. Debehugne (5003) t 988 ER2 1988 W. F e d
(4744) 1988 RF5 1988 H. Debhogne (5022)1984 HE1 1984W.Femd and V. Zappal&
(4761) 1981 QC 1981 H.-E. Schuster (505q 1988 RQ5 1- H.aebehogne
(47sls) f 984 OF1 tW4 H. Debehmne (5057) 1987 DCg 1987 H. m g n e
(4793) 1988 RR4 1988 H. Debehogne (508811979 QZl 197QC,-I. W k v U
(4798) Mercator tB89 E.W. Elst (so=) 1985 CH2 1985 H. DeWogne
(4800) 1989TQj7 t g 8 9 H. Debehogne (60BQ)1085 DV1 1985 H. Debehagne
(48041 Pasbur tGW E. W. Elst (5107) 1987 RS6 1987 H. D-hogne
(4817) 1984 D M I084 H. Drhhogm (6108) lmeck 1987 E W. Bst
(4821) Blanucci 1g86 W. Ferreri I5l09) 1987 RMI 1987 H. Debshogne
(4825) Venturn 1O M E. W, Bat (51151Frlrnout ID88E.W. Elst
(4830) 1888 RQ4 1988 H. Wehogne (5127) Bruhns 1989 E.W,Elst
(4843) 1990 DR4 1WO H. Wehogme- I5lW 1W9YO 1079 H. Dabehopneand E. R. Netto
(4864)1988RA5 1988 H. Debahope (5184) cavallMs;oll 1990 E W. Elst
(4931) 1983 CN3 1983 H. Debehogne and (5204) 1988 CMP 1988 E, W. Elst
Q. De Smctls (5229) 1087 OEB 1907 H. Debehogne
(4933) 1984 EN1 1084 H. [Pebehagne (5248)1983GQ 1 X 3 H. Debehogne and
(4937) 1986 CL1 1986 H. Oabehogns G. DBSands
Table 2: Ranking list of €SO discowrefs Table 3: The ESO minor planet sky
1. Debehogne, H. 100 (19) (3488) Arleso (4380) Geyer (1670) Mlnnaert (1637)Swings
2. EM, E. W. 20 (4501) BaW (3371) Qiaccont (1 eel ) mrt (3765)Texereau
3. West, R. M. 18 (2358) Bahner (1894) Herffner (1738) Oosterhaff (2154) Underhlll
4. De Sanctls, G. 15 (15) (2145) Blaauw (1B50) Heckrnann (3 629) Pecker (2842) UnMd
5. tagerkvlst, C.-I. 12 (1983)8ok (4Q4)Hlltner ( 4 W ) Pizarm (2823)van der Laan
Schwter, H.-E. 12 (1543)k u ~ e a l s P573) Holrnberg 89W Portugal g203)van Rhiln
7. Ferteri, W. 8 (1) (3368)Bown (3282) SpencerJonas (21384) Reddlsh (1040) Walmen
8, Netto, E R. 4 (4) (4192) Bmysacher (I770)Kuiper (4593) Relpurth (2022) West
3, Landgmi,W. 3 (1120) Cannonia (2187) IASIHa (3871)Relr (2902)Westerlund
10. Christensen, P. R. 1 (1) (4636) CHlr (1851) Lacroute (2605) Sahade (2301)Whltford
Geffert, M. 1 (I 594) Danjan (1448) Undbladia (1542) Schaleh (17951 Woltjer
Hansen, L 1 (1) (3450) Dammanget (1334) Lundmarka (1743) SchmWt
Morgaard-Nl&en, H. U. 1 (3) (1761) Edmondson (4386) LiIst (1235)Schorrla
P i i o , G. 1 (<I (4385) Us&ser (1527) Malmqulsta (2018) Schuster
P i m , 0. 1 (f) (3433) Fehnnbach (21311 Mayall (837)Schwamhllda
Zappal&,V. 1 (1) (1581) Frlckr (4065) Melnel (1422) Str8rngrenla
The beautiful image shown in the cen- It Is purely by chance that this strange roughly the same size; (3)t h y are rather
trefold was taken by the €SO MT on nebulosity, reproduced in negative In circular. These features have led F. D.
January 17, 1992. It was obtained with the picture on the opposite page, was in Kahn to suggest that this is a "honey-
the €SO Multiple Mode Instrument the field of our CCD detector. As shown comb" in the LMC. The same bubbles
(EMMU, in a narrow Ha filter and the in the picture, it consists of over ten were also observed in a narrow-band
integration time was 10 minutes. The loops wlth a size of around 12 arcsec, or [0111] 500.7 nm fitter image.
original purpose was to observe the in- about 3 parsec at the distance of the Bubbles in the interstellar medium are
ter/circum&llar material around LMC. The most remarkable features are: not a rare phenomenon, especially in the
SN1987A; the results of that work can (1) all the bubbles are clustered along a M C .The present "honeycomb" nebula
be found in the paper by Wang and filamentary nebula, I .5 arcmin long and is in fact located In a complex environ-
Wampler (1992). 30 arcsec wide; (2)the bubbles have ment which is full of bubbles with sizes
up to 30-40 pc across. These "super" duced by the stellar winds from massive References
bubbles may be due to OB associations stars. Dyson, J. E., de Vries, J.: 1972. A & A, 20,
or supernova explosions (Dyson and de If the " h o n e p m b is indeed due to 223.
Wes, 1972; Weavar et al., 1977). stellar activity, it wilt set very strong mn- Elmegrm, B. G., h d a , C. J.: 1977. Ap.J.,
Still, the origin of the "honeycomb" stralnt on the nature of the underlying H4r 725.
may be quite different, although it stellar objects. In order to produce a Wang, L and Wamptw, J. E: 1992. A d A,
seems that them are only two cluster of bubbles of similar size, the 282 L9.
-
possibitities R is either related to the underlying stars have to be born at the Weaver, R,, McCray, D., Caster, J., Shaplro,
P., Moon, R.: 1977, &J., 218,377.
activities of the underlying stellar ob- same time, with the same initial mass
jects or it is independent of, or weakly and they must evolve at the same rate.
dependent on,the stellar activity. The "honeycombwwill then be a unique
However, direct Images taken in the object for the study of sequmtlal star
continuum band do show an enhance- formation (see,for example, Elmegreen
ment In the number densities of stellar and Lad& 1977).
objects in the neighbourhood of the The morphology of the "honeycomb Centrefold
'honeycombw. This implies that sorne- makes it an interesting object In Its own
fPmin Ha liame, obtained with the NTTand
thing pecullar might be happening here, right. Morework will now haveto bedone, mMI. 77-m frame has been rotated 30"
and that the "beesnwho made the "hon- both obswvationat and theoretical. clockwise for typgrephllcal reasons; the
eycomb" are perhaps the swarm of This work is supported by SERC. I am north direction is t h m f w e et 1 o 'clock, SN
stars that is resident in the cloud. 8ub- thanMul for several helpful diseusslons 1987A is at the centre and the stmge "hon-
bles of similar size can be easily pro- with J, Danziger of ESO, eycomb" is visible in the lower left erea. b
Comet PIGrigg-SkjellerupObsenrations at ESO La Silla
During the GlOlTO Encounter Period
H. BOEHNHARDT, Universitats-Stemwarte, Miinchen, Germany
K. JOCKERS, N. KISELEV, Max- Planck-lnstitut fiir Aeronomic, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany
G. SCHWEHM, A!. THOMAS, ESTEC, Noordwijk, the Netherlands
In total 4 half nights (from 7/8 to 10111 buted only 10 hours after the observa-
Introduction July 1992) at the ESO 3.6-m telescope tions and about 5 hours before the en-
On July 10, 1992, the GlOnT) and at the ESO 1.5-m spectroscopic counter to the GlOTO experimenters,
spacecraft of the European Space telescope were devoted to observe to the scientists and to the press who
Agency (ESA) became the first satellite comet P/Grigg-Skjellerup. Two even- were following the fly-by at the G10ITO
to pass within 500 km of the nucleus of ings were lost due to douds over La control centre, the European Space Op-
a comet. G10lTO encountered the Silla. In the night July 9/10, 1992 some erations Centre (ESOC), in Darmstadtl
periodic comet P/Grigg-Skjelterup and direct images could be obtained Germany (Jockers, 1992).
returned a wealth of interesting in situ through cirrus clouds. Only the last night On the day of the GlOrrO encounter
measurements of the cometary coma to of July 10/11, 1992 gave reasonably (see Figure 1) an ellipsoidal coma of
Earth. After the fly-by of comet Halley on good atmospheric conditions for our about 30 x 20 arcsec apparent exten-
March 14, 1986, the spacecraft com- observations. However, the small elon- sion surrounded the central brightness
pleted the first ever Earth gravlty assist gation of the cornet from the Sun (about eondensatlonwhfch containedthe wm-
manoeuvreon July 2,1990, placing it on 45 deg.) restricted the observing win- etary nucleus. The major axis of the
cwrse for an encounter wRh comet P/ dow to just 1 hour aRer evening twilight coma ellipsoid pointed towards position
Grlgg-Skjellerup. At launch, operations with the comet positionedtow above the angle 130 deg. (counted east from
after the fly-hy of comet P/Hatley were western horizon (below 25 deg. sleva- north), i. e. about 15 deg. out of the anti-
unforeseen but the remarkable perfor- tion). In fact, special precautions were solar direction. Numerical simulations of
mance of the spacecraft and its in- needed to operate the 3.6-m telescope the dust tall orientation for the encount-
strumentation allowed the extension of at such large zenith distances and even er day support the interpretation of the
the mission. GlOlTO has now com- then guiding on the comet with non- elongatd coma as baing formed mainly
pleted 7 successful years in space. siderial rate was not at optlmum. by cometery dust particles. No indica-
Unlike comet P/Halley, m e t P/ Comet P/Grigg-Skjellerup reached Its tions of a plasma tail were detected in
Grigg-Skjellerup was previously a large- perihelionof 0.99 AU on 22 July 1992. It any of our exposures. This Is partly
ly unexplored comet (for a summary of was predictedto show a late onset of its caused by the moon-la sky which does
the results published so far see Birkle nuclear activity and to exhibit a steep not allow to reach the low surface
and Boehnhardt, 1992; additional infor- brightness increase {Green, 1991) be- brightness of the plasma tail (a plasma
mation can be found in Osip et al., 1992, fore perihelion. Actually, it looks as if the tail was detected by GIOlTO) and also
Schmidt and Wegmann, 1992). ESO has comet only initiated significant coma limits the extent of the visible coma. The
supported the G10TO fly-by at comet development by the beginning of June radial renormalization method was ap-
P/Grigg-Skjellerup by providing urgently 1992 (that was 1% months later than plied to the superimposed CCD image
needed astrometrlc positions before the expected) when it was already at a of P/Grigg-Skjellerup of Figure 1. How-
encounter and by granting observation heliocentric distance of about 1.2 AU. ever, apart from the dust tail extension
time to four authors of this article for However, the steepness of the light- no further structure was found in the
physical obsewations. In this adicle we curve was approximately as predicted(n otherwise symmeMc cometary coma.
glve a preliminary account on these ob- of about 30 to 40). Before perihelionthe An analysis of the radial profile of the
servations and provide some highlights total coma brightness was estimated to integrated coma brightness exhibited a
of the spacecraft encounter. be about 1 mag fainter than the light- rather llnear increase with aperture
curve prediction published by Green diameter. Both phenomena (the don-
(1991). At a wavelength of 620 nm the gated coma towards the dust tail d i m
The Observing Programme brightness of the comet in a square tion and the radial coma brightness pro-
The main scientific goals of our ob- aperture of 20 arcsec was 15.5 mg on file] support ideas that most of the light
sewlng programme at ESO-La SIlla July 11, t 992. in the R filter exposures of July 9/10,
were: to determine production rates of In the night July 9/10, 1992, just 15 1982 arose from sunlight scattered by
the very abundant HaO molecutes and hours before the GIOTTO encounter the dust. An analogous Image process-
other gasmus coma species, to provide with P/Grigg-Skjellemp, 4 broad-band R ing of the R filter CCD observation of P/
direct images of the comet for the en- filter CCD Images were obtained with Grigg-Skjellerup obtained on June 29,
counter period which could be used for the ESO 3.6-m telescope at La Silla 1942 at the ESO New Technology T e b
an analysis of the coma geometty and through cinus clouds low at the western scope MT (Stom and Meylan, 1992)
overall dust environment, and to collect horizon (below 20 deg. elevation). The has been performed by one of the au-
information on the cornem ion tail. Be- images were processed at La Slla and thors and led to sirnllar results as for our
cause of the damage of two important Immediately transmitted via satellhe link images of July 9/10, 1992.
onboard experiments (the Halley Mul- to ESO-Garching. The co-addd coma In the night July 1W11,1992 7 images
ticolour Camera and the Neutral Mass image of these exposures is shown in (exposure time 30 s each) through a
Spectrometer) GIOlTO was unable to Figure 1. Thanks to the night work of wide-band red filter (dust + NH2) and 3
collect detailed data on the questions people from the €SO Information Ser- plasma filter exposures (10 minutes
addressed by our observing pra- vice and by staff at ESO-La SIlla a hard- each, but trailed due to guiding prob-
gramme. copy version of Flgure 1 could be distri- lems) were obtained at the ESO 3.6-rn
telescope. The photometric calibration
and the analysis of these data is stilt In
progress. While the cometery imaging
continued at the 3.6-m telescope, 2
CCD spectra in the 370 to 1000 nm
wavelength range were exposed on July
1D/t 1, 1992 at the ESO 1.5-rn spectros-
copic telescope. The spectra show the
strong emission band of CN at about
388 nm and also the C2 emission
around 517 nm. A weak dust continuum
was found in the red part of the spectra.
For the spectra the calibration and data
analysis is presently performed.
ESO has also supported the fly-by
targeting of the GIOTTO spacecraft by
providing high-quality astrometric posl-
tions of the comet to ESO before en-
counter. The data were measured by
Richard West from CCD frames ob-
tained with la Silla telescopes. Post-fit
residuals of 0.1 to 0.2 arc% were de-
rived for the ESO data from the comet
orbit determination at ESOC Darmstadt. Figure 1: Comet P/Grgg-Skjellmp on July 10, 1992, just 15 hours b e f m the GIOT70
Astrornetric positions of the comet were encwnter.
also determined from our CCD frames The Image is a composite of 4 R filter expostrres obtained at the €SO 3.8-rn telescope. The
of July 9/10,1992. These data were also field of view is about 70 x 50affisec(73,000 x 52,000km at the comet). North is up and east to
transmitted to ESOC Darmstadt and can the left. The Sun direction is Indicated by symboi 0,that of the dust tail by symbol D. The
be used together with data from other direction of the cometary motion on the sky is given by symbol V. that of the GIO7TO
observers for the post-encounter analy- spacecmft by symbol G.The four tralls In the lower image section am background stars.
sis of the GIOlTO fly-by trajectory at the
comet.
Further detalls on the GlOlTO Extended OPE started to detect emissions from
The GIOTTO Fly-by at the Cornet Mission to cornet P/Grigg-Skjdlerup the gas coma about 50,000 krn from the
On July 10, 1992 15:30:36 UTC have been given In Schwehm et al. nucleus. The first indi~ationof entering
(f 46 sec) GlOlTO passed within (1991). Spacecraft orbit and attitude as- the dust coma occurred around
about 200 km of the nucleus of comet pects of the fly-by have been described 20,000 krn from the nucleus(at about the
P/Grigg-Skjelletup. During the P/Grigg- by Morley (1991). same distance as the dust coma extent
Skjellemp encounter GIOTtO was actu- The payload was switched on in the in our ground-based observations). Data
ally overtaken by the comet in its orbital evenlng of July 9, 1992. 7 out of the from OPE provided the first estimate of
motion around the Sun. At the same origlnal complement of 11 on-board ex- the spacecraft-nucleus distance at clos-
time it passed through the orbital plane periments were operated during the en- est approach. A value of approximately
of the comet from north to south. The wunter: the Magnetometer (MAG), the 200 km was derived. In combination with
relative velocity during the fly-by was Johnstone Plasma Analyser (JPA),the the MAG data, there is good evidence
about 14 km/s which was almost 5 Energetic Particle Analyser (EPA), the that GIO7TO passed the nucleus on the
times slower than during the Halley en- Optical Probe Experiment (OPE),the anti-sunward side, 1.e. through the tail
counter in 1986. h e heliocentric dls- Reme Plasma Analyser (RPA), the Oust forming reglon of the coma. The data
tan* of the cornet at encounter was Impact Detection System (DID), the Ion from OPE also suggested that closest
1.01 AU, the Earth distance 1.43 AU. Mass Spectrometer (IMS). In addition, approach occumd a few seconds after
GtOlTO approached the nucleus from the signals from the spacecraft were the nominal predictions.
I 1 deg. behind the terminator. For on- analysed for perturbations by members DID reported Rs first impact at
board power reasons and because of -
of the GIOTTO Radio Science Experi- 15:30: 56 UTC probably &er closest
communications constraints (the high- ment (GRE) team. approach. A totat d three impacts were
gain antenna needed to be kept Earth At about 600,000 km from the nu- recorded, the first being the largest. It is
pointing) GlOlTO had to fty through the cleus (12 hours before dosest ap- conceivable that the impacts occurred
coma of comet P/Grigg-Skjellerup al- proach),JPA detected the first presence when GIO7TO crossed the orbital plane
most side-on with the solar cells fully of cometary ions. At a distance of of the cornet.
exposed to the cometary dust and gas 18,000-1 5,000 km both JPA and RPA At 15:31:02 UTC, shortly after the
environment (at comet P/Halley the reported what looked like a bow shock first impact, the High-Gain Antenna of
bumper shields of the spacecraft were or a bow wave of the coma, much more GIOlTO appeared to be osciHating
front-on in order to protect the experi- distinct than had been predicted for slightly around Rs nomhal value. An in-
ments and the other satellite hardware such a faint comet. MAG measurements crease of the spin rate by 0.003 RPM
from damage by cometary partictes). carried out during the inbound trajectory was also observed while the solar as-
could not confirm this finding, but re- pect angle readings were fluctuating be-
ported Interesting wave phenomena not tween 89.26 and 89.45 deg., indicating
All times in this section are stallon-receive times of
Lhe GlOTTO signals In WC. The time for signals to seen in a natural plasma before. How- a nutation of about 0.1 deg. This was
reach Ear(h hwn OIOlTO at the tlrne d the en- ever, on the outbound trajectory MAG also recorded by the GRE and is awalt-
munter was 11 mlnutes 52.6 seconds. saw clear indications of a shock. ing further evaluation.
€PA saw clew Indlcatlons of the Refermces
acceleration regions and surprising K. Birkte, H. Boehnhardt: 1992, Earth, Moon D. J. Osip, D.G. Schleicher, R. L. Mlllls: t902,
dierences in the stntcturee betweem ?/ and Planew6?,191. Icarus, in press.
Halley and PIGrigg-Skjellerup. Last but D.W.E. W e n : W91, Intem~~tiona,Comet H.U. Schmidt, R. Wegmann, D.C. Bdce,
not least IMS recorded good data: how- Quarterly 13,91. W. F. Hueher: 1992, MPA 670.
ever, the data analysis for this instnl- K. Jackers: 1992, ESQ Photo 08/92. G. Schwehm, T. Morley, H. BoshnhaPdt:
ment is qulte cumbersome and com- T. Morley: ISl,b m e d i n p d the 3rd Inter- 1991, The Me$88ngsbrBS, 37.
national Symposium on Spacecraft Flight J. Storm, G. Meykn: 1902, ESO Press Photo
plex, due to the comparatively low en- Dynamics, ESA SP-326, 487. 05/92.
counter velocity.
A ffiorough test of the Halley Mu[-
tlcolour Camera (HMC) onboard
GlOlTO on 7 July 1992 could only eon-
firm that the optical path was very effec-
tlvely btockad. However, on July 12,
1992 a number of tests were petformed A Minor Planet with a Tail!
with the detectors of the MMC, which
provided engineering and calibratron R. WEST, H.-H. HEYERandJ. QUEBATE, ESO
data on the long-term behavlour of
CCD's in space.
Minor Planet 1g79 VA was discovered (Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge,
by Eleanor Helin at Palomar on Mass,, USA)that the earlier tmqes were
November 15, 1979 as a "fast-moving "unusud", he immediately recalled that
The Future of GlOfTO object" of magnitude 11 (IAUC 3422). an object on the Nov. 19 Palomar plates
Further observations were made, and had already been catalogued in 1949 as
About one weak later than previously
when a reasonably accurate orbit be- Comet Wilson-Harrington (1949 111).
planned, on July 21, 1892, another rna-
jor orblt manoeuvre put the spacecraft
came available, R was found that 1979 There was also the strange circum-
VA belonged to the select "Apallo" class stance, however, that thls comet was
into an orblt, that will bring it close to of Earth-crossing minor planets. Its descdbd as havlng a point-likeappear-
Earth (distance about 200,000 kmj in
perihelionwas just Inside the Earth orbit, ance on plates obtained the following
July 1999. There are still 4 kg of fuel left
at 0.98 AU, and It had passed within nights.
onboard for attitude and further orbit 0.1 AU, w tess than 5 million km, of the So here was an object that was a
correction manoeuvres. This leaves, Earth In late October 1979. The eccen- seemingly normal minor planet in 1979
though with rather hard constraints, the
was rather large, 0.63, and the and thereafter, but wHch looked like a
door open for some further activities in trlclty
orbit was therefore vmy elongated; the comet on a pair of plates in 1949. How
1999. After a final orbit trim manoeuvre could thls be explained? Were the tails
priod was somewhat over 4 years.
on July 23, 1992 at 17:07 UTC the After more observations had become perhaps some kind of plate fault, or was
GtOrrO spacecraft was put into hiber- available In the 1980'9, 1979 VA was this a real effect?
nation for the third time. Brian Marsden asked h u t our opin-
duly assigned the ddnitive number
Meanwhile, spacecraft experimenters
4015, but it has not yet recdved an ion and we decidd to have a very care-
and telescope observers have started M e i d name. ful look at the glass copies of the POSS I
the scientific evaluation of their data,
Nothing very exciting about that. But AUas plates, stored in the vault at the
which may stilt hold surprises. The next
this August, Minor Planet (4015) ESO Headquarters in Garching.
space exploration of comets,after can- Our first cxlnclusion was that the
suddenly baame an object of intense
cellation of the American CRAF (Cornet
interest among solar system as- "tails" are unllkdy to be photographic
Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby) project will tronomeml faults. Although a great variety of artifi-
be ESA's ROSElTA mission which is cial dots, lines, etc. is ofim found on the
supposed to bring a cometary sample very sensitive emulsions used in as-
back to Earth. It will take place in the The Palomar l W 9 Obsewations
-
tronomy the first Palomar Atlas con-
next century. Meanwhile, cornetat-y ex-
ploration will continue from the ground
Extrapolating the motion of (4015) tains many so-called "Kcdak stars" -
backwards in time in the hope of finding the emulsion structure around the "tail"
and we expect that, together with other earlier recorded Images of this obiect, is uniform on both plates and does not
branches of astronomy, it will profit from
Ted Bowetl of the Lowell Observatory at indicate any artificial origin. It is of
€SO'S progress in Mescope tech-
Flag&#, Arizona, USA, found that It cwrse true that we were only able to
nology.
should be vtslble on a pair of plates. study second-generation copies of the
obtained with the 4&lnch Palomar original plates in the plate vault at Cal-
Schmidt telescope for the first Palomar tech in Pasadena, but from our expepi-
Acknowledgement Sky Survey on November 19, 1849. ence with many thousand Schmidt
These plates were some of the first ob- plates over the years, this conclusion
The authors like to thank very much tained with this telescope, red-sensitive still seems quite safe.
the staff at ESO-La Silla and at ESO- no. 9 (45 min: 10%-E + a red plexlglass The tail la rather weak, especially on
Garchlng who supported - partly in filtre) and bluesensitlve no. 10 (12 min; the red plate, and we therefore photo-
-
night work the fast data transmission unfiltered 103a-0). graphidly enhanced the two Palomar
and hardcopy production of our P/ The image of (11015)was m y to flnd, plates in order to see the structure more
Grigg-Skjellerup observations on the but Bowetl and his colleagues were clearly. The amplified images am repro-
encounter day. We would dm like to most surprised to discover that it did not duced in Figure 1a and 1b. There is no
-
acknowledge the hdp of Richard West look Itke a normal minor planet trail it doubt that on both pJates, the "tall" has
from ESO-Garching in obtaining the as- had a tail! the normal appearance of a comatary
tmmetric positions of the cornet from When a hint was passed to Brian tail. It extends only to one side of the
our CCD frames. Marsden at the Minor Pbnst Center ball, is attached to the trail over the full
Figure 1: ?hwephotogmphicaIly enhanced photos show M i m PAanet (4015) = Comet Wkn-Hmington on {a) a blue- (12 mln) and @I a &
sensitive (45 min) plafe, obtained on N o m k 19,1949, w'th the #-inch Schmidt telexape at Palomar. The tail is well visible below and to fhe
leftof the MI. 7Re Theiml line in the lower right comer of (4is an muIsion faulf. In {c), Me same sky fmld is shown on a recent @ate obtatnsd
with fh8 same telescope tor the POSS 11: the# Is no diffuse in the field.In (d), a ig7$ image of minor planet (4015) from a piate obtained
-
with the 48-inch UK Schmldt telewope d m o n s ~ t e sthe s b ~ s ofsthe short trail(at the centre) there is absolutely no tail vkible. On te)and
Ib), the distanm Irom the Earth md the Sun was 34 mit/ion krn and 172 million km,respectively; on (dl the com6ponding d i s t a m were
58 millfm and 178 rn/llion km. Y7?eobject a p p w s brighter in 1949 (a, bJ than in 1979 Id), partly because it wes closer to the Earth, but most
p r W y also because H was at that U r n surrounded by a small dust cloud.
AN photos are reproduced at the same scale, approximately 8.5 arcsedmm; north is up end east is to the led,
The photo was p w m d at ESO from fhe Pelomar Obwvatory Sky Srrrveys I and N and the ESWSERC Survey of t h S ~ m h m Sky
(@CallfamiaInstitute of Tedrndagy (c) and UK Science and E n g i M n g Research CounciI @ERG) (dl)).
length, does not extend beyond the trail cause of the dierent emulsion sensitivi- tion proves that It must at least once
ends and has the same general direction ty. It is for this m 8 0 n that comets 8re have had an outburst of some kind, giv-
on the two plates. In other words, the tail much easier to discover on bluesensi- ing it the oemporary) appwance of a
really "moves" with the object and it is tive plates; that is also why very few perfectly normal comet. So what Is it
therefore very unlikely to be a ghost carnets were found on the ESO(R) sur- really, a minor planet or a comet?
reflection from a bright star in the field. vey. This does not apply to comet ob- Possibly both. There has recently
Moreover, a look at the same sky field servations with CCDs, since these de- been a growing interest in studying the
on the J plate (Figure 1c), recently ob- tectors are more sensltlvs in the red relationship W e e n these two types of
tained for the POSS II survey (which is spectral region. solar system objects and various evi-
now being reproduced at ESO) shows So we are convinced that minor dence for interrelation has become
that there are no nebulae or galaxies in planet (4015) really had a dust tall in available during the recent years. For
this area which might simulate a cornet 1949. example, minor planet (2060) Chiron, In
tail. a SO-year orbit between Saturn and
It is dso Important to note that the Uranus, developed a large coma in 1988
weakness of the tall on the red pfate
Minor Planet/Cornet on Its way towards perihelion in 1986.
Interrelations Earlier this year, another minor planet
does not necessarily mean that the tail
consists of gas only. Even dust tails Until now, the object (4015) had ful- with an even larger comet-like orbit was
which shine by reflected sunlight, and filled all requirements for classification found and was provisionally designated
which are generally redder than gas as a minor planet; its trail (Figure Id) as 1992 AD (cf. The Messenger 67,
tails, are normally weaker on red than on was perfectly sharp, without any hint of p. 34, March 1992). It has in the mean-
blue photographic Suwey plates be- a coma or a tail. But the 1949 observa- time received the number (5145) and
41
the name Pholus (mother Centaur), but comet. first discovered in 1E125. It was orbits in the inner sofar system, are in
contrary to Chiron, Pholus has not seen to split Into two p i e c In
~ 1846, it fact dead comets. It may well be that we
shown any activity (yet). faded in 1852 and was not seen at dl at actually witnessed the dmth throes of
Other minor planets are known to its predicted return in 1866. When no comet 1949 111, and that its inactive nu-
move In highly eccentric comd-like or- more ice is available on the surface of cleus was "re-discovered" in 1979 as
bits much nearer the Sun. One of them, the nucleus of a comet, or if the Sun's minor planet 1979 VA. It is the first direct
(3200) Phaeton (discovered by IRAS in heat can no longer penetrate through observation of this kind and R will surely
1983 and designated 1983 TB), moves the insulating surface to tfie reservoirs stimulate much activity in this Interest-
in the same orbit as the Gemlnid meteor of be that may still be presmt inslde the ing research field.
stream. It seems that it is the parent nucleus, no coma and tail will develop.
body of the materid In this stream. This The comet will have become "inactivem Minor planet (4015) again passed
Zs strange, because only a comet, and and its small nucleus will only shine by through its perihelion in late August
not a solid minor planet, is thought reflectedsunlight. This impliesthat It will 1992. There is little doubt that il wlll be
to be able to disperse dust along its be very hint and its image, if obsewable extensively observed during the comlng
orbit. at all, will from then on be indistinguish- months. Unfortunately, R will be located
Several comets in well-known orbits able from that of a minor planet. This In the northern sky and will not be eastly
have been found to disappear from type of object is appropriatety referred accessible from La Silla. Initial observa-
view, probably because their source of to as a "dead" or "dormant"comet, tions (IAUC 5585 and 5586, August 14,
volatlles is exhausted. One of the most It is widely believed that at leas?some 1892) have not revealed any signs of
well-documented cases is that of BUa's of the minw planets, mrw In curnet-like activity whatsoever.
resemble a classical or recurrent nws: were never noticed before and they
the only feature was the late appearance were not correlated with the orbital
of emhion Ihes qulte like those of phase. An explanation for the p h e n o m STAFF MOVEMENTS
dwarf novae (Dueheck 1977). Moddlhg non could be a sudden variation In the
the physical mechanism powering the mass transfer rate, causing a shrinking Arrivals
outburst d A62040 and Its associate of the disk that appears bluer, but less
sources has always appearad a luminous. However, the contribution of k*oW
challenge because there are problems the disk to the total flux does not seem BEDDING. Tlmolhy (AUWGB), Fellow
both with mass overflow InsWillty mod- to exceed 15% in any band (Haswell, CONZELMANN, Ralf (Dl, Wigmr-
els implying X-ray W i n g of the secon- 1$92). These results appear therdore breughtsman(Mmhanies)
dary by the compact object (Hameury et vwy p d h g and t h y should be eon- HAINAUT, Ollvier 0, Student
needed also wlth the secondary star, MELDSEN, Hans(OW, Fellow
al., 1#6,199O), and with disk insfabllity
RASMUSSEPI,RQ (OK), Technician
models (Mlneshipe and Wheeler, 1989, which must have undergone some kind
(softwm)
Huang and Wheeler, 1989, Mineshige et of imtabillty. For better understanding it RODRIGUEZUUOA. JBUS(E), O m -
al., 1991)that need a higher mss trans- is undoubtedly-n to study pos- tion Tecfurleian (Rarnota Control
fer rate to work than the one inferred by sible new spwfral variatbns, monitoring Equimt)
Fu and Taam (I989). For a detdled dis- the object regularly. This could offer a
cussion see Haswell, 1992. key to understanding the complex Transfers
Two s p m h were obtained on Febru- phsnomerra th& are happening and the AtLbERT, Eric 0, Engineer (Software)
ary 18md 19,1991, threeon December mechanism that powers the outbursts, (fmrn La Snla to Barchlng)
2, 3 and 4, 1991, and two more at an beaause it is crucial for any model to
Interval of a few hours on December 5, kmw If and how there is variabitity of the Departures
t s91. Although the two spectra of Feb- mtransfer rate and what is the rsa-
ruary are dike and their slope and ture of the disk. Europe
CharaCt~rjstlCSappear to matchthose of Such serendipitous discoveries of UU, Xlaowel (RC), Assmiate
Haswell of November 1987 (see Has- verriabWty, already known not to be In- MAZAU. Pado (U, Fellow
well, 1992), the spectrum of December2 frequent for c d n syrnblotics and X- PRAT, Serge 0,Mechanical-Project
show8 that the flux in the red can de- ray binaries, can be detected d w for Engineer
crease significantly and re-increase wt a clasical novae during a survey of this STEFL, Smislav (W), Associate
time scale of one day (seeFig. I, whetre kind and certainly be meaningful to VAN MWRSEL, Qustaaf (NU,Scientific
the two spectra were taken at the same understand the nature of the syslems. Programmr/hdpt
orbital phase). On Demmber 5, he de- WARREN, Stephen [GB), Fellow
ZEUNQER, Werner (4, Fellow
crease of the red flux murred again,
but a second apectlum reappeared References .
'normar' again after a few hours. The Bianehini, A, Della Valle, M., Orlo, M.,bet-
luminosity fluctuations In the red region msn, H., Blanehi, L, 1991 me M w s e w
NO. M,32 Erratum (Wnw 08, p. 2, J u n ~
of the spectrum were up to I mag 1992)
Boley, F., Wrrlfson, R., Bradt, H., Doxaey, R.,
(t- arnptitude at longer wave- Jemigan, G., Hlltner. W.A, 1976, Ap.J., The 6.5-m MMT msntroned In the llst of
bngths?) and the slope of the con- 203,L13. IbQe telescope pro]edts Is of c o u w
tlnuum totally changed (see Fig. 1). Duerbeck, H.W., 1977 In Novae and Relafed -I on Mt, Hcrpklns, not on Mt.
Such sudden, irregular vadatians in the mm, ed. M. Friedlung, Dordmht Reidel, Graham.
flux and In the slope of the continuum p. 150.
Obsewation of the Central Part of the P Pictoris Disk
with an Anti-Blooming CCD
A. VIDAL-MADJAR,A. LECAVELlER DES trANGS-LEKALLOIS, G.PERRIN, R. FERLET,
F. sWRE,Institut d'Astrophysique, CNRS, Paris, France
F. GOUS, J.-E. A RLOT, Bureau des Longitudes, CNRS, Paris, France
C.BUIL, CNES, Toulouse, France
H.BEUST, Sewice d 'Astrophysique,Saclay, France
A. -M. LAGRANGE-HENRI, Observatoire de Grenoble,France
J. LECACHEUX, Observatoire de Paris, Meudon, France
1. The f3 Pictoris Disk grangeHenri, Vidal-Madjar and Ferlet, direct starlight (passing through the
1988; Beust et al., 198g). Numerical edgeon disk) would result. Therefore,
Since the discovery with the IRAS simulations of infalling bodies which they clalmed that a cleared-up reglon
Satellite of a number of main-sequence evaporate when grazing the star are was probably present within 30 AU from
stars which show an infrared excess, able to reproduce the observational the star, possibly due to planetary for-
direct imaging has proved, in the only data and provide constraints on the mation. kter on, Diner and Appleby
case of the southern AS-type star 6 Pic- bodies' nearly parabolic orbits: for in- (1986), using the same cornnographic
toris, that this excess is caused by a stance, a specific direction of the orbit's data but coupled wlth the IRAS obser-
disk of dust surrounding the star (Smith axis with respect to the line of sight is vations, produced a dl& model cohe-
and Terrile, 1984). The favourabb orien- required, along wRh close perihelia 2 10 rent with both dust scattering and
tation of the disk, viewed nearly edge- stellar radii. We then came to the con- emissivity, and found that within 1MI AU
on from Earth, has permitted the further clusion that the numerous events seen no strong constraint was present in the
detection of its gaseous counterpart, could be due to the presence of a giant data: dust distributions presenting very
with a typical density n(H) - 10~crn"' planet (or proto-planet) in the P Pictoris small cleared-out inner regions were
(Hobbs et al., 1985; Kondo and disk which perturbs a lot of small pass- certainly acceptable. This is due to the
Bruhweiler, 1985; Vidal-Madjar et al., ing-by objects and throws some of them fact that, slmHarly to the cormographic
1986). Subsequent observations have towards the star (see9.g. Beust, Vidal- observations, the low resolution IRAS
emphasized the complex time variations Madjar and Ferlet, 1991, and references data are sensitive to relativdy cool (out-
of the circumstellar (GS) lines, both in therein), thus posslbty clearing up the er and extended) dust. Then, Arty-
the vislble and the UV (Ferlet, Hobbs inner part of the disk. mowicz, Burrows and Parme (1989).
and Vidal-Madjar, 1987; Lagrange, Fer- From their coronographic study, ushg new coronographic data (Paresce
Idand Vtdal-Madjar, 1987). Smith and Terrile (1984) have shown and Burrows, 1987) still limlted to more
In order to interpret tha extensive data that an r4.3 power law was well repre- than 6 arcsec from the star, along wlth
set gathered on the @ Pictoris proto- senting the dust distribution within the the IRAS data, confirmed the radial
planetary system, we have proposed a disk. However, at less than 6 arcsec power law (although sllghtly less steep,
model in which the sporadlc redshifted from the star (100 AU), i.9. behind the in r-9*6)and the Diner and Appleby (1986)
events are the result of the evaporation coronographic mask, they showed that conclusions, i.8. a 5 to 15 AU cleared
In the vicinity of the star of solid comet- if this taw was extrapolated to less than inner region is compatible with the ob-
like bodies falllng into the star (La- 30 AU, a too strong extinction of the smations.
Figure la: 20-ssc exposure (V filter) of p Picto& corrected for the Figure 1 b: Same correction made on another star (with similar light
diffuse light Ievel by the use of a template star (see text). The bright levels) obviously shows no circumstdlar disk. A 6-arcsec-mdius
spikes due to the secondary spider cannot be completely corrected, circle is drawn around the star to visualize the limit of previous
but do not perturb disk brightness evaluatmns due to their angular coronographic observations.
separation.
at ta Silla. To probe the disk at different
distances, series of images were taken
with exposure times ranging from 0.5 s
(to see as close as possible to the star)
to 300 s (to detect the disk as far as
possible and have an overlap with the
previous coronographic images). This
has been done with the four standard
filters: 8 (440 nm), V (550 nm), R
(700 nm) and Ic (800 nm). More than 450
CCD images were taken, and an aver-
age of 10 was gathered for each filter
and exposure time. Additional ex-
posures were recorded with different
angular position of the bonette in order
to test the effect of the CCD orientation
relatlve to the disk. No changes were
observed.
Figure 2: The P Pictoris disk image wlthwt the spikes, radially flattened to strengihen the
Data Analysis
weakest parts of the disk, Nadh is up. A 6-mcsec-radius circle b drawn. This disk is clearly After the classical bias and flat fielding
seen down to 2.5 arcsec from the star. Shwter exposures reveal the disk down to 2 arm% (30 corrections of the CCD frames (see e.g.
AU. Bull, 1989),one of the difficulties was to
properly correct for the diffuse light level
by using the template star, observed
almost sirntlltaneously with the same in-
Simultaneously, Telaca et al. (19881, On the contrary, the use of an anti- strument setting. This correction was
completing 10 and 20p ground-based blooming CCD which avoids the con- done by scaling properly the diffuse light
observations with 5 arcsec resolution, tamination of pixels adjacent to satu- level of one star relative to the other in
were able to constrain more strongly the rated ones, allows the direct obsewa- the two quadrants where the disk is not
different models: the P Pictoris inner tion of the disk next to the star without observed. This is not a simple linear
disk is relatively clear of dust, possibly the use of any coronograph. Stellar light wrrectlon. The radlal variation of the
up to 50 AU (3 arcsec from the star). simply saturates some pixels while the correction factor was evaluated assurn-
However, more recent observations nearby ones collect charges related to ing, in a first approximation, that the
from 8 to 12p by Telesco and Knacke the light coming from the vicinity of the diiuse llgM (away from the obvious
(1991) led to a possible detection of a star. This technique was well developed spikes due to the telescope spider) pre-
spectral signature related to silicates, In planetary studies by Colas (l991),and sents a circular symmetry.
but only s e n within 3 arcsec from the led to the detection of very faint The result is shown in Figure la. in
star.
From all these observations, it Is
-
satellites (V 16) near the giant planets. which the Image was rotated in order to
The size of the stellar image Is thus have the disk horizontal. The disk detec-
plausible to assume that a dust-free simply defined by the seeing and the tion is obvious, particularly when com-
zone exists in the inner reglons of the fl exposure time. Typical values are be- paring with Figure I b in which the same
Pictoris disk. tween one and two arcseconds, repre- correction was applied to another tem-
senting roughly the limit of that observa- plate star with no disk at all, and in
tional approach. Use of adaptive optics which all light levels are at most equal to
Obsenrations with an
could furher reduce the effect of the 10% of the ones in Figure 1a, at similar
Anti-Blooming CCD
seeing, and observations of the disk at angular distances from the central stars.
To obsewe the disk closer to the star, less than one arcsecond from the star It is also very clear in Figure 1 that the
we decided to use an anti-blooming should become possible. The limitation correction process is unable to perfectly
CCD (THX 7852), instead of a classical is then only due to the diffuse light eliminate the very bright spikes in the
one associated to a coronographic ap- characteristics in the telescope, pro- case of f3 Pictoris because they are part-
proach. In effect, all the observations duced by both the cleanliness of the ly due to scattered light from the disk
published with wronwraphs give very mirrors and the induced diffraction itself.
good results far from the star {Smith and pattern. The final image of the p Pictoris disk is
Terrile, 1984; Paresce and Burrows, The recorded images with such a shown in Figure 2, where the brighter
1987, but fail close to it, the limit being CCD must be simply centred on the spikes were simply taken out, and the
around 6 arcseconds. The difficulty to stellar images in order to give the possi- disk luminosity Is flattened by an rd9
get closer Is due to the diffuse light bility to either add them and improve power law in order to better lllustfate its
around the mask whlch is extremely S/N by selecting sharp images (always radial extent. The superimposed circle
sensitive to the star posltion behind the corresponding to shorter exposures), or represents a region of 100 AU (6 arcsec)
mask, a pasition difficult to control with- correct for the djffuse light effect within around the star, corresponding to the
out any adaptive optical device. Auctlra- the telescope by subtracting the groper- inner limit of the coronographic studies.
tions producing unrepeatable changes ly centred images of a template star The disk is seen down to 2.5 arcsec
of diffuse light levels around the mask which was in our case the nearby star from the star. Shorter exposures allow a
make difficult to achieve quantifiable a Pictoris. precise evaluation of the disk brightness
obsetvations with such techniques very The observations were performed in down to 1.8 wcwc, i.e. down to less
dose to the star. October 1991, at the 2.2-m Telescope than 30 AU.
I3 filter V filter
1 f0 100 1 to 100
distance to the star (arcseconds) distance to the star (arcseconds)
1 filter
..rn
:+
:'
-- :om
.bn
'.,"
*.,*
rn *?,
I
1. Introduction the obsenrations of giant luminous arcs. that we were observing a gravitationally
Since 1987, the redshift determination The flrst main resufi, about one year distorted Image of a background source
of the giant arcs observed in rich clus- after the discovery of giant arcs in two through the cluster of galaxies. One year
ters of galaxies has been a great clusters of galaxies (Soucail et al. 1987, Later we continued our study by showing
challenge for observers, as it was mitial- Lynds and Petrosian 1986), was the red- that many clusters were acting as giant
ly the only way to confirm the nature of shift measurement of the giant arc in tenses an the numerous population of
the gravitational phenomenon. But the Abell 370, a rich cluster at a redshi of faint blue galaxies detected at the same
faint surface brightness of most of the 0.37. A strong mission line was d e perlod by Tyson (1988). For example in
arcs, only slightly compensated by the tected all along the structure, with a A370, many weakly distorted blue ob-
extension of the image, is partly re- curved slit punched with the PUMA sys- jects were detected, with an orthoradial
sponsible for the slow progress of such tem installed at the 3.6-m at La Silla. The orientation with respect to the duster
obsenrations although their scientific line was immediately identMed with the centre (Fort et al, 1088). These so-called
impact is quite large. well-known IOIB line at 3727 A, red- "arclets" were also supposed to be im-
Let us begin this paper with some shifted at 0.725. This important result ages of distant background galaxies.
chronotogicaisteps in the discovery and was the confirmation of the hypothesis But in this case, the confirmation of this
idea is less obvious, because their mag-
nitude Is larger than 25, out of the
capabilities of the present-day spectro-
graphs. Many other clusters have now
been observed by many people and a
lot of them present similar structures. In
particular, Tyson et al. (1990) have de-
tected a strong excess of tangentially
elongated objects in the very rich cluster
A1689, mainly among the blue selected
objects, by using very deep imaging in 0
and R.
The scientific interest in these exam-
ples of gravitational lensing is quite im-
portant, because it is a new tool for
Observational Cosmology, and an ap-
proach of the mass distribution rather
independent of other dynamical
methods. The development of the new
methods applied on lensed-clusterswill
be presented in a final report of the Key
Programme I-0t5-45K, "Arcs survey in Figure 1: Ultra-Deep B image of the cluster of galaies Cl2244-02, from CFHT. One can see
distant clusters of galaxies", performed some substructures along the glant arc.
by the Toulouse group (Fort et al., 1990).
The use of the "gravitational telescopen
for probing the deep and distant Uni-
verse is also very promising and exciting results from the spectroscopic follow- now (Mellier et al., 1991). The stellar
and will be discussed here. A major goal up of the main arcs detected in our content seems "normal" with a star for-
of the spectroscopic observations is to survey of rich clusters of galaxies (ESO mation rate of a few tens of solar
derive the redshift of the largest and Key Programme and CFHT Long-term masses per year, a value far from the
brightest arcs, and this for many Programme). The data have been col- high numbers derived from the spectra
reasons: lected on different telescopes with vari- of distant radio-galaxies!
- it is the ultimate confirmation of the ous instruments (3.6-m and NIT on La
gravitational lensing hypothesis, espe- Silla, 3.6-rn CFHT in Hawaii, 4.2-m WHT
2.2.The "Stmighf" Arc in Abell2390
cially in the cases for which other in- in La Palma), but they all correspond to
terpretations are possible (cluster faint objects and consequently low res- The spectroscopic data on this pecu-
galaxy seen edge-on,manifestations of olution spectroscopy with very long ex- liar arc were collected at the 4.2-m
galaxy-galaxy interactions, etc). In a few posure times is required for each Wllllarn Herschel Telescope in La Palma.
cases, such as the triple arc in specific object. The surprising straight shape of the arc
C10024+ 1654, the identification of a made the slit positioning easy! A total
change of parity in the dierent images integrationtime of about 10 hours led to
(from high spatial resolution data) is also 2. Some Peculiar Cases the detection of an emission line at 7130
a clear evidence of the phenomenon of R e d s h i Determination 8( and an underlying continuum, both
(Kassiola et al., 1992). compatible with a redshift of 0.913
2.1 The Giant Arc
- The redshifi of one an: in a cluster in the ClusterC12244-02 (Pel16 et al. 1991). We were also able to
fixes the geometrical scales of the lens- detect a velocity gradient along the arc
ing configuration and gives immediately
the total mass within the critical radius.
Consequently, the constraints obtained
-
The blue giant arc detected in the
centre of C12244-02 (z 0.329) is one of
the most spectacular cases of gravita-
with a line shifi of 10 A which we
confirmed further wlth observations on
EFOSC at a better resolution. This gra-
on the dark matter distribution are better tional tensing (see Fig. 1). Its very circu- dient is presently interpreted as an in-
(see for example the case of MS2137-23 lar shape extends over more than 100" trinsic velocity gradient inside the
in Mellier et al., 1992). and its B-R colour Index of 0.8 makes R source, stretched by the gravitational
- The redshiffs of two dierent arcs in one of the bluest arcs ever observed. distonion of the cluster field. If so, It is
one cluster could be very promising for More than 10 hours of integration were the confirmation of the existence of a
constmining the value of qo, provided necessary at the 3.6-m with EFOSC in rotatingdisk with a maximum velocity of
one is able to reconstruct the gravita- order to obtain a good signal on the about 200 km/s (uncorrectedfor inclina-
tional potential of the cluster, and the continuum. An emission line was finally tion). It has also W n used tentatively to
two redshifts we distant enough from detected at a wavelength of 3940 A and derive the Hubble constant Ho through
each other. identiffed with Lya redshifted at 2.238. the Tully-Fisher relation (Soucail and
- Last but not least, the arc sources This identification was also confirmed Fort 199 1).
form a sample of very distant field galax- by the detection of several absorption Our first interpretation of the straight
ies at redshift larger than 0.6. It is very lines (CIV 1549, Sill and SiIV) and the shape of the arc was the existence of a
important to study their properties in the continuum observed in t h e rest-frame bi-modal deflecting potential with a
framework of galaxy evolution and for- wavelength range of 1200-2000 A is source positioned in the saddle region
mation, and their stellar content must be compatible with what is expected from between the two clumps of matter. Un-
compared with evolutionary models starburst galaxies. fortunately we did not detect any over-
(Guidwdoni and Rocca-Volmemnge This rather secure identification dense region of galaxies on the external
1987, Bruzual and Charlot 1992). makes the source of this arc one of the side of the arc, which was somehow
Here I will present some preliminary most distant field galaxies known up to problematic. Another possibility was
corresponds to a cluster member at z =
0.374. Its very low flux in the near in-
frared (1 and k bands) makes It rather
"intriguing" and it should possibly corre-
spond to a very distant and/or young
galaxy, which needs to be re-obsenred.
-The glant arc in the cluster
C10024+ 1654 @=0.39) is the most in-
teresting one to study in view of its large
spatial extension and Its splitting Into 3
pieces. A curved slit was punched with
PUMA (October 1989) in order to follow
the three main parts of the arc, and
despite a total Integration time of 6
hours, a featureless spectrum was ob-
tained, with no evident emission lines. A
recent analysis of the image formation in
this cluster by Kassiola et al. (1992) led
Figure 2: High-resolut/on image of the mtm of AM12390, from C M e n d with a I-band 1SIfer. them to predict the redshift of the arc
The separation betwmn the images of !he two galaxies f m i n g the arc is visible and also a source to be between 1.4 and 1.9 from
slight change in the orkntatiwr of each Image. theoretical arguments. Deeper data are
expected In order to test their predlc-
tions.
Let us also present one counter-ex-
ample of what was initially suspected to
be an arclet. From deep imaging in the
suggested recently by Kassiola et al. 2.4 Some Results from Mher Clusters cluster of galaxies A483 (z = 0.29) we
(1992) that we see two interacting gatax- Many other arcs or arclets were ob- noticed several extended blue images
ies at z = 0.913. This hypothesis Is rein- served spectroscopically over the last around the cluster centre. In particular,
forced by the infrared data (see below) three years, sometimes with less two structures were detected, one going
because the arc presents a strong col- success. In most cases, we did not through the envelope of the cD,and the
our gradient in K (Small et al. 1992) and succeed to get a redshift for the arc other one extended over 9" located a bit
also from high-resolution CCD frames spectra without emission lines, as it is more than I t north of the cO. In D e
collected at CFHT last year (Fig. 2). The extremely difficult to detect absorption cember 1991, we got 4 hours exposure
separation between two smaller images lines on a low S/N continuum. This in spectroscopy on the second of these
is clearly evident In the I-band. means that it will be very difficult to objects. After data reduction we found a
measure redshifts between 1.I and 2.3: redshift of 0.2741 This object is most
2.3.,TAeMultiple Arc System In A2218 0111h 3727 is too far in the red (A > 7800 probably an edge-on spiral galaxy be-
This cluster (z = 0.175) is one of the
richest clusters of the Abell catalogue,
h and Lya is not redshifted enough (A <
4000 A)). Between these two typical
longing to the cluster and not an arclet.
One must conclude that people have to
with a giant cD in its centre. It shows emission lines, no other emission lines be very careful when they announce the
many arclets in the central region, lo- are prominent in normalgalaxies and we discovery of arcs or arclet candidates.
cated around the cD and also around only expect to see absorption lines. Only detailed multi-cotour photometry
the second giant gataxy. A spectros- Presently two arcs fall in this andtor spectroscopic data can give
copic survey of the cluster has been category: some confidence in the gravitational
performed at the 4.2-m WHT (La Palma) - The arclet A5 In the cluster A370 is arcs hypothesis, if one cannot detect a
by Pelt6 et al. (1992). They collected the largest one of the weakly distorted clear multiple arc system with a counter-
spectra of several arclets, and got two images detected by Fort et al. (1989). tts image or possibly a parity change be-
source redshift measurements with a B-magnitude reaches 22.7, but the sur- tween the images.
secure determination. The first one is face brightness is only 25.5 mag. arc-
located near the central cD and pre- ~ec-~ A . spectrum was obtained with
3. Gravitational Lensing and
-
sents the spectrum of an WSa galaxy
redshifted at z 0.702. Its colours are
redder than those of the duster
EFOSC, with the tentative detection of
absorption lines giving a preliminary
redshift of 1.305 (Mellier &t al. 1991). The
Orstant Galaxies
The sources of the gravitational ares
member, contrary to the other known [Oll] line was then predicted at a and arclets are potentially a very useful
arcs. The fact that the cluster redshift is wavelength of 8590 A. Our last data sample of very distant galaxies, from
only 0.1 7 also favours efficient magnifi- collected in December 1991 on EFOSC which we k g i n to gather extensive
cation on rather tow redshift sources. using a rism wltll a higher dispersion spectrophotometric data. At least ten of
The second arctet is very blue and it lies 1
(R150,3 per pixel) are rather inconclu-
sive: no emission line is visible at the
them are presently spectroscopicalty
confirmed and the spectra generally in-
around the second brightest galaxy. A
strong emission line has been detected expected wavelength, and the con- clude information an the continuum or
at 7580 A with an underlying blue con- tinuum level is only at 1 o above zero. the large-scale spectral energy distribu-
-
tinuum, giving an identification of the
[0I[ 1 3727 line at z 1.034. More data
are being analysed on this cluster, main-
Anyway, even if the recishi of A5 is not
confirmed, the photometric information
available makes this object very peculiar
tion (Table 1).
We must also consider the possibte
selection biases Introduced in the sam-
ly by multl-colour photometry used on and exciting. The colour indices (0-R) ple before any analysis and compari-
the numerous populations of very faint and (R-K) are very blue, the continuum sons with other surveys. The arcs and
arclets, in order to evaluate their "photo- in the optical range is flat and feature- arclets are generally detected by their
metric redshift" distribution. less. It is now quite unprobable that this blue colour (0-R < 1) with respect to the
Table 1. Summty of the me^ swvey ofarcs and a f c M tent &her with a non-evolutlonary mob
el of galaxy or a model with a single
Gtusmr b 4 0 R B-R R-K pB y &I, & initial burst of star formation. Thls prob-
A370 640)' 0.3740.725 21.1 19.4 1.7 4.1 24.6 12 23.8 22.1 &ly m a n s that the history of star for-
A370 @5Ia 0.374 1.3057 22.7 22.3 0.4 -3.0 25.4 B 24.7 242 matlon in these galaxies 16 rather ccn-
C12244& 0.338 2 B 7 21.2 20.4 0.8 3,O 2S.3 20 24.8 23.7 tlnuous, up t~ a redshlft of about I.
M9d 0.231 0.913 21.9 20.0 1.9 4 2 25.3 12 24.8 22.7
AM18 (# 3 w a178 0,702 24.3 21.4' 2.9 - 25.0 4 253 22.9
Ant8 {# 289)' 0.176 1.034 22.5 21.7" 0.8 - 242 5 24.2 B.4
AQE!N ' 0206 0.771 23.6 23.1 0.5 3.5 25.5 4 25.1 24-8
0.391 1
~ 1 ~ 4 + 1 6 5 4 ~ 23.0 22.3 0.7 3.3 25 4 24.5 23.8 1 have presented In this article the
- a 232
~ 5 0 (amoa-24)'
6
A2t63 (All7
Mi63 MY
0.321 0.917 21.0
0.203 0.742 2442
0.203 0,728 23,1
19.8
21 -8
21.2
1.2
2.4 --
4.0
-
- 3 25.4
3 24.;)
22.0
29.0
22.4
status of the survey in 1992, and I
should emphasize the fact that the ln-
f .9 crease of the m p l e d arcs with a
'Gunnt filter: 'MI etal., 198RSMMbretal+.t99l: apeitbet al,. 1991:'iWldetaL. 1 9 R f l l d d . , -re mdshift measurement ie very
1991; Qlwd 1992. p W n t ; ' S a d 1 8.,Arnaud M.. b c h l b h y M., M&ez Q, in prepmation. Jaw, due to the dlffieulties of the obser-
vations and the long exposure times
involved for these faint objects. But the
detection of new arcs and arclet can-
didates still goes on, especially in the
redder duster members but thL is not 4 Infrared Photometryof Large framework of the ESO Key Progmme
afways the case (w for example the Arcs "Arcs and arclets surveymm i the simllar
"red arc" in A2218, Pel16 et al. 1992). in order to Increase We observed one at GFHT. We expect some new,
More important is the fact that tha sam- spectfal range of the galaxies, a photo- m y exciting data over the next year. In
ple is limited In surface brightness more
rnetrlc survey of the arcs has been p r - particular, we are very excited by the
than in magnitude; this Es due to the fact fortned by out colleagues from Durham new arc system dis~overedIn the dus-
that to detect the conttnuurn of the
@JQ in the K band (Smdt et al., 1992). ter MS2137-26 (Fort et at. 1W2, Fig-
spectra of thew objects in a reasonable ure 3): a long tangential arc has been
The main advantage of the band at
exposure time implies that the surface detected as welt as the first case of a
2.2 pn is that it scans a portion of the
brightness does not acead p~ = 25.5.
spectrum damlnatd by the old stellar radial arc candidate. This peculiar lens-
Rernembw that in gravbgonal lensing.
population, and is more h d i c a t h of the Ing cofl~urationhas been expected for
surface bri~htness is c o n w e d and history of star formation than blue pho- a tong tim, but as radlai Images are
that magnMc&~oo means extension of
tometry, vwy sensiave to w e n t star supposed to form near the cluster
the image ofthe source, Finally the sam- firmation. Anyway, the combinertion of centre, in mast cases t h q fall in the
ple is only based on galaxies with red- both magnitudes a$ well as the redshift envelope of tho giant cmtral galaxies. In
shift larger than 0.7 h u s e It roughly indieation give a g o d tool to study the the case of MS2137-23, the radial arc
mrrespndrr to the minimum reMR distant galaxies and their entire spectral candidate was detected by Its blue czoC
above which lensing is efficient, far a content. Then it is shown that dthough our, and a modelling of the gravitational
typical deflector at a redshift of 0.2 to most of the the have blue d o u r Indb potential of the cluster was proposed by
0.4 @so, 2r~lBt811.
ces,none of them remain undetected in Mellier et al. (1992)which takes tnt6
But the sources of the arcs belong to K. But forth- atz > I , the old popula- account a large number of observational
the family af FIELD galaxles (which are don do& nQt contribute significantly to parameters. The spechsoopic confir-
not detected by their radio mission for the K flux, so the sample is not consis- mation of the radial image would fix one
example), and their intrinsic mag-
nitudes, c o m t e d from the gravitational
rnagnlfibation,arb in the range 124; 25)in
B. This ranae is at laast one mmnitude
fainter than-the magnitude rmg&d the
deepest spectrascopic suweys of field
galaxies perfoned by Cowie et at.
(1991) for exampie. So It is interesting ta
explow the redshlft distribution which is
centred around 1 In our sample. One
should not& for example that with the
exception of the pecufiar w e of
C12244-02, about 70% of the galaxies
have a redshifl smaller than 1, and the
medim mdsh'ift Is 0.9. Moreover, in view
of thdr spectra, these ob- are not
obserwed in a phase of violent star for-
mation altlsough mission lines typical
of HI1 regions are present in most of
ham. Moreaver, when we have high-
resolution Images of the giant arcs, we
often see sub-structures insidethe arcs.
This still preliminary rewlt could sug-
gest Jfhe4 that we see mrging Figure 3 Imge dfhearc system in MSafST-23 (z=0,3f &cawed dwiq a run at the lVrr
at large z or that inside the d i s m galax- in ~ u g u s tfsiIW m u e y - m m e "wswvw in dustersn. m& resofutfon -/
Is disks or spiral arms am already show evfdeoce fora bfue "Widarc" near@ central galaxy, the nmt ease ever d e k W of this
formed. paculiat le#lsi~gm ~ u m t m
of the still unknown parameters, in- The use of the gravitational telescope Guiderdoni, B., Rocca-Volrnerange B., 1987,
creasing the number of constraints of for the study of distant galaxies appears A& A188,I.
the model. to k a powerful and original tool, which Ellis R.S., Allin~ton-Smlth,J.R., Smail I.,
1491, M.N. R.A.S. 249, 184.
For the arclets or Uw weakly magnified is probably not yet fully used. for exam
Fort B., Prieur J.L. Mathez G., Melller Y.,
galaxies which are too faint to be ob- pls, we can also expect to find some Swcall G., f 988, A & A 200, L17.
served spectroscopically, we also ex- "exotic" magnified objects, such as very Fwt B., Le Borgne J. F., Mather O., Mellier Y.,
p t some progress by using m u l t i d - distant quasars (kBorgne et d., 1890) Pkat J. P. Soucail G.,Pellb R., Sanahuja
our photometric data spread over a l a w or we hope to "see" some spatlal struc- B., IBSO, The -62, 11.
spectral range, such as B, R and I col- tures in galaxies at r = 1 through the Fort 8.. Le Fhre O., Hammer F., Cailloux M.,
ours. In W case we can compare the
colwrr indices d the objects with the
predictions of spectrophtmetric mod-
opened for us a new window in the z 1
Universe!
-
distortion of the clusters. The arc survey 1892, &J., submitted.
Kassida A., Kwner I., Blandford R.D., 1992,
M.J.,In press.
W i d a A,, Kovner I., Fort B., 1992, Ap.J. In
els of galaxy evolution, in order to evalu- press.
ate a "photornetdc redshift". This Lynds R,, Petmian V., 1986, BAAS, 18,
method Is being calibrat6d with the 1014.
known arcs, and we are conscious that it I wish to thank all my colleagu~from Le Borgne J.F., Pelld R., Sanahuja B.,
is only useful in a statldcal way, when a the Twlouse-Barcelona group, namely Swcall G., Mellier Y., Breare M., 1990,
large number of arclets is being o b B. Fort, H. Bonnet, J.P. Kneib, J.F. A & A 229,113.
served. The preliminary results of the LeBorgne, G. Mathez, Y. Mellier, R. Mellier Y., Fort E., Soucell G., Mathez G.,
method, appliedinthe fietd of A370 show Pe116, J.P. Picat and B. Sanahuja with Cailloux M., 1991, Ap.J. 380,334.
that most of the galaxies have colours whom Ihave worked on arcs and lenses Melller Y., Fort B., Kneib J.P., 1992,M.J.. in
compatible with galaxies at redshift for many years in such a friendly envi- press.
Peltb R., la Borgne J.F., Soucail G., Mellier
around 1, reinforcing the results pre- ronment] Also many thanks to our col- Y., Sanahuja B.,1991, Ap.J. 388,405.
sented above (Fortet al., in preparation), labrators T. Tyson (Bell Labs), G. Pelt6 R., Le Borgne J.F., Sanahuja B.,
last but not lead, in a few optimal Bemstein (Tucson), R. Ellis, M. Fitchstt Mathez G., Foe B., 1992, A & A, sub-
cases, we expect to get a complete set of and I. Smail from Durham for all the data mitted.
data In some clusters: high-resolution X- provided and the exciting dlscussions Small I,, Etlis R.S., Aragbn-Gslamanca A,
ray map with ROSAT, muttiplearcs and a we had about observations of gravita- S o u d l G., Mellier Y., G i r d E., 1W2,
lot of arclets and weakly distorted im- tional lenses. M,N. R.A S, in g m .
ages of background galaxies for a recon- SoucaEt GI., Fort B., Mdlier Y., Pieat J.P.,
1987, A & A 172, L14.
struction of the 20 gravitational potential Soucail G., Mellier Y., fort B., Mathsz G.,
of the Dark Matter from the centre to the References Cailloux M., 1988, A & A iQ1,L19.
external radius of the cluster. The red- Brurual G., C M o t S , 1992, submltled to Swcafl G., Fort B., 1991, A& Am, 23.
'shi of the giant arcs is in this case 4.J. Tyson J.A., I=, Ad %, I.
fundamental in order to fix the scaling of Cowle LL,Songalla A,, Hu E. M., 1981, N8- Tyson J.A., Vatdes F., Wenk R.A., 1990,
the potential in the lens modellings. tun3 354,460. Ap. J. 549, Li.
1. Introduction lines provide typi&i vilues of NN =I 014 mate of the cloud sizes has been ob-
An important source of information on atoms ~ r n and - ~ b = f l u = 20-30 km tained by Smette et al. (1991) from the
the distribution and the physical state of s-' (Carswelt et al. 1987, 1991) corre- spectra of a gravitationally lensed high-
the intergalactic medium (EM) up to
redshift z= 5 is provided by the study of
spondent to T, - 2-5 x 1O4 K, assum-
ing thermal broadening. However,
redshifl quasar UM673 (&, = 2.7). They
derive lower and upper limits of 12,?!I;
the absorption spectra of high redshift Pettini et al. (1390)claim typical b values kpc and 160h z kpc respectively, for the
quasars. The crowd of narrow absorp- as low as b = 17 krn s-I and a tight diameter of spherical clotlds, or 24 kpc
tion lines seen shortward of the QSO correlation between b and NHIparame- and 320 kpc, for oblate spheroids with
Lyman-u emission is thought to be due ters which suggests lower temperatures an axis ratio < 0.1.
mainly to Lyman-a absorptions caused and would imply a further important Under these conditions, gravitational
by intervening clouds along the line-of- constraint on the physics of the clouds. energy is overwhelmed by thermal ener-
sight (Lynds 1974: Sargent et al. 1980). More data are necessary to resolve this gy and the clouds coutd be confined by
Direci measures of column densities controversy. a hotter, highly ionized and diffuse IGM
and doppler widths of the absorption The most recent and accurate esti- if non-baryonic dark matter does not
quasar atmrptlon spectra pkiiularly
suitable to inve8tfgate the ptryslcal
propert186 of the diffuse and clumpy
components of the IGM.
As an example, we present a high
resolution spectnrm (R = 22,000)of the
quasar (22126-158 at r = 3,27, extend-
ing from 4500 to 7000 A, and show how
we om extract crucbl Information like
the density of the diffuse neutral hydro-
gen and the dwrlbution of densltl, and
temperature of the Lyman-a clouds.
collect a homcgeneous sample of Figure 2: A selected region in the Ly-a forest, with the fined profiles.
example, adoptlng ionization equilib-
rium with J-= = 1 and an IGM ternpea-
ture0fT,~,~2xl0~Katz=3wefjnd
QIOM = 0.006-0.013 for our best fit and
1 o GP estimate respectively (Giallongo,
Cristiani and Trhese 1992).
This is the first direct measure of the
GP opacity carried out using high-reso-
lution quasar spectra with good relative
flux calibration as can be obtained from
the NTT+EMM1 echelle-mode config-
uration.
- -
of the spectra has been obtained st the contribution and the GP opacity due to tines whose central relath intsnsi is
resolution R 22,000 and is shown in diffuse hydrogen absorption: r = z ~ p u r ~ , less than (1-20) are selected to form a
mguw 1 smoothed to 10& for illustra- and can be measured once the quasar complete sample. It is clear that a
tive purpose. The S/N ratio ran@$ from continuum has been eshbllshed. threshold of this type corresponds to a
6 to 12 In the Ly-a forest region. From composite quasar spectra and well-defined locus in the h 1% NH1 -
a21 26-158 had previously been ob- from Fiure 1 it can be shown that them plane (b is in km 9-l and NHIin ~ r n - ~ .
sewed by us at low resolution (-- 2!5 4, are few regions which can be assumed The usual x2 fitting procedure is
udng the B & C spectrograph at the as repmentathe of the true continuum adopted to deblend the line profilea
2.2-rn ESO/MPI Megoope at La Silla on level. The region between Lya and CIV (Carswell et at. 1987,1991). The number
September 3, 1989. Two exposures of emissions is affectgd by the presence of of components is assumed as the
30 min each were taken with a 5 arcsec weak emission lines whose broad wings minimum which gives a probability of
wide dk in the spectral range 3300- tend to overlap (01 1302, Cll 1335, SiiV random deviation P > 0.05. An example
8650 A. A standard reduction was 1400) and the region betwsen CIV and of the resulting profiles is s h o w in Fig-
carried out with the long-slit package of CIII] emissions is affected by Hell 1640 ure 2. In general this objective proce-
MIDAS. The absolute flux calibration and Olll] 1663 and by the bIue end of the dure is satisfactory though, in some
wan obtained obsedng the standard blended Fell 2000 complex. With this cases,lines with a malt number af pix-
star U)S 7498.
The two spectra have then been com- Figure I(a, -0.62).
pared, finding that, apart from the dilk-
-
caution the Wed power-law is shown in d s and poot S/N ratio are classified as
JngIa although they clearly appear as
At this point, regions free of strong double from visual inspection.
mce of a factor 100 in resolution and a absorption Ilnes, where the r.rn.s.fluctu- After removing metal line systems,
renormalbation factor close to unity, ation about the mean flux becomes mn- which are w i l y Identified through the
there was a Wect mrmpmdence sistent with noise statlstlcs,are selected observation of CIV doublet seen
within the noise. The red part h > 7000 to estimate the GP depression. The longward of the QSO Lya emission,
a) of the low-resolution spectrum has power-W continuum estirn- long- we obtaln, in the region from 4750 to
then been appended (after renormaliza- ward of Lya emlssion is extrapolated in 5200 A, a complete sample of Lya lines
tion) to the ecfielle spwtrum as shown the Lyman-a forest and compared with whose distribution in the b - log NHI
in Figure 1. Ute local continuum level of the selected plans Is shown in Figure 3. Two curves
Re~CBS
Elanse, K. et sl. 1983, "MIDASnln Pmc. of
DEWS, Zdch, 87.
-
FQure 4: Simulated blend of two lines with b 50,log = 14.I , by I A, with W =
6. DaW curve: profile of the lndlvidml components, Continuous curve: single line f i
Carswell, R.F. et at. 1987, M.J. 31% 708.
Carswell, R.Faet at. tBQ1, Ap.J. 371,36.
D'Worico, 8. lW0, The Messmgsr61.51.
' b = 35 and log NM 5 15.7.
profile, wih Giallongo, E, Cristlani, S. and Them D.
1992, Ap.J.L Qnpress).
Gunn, J.E. and Peterson, B.A. 1965, Ap.J.
$42, 1633,
lower curve corresponds to a central not uniformly distributed in the same Lynds, CR. i971,Ap.J. 1g4 U9.
flux of 0.1 where the noise level be- range of b occupied by unsaturated Madau,P.1982,Ap.J.I., Ll.
comes comparable to the signal and lines. In particular, the absence of clear- Osttlker, J.P. and Ikeruchl, S. 1B83,Ap.J.2@,
lines start to saturate, In the range of b ly single llnes with b < 20 and log N, m.
o o n s l d d lines on the right of this > 13.5 is not due to any bias. Moreover, Pettinl,M.etal.IWO, M.N.R.A.WW,545.
c u m cauld be unresolved blends. It is almost all the saturated features appear Wes 1 W M.N.RaRS.218,25P.
m n t , W.LW. et d. 1880,Ap.J.S.42,41.
clear that unsaturated lines show a tight as unresolved blends and the reality of W r t e , A. et al. 1992, M.J. 38% 39.
correlation which reflects the selection lines with lw NHI> 14 In our spectrum Is Steidel, C.C. and Sargent, W . t W . 1M7,
effects (Iinwdection + non-saturation). cast In serious doubt. The same cauld &.J. W8,L11.
However, the saturated lines, which are be me for lines with b > 35. Tr- D., Gidlongo E,, and Camufeni L
clearly identified In our spectrum, are According to this Interpretation, most 1992, Ap. J. (In p m ) .
evolutionary status of the galaxy popu- that ellipticals always reside In high-
Clusters of galaxh are recognized to lation. density regions like the core of the cbs-
be the basic building blocks tracing the Moreover, it is relevant to clarify ters while spirals better trace the low-
large-scale structure in the Universe. whether or not clusters are dynambdly density peripheral regions (Oressler
Thanks to the large number of coeval relaxed structures and how environ- 1980).
objects all at the same distance we get mental conditions constrained galaxy Both the dynamical and photomaric
more favourable statistics allowlng to formation among the different mor- questions have much in common as en-
explore in much better detail the phological types. We know for instance vironment conditions might have influ-
false correlation (see for example Koo have been observed down to the limiting
I988 for an exhaustive dlscussion). In
the last years however a number of ob-
magnitude r -
24. Data reduction and
systematic photometry in the flelds have
servations converged detecting such a been performed using MIDAS utilities,
component in the population of many and the implemented package INVEN-
clusters at high redshift confirming that TORY (West and Krusrewski 1981). A
despite any possible complication the parallel investigation including multi-ob-
effect is real (Butcher and Oemler ject spectroscopy of selected relevant
1984b, Luppino et al. 1991, Molinad et candidates in each field had also been
al. 1990, Newberry et al. 1988). carried out allowing to explore In more
Three main spectral features seem to detalt the absolute spectral energy dls-
characterize blue galaxies: Ii) Most of tribution of the galaxies.
them display emission lines (typically Although of the greatest importance,
[Oil], [OJ11] and Hf))as found for instance the spectrosmpic approach cannot be
in the star forming spiral galaxies widely pursued as it is largely time-con-
(Butcher and Oemler 1984a); (ii)strong surning. Even fully exploiting the
Balrner lines in absorption are often de- EFOSC MOS mode we need about 4-7
tected superposed to a normal E-type hours integration time to obtaln spectra
continuum (E+A galaxies of Dressier of acceptable signal-to-noise for ob-
and Gunn 1982, 19831, (iii) when high- jects fainter than 20th magnitude. For
resolution imaging is available Vhomp- comparison, good photometty down to
son 1988) most blue galaxies seem to magnitude 24 can be achieved in about
display a late-type morphology with 1 hour total exposure time. Our analysis
signs of possible interaction. rests therefore basically on the mul-
On the basis of our present knowb ticolour photometry using spectral infor-
edge It is certainly hard to disentangle mation as a check of our inferences.
the various mechanisms leading to such Through comparison with evolutio-
profound differences in the population nary population synthesis models
of late-type galaxies at early epmhs. (Buuoni 1988,1989) we intend to study
This is certainly a problem since it has to how consistently photometric proper-
be established how such late-type ties (i.8. magnitudes and colours) of
galaxies can "vanish" or transform so galaxies in clusters do evolve in a "regu-
drastically by the present time.
0 1 2 Alternatively, one should conclude
g-i that looking at high redshlft in some way
we are selecting clusters which are in-
Figure 1: (g-r) @-I) diagrams for the clustm trinsically different from the locd &am-
A3284, 2158M351 and 1141-283. AN of th@ ple. One reason could be that sinm they
objeefs w/th complete photometry are In- are mainly optically selected, the more
cluded in the plots. The encircled clump of compact ones are strongly preferred
objects, moving to redder colours with in-
creasing redshift, /$ due to the cluster ellipti- (Cappi et al. 1989). Moreover, clusters
cal galaxy population. The redshifts of the with active galaxies could be more
dusters are mpectively 0.15, 0.45 and 0.50. prominent. Finally, due to k-correction
effects those with a larger fraction of
spirals might become more visible with
increasing z (Coleman et al. 1980).
That high-redshift clusters might be
enced at the beginning the morphologi- somewhat different aggregates also
cal and photometric properties of the stems from an extended analysis by
galaxies. Therefore, studying cluster Newberry et al. (1988). In particular, it
galaxles we get both direct dues about appears that they display a larger vetmi-
their evolutionary status and about that ty dispersion (typically more than
of their parent clusters. 1000 kmlsec) and, statistically, a more
compact stnlcture.
2 The Blue Galaxies' Dilemma
3. The Project
One of the most intriguing and em-
barnassing problems when dealing with In 1986 we started a systematic sur-
the cluster galaxy population is that an
increasing fraction of blue galaxies 0.e.
vey of clusters of galaxies at intermedl-
ate and large redshift (0.15 < z < 0.6).
tllllllllllllllllll
0 1 2
bluer than expected for a population of Previous contributions to this long-term g-i
quiescent early-type galaxies alone) project can be found in Buuoni et al.
(1988), Molinari et al. (1990), Molinari et Figure 2: T w o d o u r diagram fw the main-
populate clusters at high redshift. This is
sequence stars (upper parno. In the lower
the so-called "Butcher-Oemler effect". at. (1992). paw the mlwr excumim for the d/fferent
Since spiral galaxies in the field are To date a homogeneous set of CCD galaxy morphobgical type3 8 function of
known to display similar colours, It has observations In the Gunn g, r, i system redshift (from z = O to I in the sense of
been first questioned that geometrical has been collected mainly uslng the inmasing g-i) are shown w'th the m r e d -
and projection effects as well as bad 3.6-m ESO telescope at La Silla equip- shlft d n k marked by filled dots (from Moli-
field subtraction could Induce such a ped with EFOSC. About ten clusters narl et al. 1M).
galaxies spread along a diagonal strip in
the diagram: (ii) the density along the
strip is not constant and one clearly
detects In each panel a clump of objects
(encircted in the figure) moving to redder
colours with increasing redshiff; (Ili) a tail
of a few faint objects L always present
redward the clump. Their apparent mag-
nitude is correlated with cotours, the
reddest ones being also the faintest.
A full comprehension of the diagrams
can be eased by comparing them with
the two panels of Figure 2. In the flrst
one we reported the locus expected for
Galactic field stars of different spectral
type while In the second panel we dis-
play the apparent colour excursion of
galaxies of different morphological
types with increasing redshlft. It is now
clear that the clump of objects observed
in the colour-colour diagrams is origi-
nated by early-type galaxies at a redshift
pertinent to that of the parent cluster.
Mwaover, as a general rule we can
note that foreground galaxies always lie
blueward of the colour of the main
clump due to the fact that E-galaxies are
systematically the reddest objects with-
synt in a given redshift. Accordingly, the faint
tail of red objects with g-i>2 is mainly
contributsd by field galaxies in the
background (at z >0.5) belonging to
early types (spiralscan never reach such
colours as displayed in Rgure 2). Also a
0 few distant QSQs might be expected to
lie tn this zone (Irwin at a!. 1991),
3000 4000 5000 6000 A complete support of the fact that
Wavelength (A) galaxies in the main clump of the (g-r)/
(g-i) diagram can be the true prcgen-
Figure 3: Observed and theoretfcal spsctral distribuiion of elliptical galaxies. In the upper panel itors of present-day ellipticals comes
low spectra d red galaxi= In the clustwA52B4 have beerr madded and raduc8d to restfrzme from the analysis of the spectra as
(six hours total exposure time with the €SO 3.6-m telwcope + EFOSC. Grism BS8900 with a
230hmm dispmim). me lower panel shows fix cornpatison an appropMe synthetic model
shown in Figure 3. Here, an averaged
fw a 15 Gyr slng1e bursf stellar population @om B m i 1989, hls model No. 10 in Table 8). spectrum obtained by summing up four
red galaxies in A3284 Is compared wlth
a synthetic model of a 15 Gyr burst
stellar population taken from Buaoni
lar" way following the prescription of seeing conditions. That is why we must (1988, his model No. 10 In Table 8).
stellar evolution. All those which devlaie rely on colours to identify galaxy types.
from the expectations wlll tell us some- A two-colour diagram could be used
effectively to discriminate between late-
5. What Contributesto the Blue
thing new, that is about events which
have perturbed and/or accelerated the type and early-type galaxies in distant
Excess?
normal course of the evolution. Thls clusters. Furthermore, combining it with A more simple approach to the study
mlght be expected especially at high a colour-magnitude diagram we can of the cluster galaxy population rests
redshift. also discriminate between fore- and also on the analysis of the single colour
background objects (respectively too distribution like in Figure 4. In the figure
bright and too faint to be members of we reported the g-i distribution ob-
4. Galaxy Type and Colour Segre-
similar apparent colour). On the basis of served for the clusters A32M. Gonsid-
gation accurate photometry we showed that ering all the objects available (thick line
A 25 kpc linear size galaxy at redshift
z in a q, = 0 Universe Is about
redshift of distant clusters (up to z
0.45) can be inferred from apparent
- in the figure] one clearly recagnizes the
major bump due to the early-type com-
I I I I I I I I t
with the limit where dwarf and non-
dwarf galaxies contribute at the same 0 .2 -4 .6
level to the luminosity function (Binggeli Z
we are not to univocdly Figure 5: Diagmm showing ffre fraction d blue galaxies &. @m dots am taken from Newberry
identify the real nature of the blue ax" et a.(1988, fhdr Fig. 2). filled square boftom left is the mean estimate for 8 low-redshin
cess. A more complete and dgep data-
base will dlow us to discriminate
-
clusters (up to r 0.08) from Butcher and Oemler (lQB4b).# l M dots am our data and refer to
the dustm ,43288,A3305, A1942 and 2158+0351 in order of increasing &shift.
Probing Beyond COBE in the Interstellar Medium
E. PAlAZZI, M. R. ATOLINI, N. MANDOLESI, lstituto T. E. S. R. E.,Bologna, Italy
P. CRANE, ESO
a
Introduction
The COSE satetlite, wlth Its instru-
ments, has provided new Insights info
the origin and evolution of the Universe.
The FIRAS (Far Infrared Absolute Spec- 6
trophotometer) has supplied the best
demomtaation that the Cosmic
Background Radiation is a blackbody
(Mather et al., 1990). The DMR pllfer- P
ential Microwave Radiometer) has pro-
vided what appears to be the first m a - 2
sumnsent of the structure in the angular u
distribution of the background radiation
(Smoot et al., 1992).
What more Is there to do and how can
2
it be done?
h i d e what may be done by subse-
quent satellttes, two important measure-
ments can be made using interstellar
thermometers. The first is to provide a
prectse Independentcheck on the absa- oo 10 a0 s3 40
lute calibration of the F I W spec-
trophotometer. The sgcoml and most figure 1: M e a s W 1-(CN} wlth the associated I a e m w imwshg HD nwnber of the
interesting from a cosmologfcal point of obsarved sters P am et al.1. 7313SOIMIlna nwemta tha CDBEmtt fw T w , T = 2.735 f
v i m is to d m o n m t e the hmogenetty 0.06 K, the deshedlkr@kthe w te d tmof the T,(CNJk ' a h , T-2.318 f K, the dashed
l
of the CBR radjatlon. A third pos~bjlity IIM IS tb ~ & h t e d d the T&C#) dm,T = 2818 f 0.018 K.
would be to verify the expansion of the
Universe via the (1 + z) dependence of
the temperature of the CBR.
One of the fundmentd assumptions means that an obaewer anywhere In the Soon after the discovery of the CBR, It
In current cosmotogical models is the Unlverse should measure the same glo- was recognized that the rotational excl-
homogeneity of the Unlv~rseand hence bal properties. Inparflcluar,thetempera- tatlon of interstellar CN could provide
of the CBR radlatlon. Homogeneity ture of the CBR should k the same. one of the best thennometem for deter-
mining the TcsR.Subsequently, Modern
techniques have pwhed the method
,,, , close to the preciston of the best
radlometers. Although the radlometers
are quite pmbe, they are only able to
call K - measure #le CBR temperature t d l y
- (= 1 AU of the Sun) and they depend on
saphtstlcaled and complicated methods
far calibration.
- On the other hand, Interstellar CN,
- whbh has been seen In semi clouds
- withln 1 Kpc, Is able to report to us the
- intensity of the CBR radlatlon field in Its
- vicinity. In addition, the actual tempera-
- ture determination dies on a rather dl-
- rect technique,
-
W
-
- - CN Measurememofthe CBR
- - HomogendtywlthlnIKpc
.rt - -
- mt rani.= c i w
mpaenm - A recant aornpIlation palazni et al.,
-
-
1992) of the measurementsof CN excita-
-- SK 106
- tlon temperatures for bright s t m ha8 not
shown any large dlffemncm Inthe TCmin
I I I ~ ~ I I ~ I I I ~ I I I ~ I + I
.Z
zmm rn 334 ~ ~ 3 6 3938 any dimtion prwlding the largest body
F ~ S I L I I~ ~ W I of data to wppott the hmogenelty of
N K bwerds ~ & S K~ ~ ~ ( s lQ
ngure2: tntersteikr~a -w q , ~a2pehnk the CBR even 1only within about I Kpc.
CIwd mponents am well d i n s t i n g u i ~ , However, most of the CN excitation tem-
peratures appear atightly above (= 80 f
30 mK)the COBE measurement of TCsR
= 2.735 K (Fig. 1). A possible explanation
of this e x c m would be the presence of
local excltation mechanisms (such as
oolllsional excltation). None of the data
necessaryto quantify t h ~ mechanisms
e
are of sufficient qualliy to provlde a clear
explanation of the observed difference.
Improved observations would be
needed to obtain better data on local
conditions In molecuhr clouds and on
CN absorption llne measurements to
show if the excess In the CN excitation
tempemture is really a result of collisional
excitation.
Homogeneitywlthln 50 Kpc
A very real posstbility exists to deter-
mine TeeRIn the Magellanic Clouds If an
appropriate sight line wlth sufficient CM
column density can be found. Such a
measurement isjuBf within the posslbillty
of the largest telescopes In the southern ngum 3:Inmtdbr CN toweds the star SK 106 (SMCI, Tha p d t l o n d the line m'mides with
hemisphere. on@ of the strwrgw ccrmponents of the IntersteIlar Ca /I K In the Small M ~ I I m i Cloud.
c The
We have initiated a prqramme for upper llmlt fof the CN column density i8 1 x 10''
obwwlng a sample of lines of sight to-
wards bright and reddened 0and B stars
In the Magellank Clouds. The observa- cltatlon mechanisms such as colllslonal References
tions were performed In October 1991 at processes or local UV field are difficult to
the 3.6-m ESO telescope (La Sllla, Chile) evaluate. NeverthJess, a determination
uslng the CASPEC spectrograph with of Tcsdr) c (1 + ~~TCBR(Z 011 at any Bahcall, J.N., and Wolf, RA., 1988, &.J.,
the 31.6 linelmm grating plus the long redshift would be very difficult to explain 152,701.
camera in the wavelength range in the context of the standardcosmologl- Magain, P., and Glllet, D., 1987, Ask.&. Lett.,
380d-450d cal scenarios. Though t h y are affected 184, L5.
Preliminary results show that the Call by large uncertainties, the exlstent upper Mather, J.C.,at al., 1990, ApJ. Lett.,=, L37,
H and K interstellar lines (bath galsctte Meyer, D.M., Black, J.H., Chaffee, F.H. Jr.,
limlts to T=BR(Z)do not contradict the Foltz, C,B., and York, D.G., 1988, Ap-J.,
and Cloud components) are present In all present theories.
the observed stellar spectra (Flg. 2).
30Br L37.
In summary, excfting and important Palaut, E, Mandolesi, N., and Crano, P.,
Molecular absorption lines of CH and CN cosmological rmults are possible from a 1992, WJ.,Oet. 10,1992.
are marginally visible (Fig, 31, represent- careful study of the Interstellar ther- Smoot,G.F.,etal., 1902, Ap.J. Lett,,598, L?.
ing the first detection of the CN species mometers avallable to us, Wamplar, E.J., 1990, Ap.J., 363,40.
In the Magellanlc Clouds interstellar
medium. Detectionof interstellar CH and
CH+ has been reported only towards
supernova 1987 by Magdn and GiHet
(1987).
Additional obwwing tlme Is needed New ESO Conference and Workshop Proceedings
for improving the molecular detection, In The PrOcedings of the ESO Workshop on HIGH-RESOLUTION SPECTROSCOW
particularCN for the measurement of the WITH THE VLT have iust become wallable. The SlO-page volume, edited by M.-H.
TeBRat 50 Kpc from us. Uldch, [8 offered at a price of DM 45.-.
The following publications we In press and will become available end of September/
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Homogeneity on Large Scales ESO CONFERENCE ON HIGH-RESOLUTION IMAGING BY INTERFEROMETRY
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excltatlon of other molecular rotation or 1320 pagw. The prlce Is DM 110.-.
atomic fine structure lines at quite large 4th ES0/8f-ECF DATA ANALYSIS WORKSHOP. Thls 188-page volume, edlted by
distances (Bahdl and Wolf, 1968). In- P. J. G d t and R.C.E. de Ruijsscher, will be avallableat a price of DM 25.- (all prices
deed a few reports (Meyer et A,, 1986; include packing and surface mall).
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bgen reportedfor the excitation of CI and attention of
CII flne structure Hnes. ESO, Financial Ssrvices
In cant& to the measurements in the Karl-Schwamchild-Str.2
Magellanic Clouds the measurements at 0 8 0 4 6 Oarchlng b, Munchen, Germany
high mdshif! introduce a rather large Please do not forget to Indicate your complete a d d m and the tltle of the Prooeed-
uncertainty In the local condition of the Ings.
specim absmed, for example local ex-
IRAC2 at the 2.2-m Telescope
A. MOOR WOOD, G.FINGER, P. BIEREICHEL, B. DELABRE, A. VAN DIJSSELDONK,
G.HUSTER, J.-L. LIZUN, M. MEYER, ESO, Garching,
H. GEMPERL€IN, A. MONETI, ESO, La Silla
ESO's new infrared camera, IRAC2, is inner cryogen tank respectively. Figure 3 plexer which is structured in four quad-
equipped with a Rockwelt 256x256 pix- is a photograph of the cooled optical rants having separate output amplifiers.
el NICMOS3 array for imaging through assembly showing the filter wheel on the It is controlled and read by a programm-
broad and narrow band filters between left and, on the right, the objective wheel able, VME-based, detector controller
1 and 2.5 ym and a K (2.2 pm) band which is largely hidden by the detector w h i ~ hhas been developed in Garching
scanning Fabry Perot. A preview of mount. and contains four AID converters allow-
some of its capabilities was already giv- The NICMOS3 array is a hybrid device ing simultaneous reading of the four
en in the June 1992 Issue of the consisting of a HgCdTe diode array quadrants. This system also contains a
Messenger (68,42) where we showed a bonded via indium bumps to a multi- Motorola 68030 processor which runs
2.1 pm broad band image of a r = 0.2
galaxy cluster and a narrow band
Fe11](1.64 pm) mosaic image of the SNR
RCW103 obtained during the first test
on the 2.2-m telescope in May. In this
article we give a description of the in-
strument and its observing modes to-
gether with performance figures derived
from the test data and some additional
images selected to illustrate some of its
posslble scientific applications.
1. Description of IRAC2
Figure 1 is a photograph of IRAC2
mounted on h e F/35 Infrared adapter at
the Cassegrain facw of the 2.2-rn tele-
scope.The camera itself Is housed in a
modified Oxford Instruments 4-1 liquid
helium cryatat which is partially hidden
by the attached motor control and de-
tector acquisition electronics. (Although
the MICMOS3 array has a long
wavelength cut-off at - 2.5 pm and
requires cooling to only -6OK using
pumped liquid nitrogen, a He cryostat
was selected in order to keep open the
possibility of Installing arrays operating
out to 5 pm In the same carnera in the
futufk) The black una sandwiched be-
tween the camera and the adapter
houses the scanning Fabty Perot eta-
lon(s) and remotely controlled exchange
mechanism used to rotate A in front of
the entrance window.
Figure 2 shows the layout of the cam-
era optics. The input doublet field lens,
which also acts as the cryostat entrance
window, provides for a 70-mm diameter
(-3 arcmin.) field and reimages the te-
lescope pupil at the cold 4.5-mm diame-
ter cold stop just behind a 24-position
filter wheel. The field is re-Imaged on the
detector by one of the five remotely
selectable objectives mounted on a
wheel. In order to minimize flexure, the
camera Itself is rigidly attached to the
outer vacuum housing vla glass thermal
Isolators and the optics and detector
mount are cooled via thermal connec-
tions to the inner tadlation shield and Figure 1: IRAC2 mounted an the F/55 adsptw at the 2.2-rn telscope.
F I 2: CrpticaI
~ layout of the camera. Tms inpul doublet covers a 70-mm (3-mm.) diameter Hlferdand acts both as fhe h l d lehs and the
c-t wlndow. A 24 pdsrtion flmwheal (not show??)is h t e d in bnt of the caldpupl stop and the fiwe remotely interchangeable
mounted on a whew/ behind ths pup//stop p m v h for magniffcatima kom -0.14- i . 1 "/pixeI,
detector pre-pmslng software under pis. The arrangement used durhg the HP370 which runs control software
the OSg operating system. This pro- test Is shown In Flgur84 but Is pmvl- written in Basic which was developed
c e w r r w i v e s command files specify- siond pending completi~nof a new originally only for laboratory testiw in
ing the required detector set-up from standard u r n interface and VME based Garehing. TMs wrksta8on is connected
the instrument workstation; transmits motor control system on La Sllla. Instnr- to the instrument via CAMAC for the
real time Images to a monitor in the msnt set-up and control is via typed motor controls, a GPlB bus for the Fabry
c o w room and sends images, with or mmmands and menu bars on the Perot control and ethernet fibre optics
wlthout m-averaging, to the Instrument
workstatton. The real time display is par-
tlcularty useful during set-up on an ob-
ject field as pixd values and eoordlnates
can be measured and cut-levels set us-
ing only the w e . The observer can
set& from a variety of mad-out modes
including double and triple correlated
and multiple nondestructive sampling. A
novel variant of the latter mode, teeted
In May but not yet implemented in a very
user friendly way, also achieves partial
seeing correction by tracking a refer-
ence object In the field and applying a
shift and add alg~dthmto each non-
destructively read sub-image before so-
lution of the error equations for the inte-
gration ramps. At present, the minimum
time m i r e d to read out a full 256 x 256
-
image 1s 700 ms. A faster read-out
muld improve the performance of #e
real time shift and add mode and wuM
be implementad In the future by install-
Ing a faster pre-prooessw whlch is now
available.
In view of the plan to phase out the
HP 1000 series computers on La Silla
the user interface runs on a wolhsWon
and MIDAS is used on-line for data stor- Figure 3: 7he c-nk optcal#wrnbfy showing tfrs Mter whml on thekft end the abjat/ve
age, image display and quick-look and- wheel on the right Weft is WLIb hJdden by the detector m n t ,
links to the detector pre-prmor. lR4C2 chamcwwk
Tabla I:
There is also an FIS232 link to the
HPIODO telescope computer which Is
wed to step the secondary mirror dur-
Ing f m s exposures and to read coor-
dinates which are w d t h In the file
headers.The HW30 workstation is used
to run two parallel MIDAS -ions. One
of them is set in the background mode
and is used to display images (with or
wlthout background subtraction as re-
quested) and store them in the correct
format while the other is available for
Interactive image analysls using MIDAS.
The HP370 shouId become superfluous
once the new user Intetface is available
when both the control saftvvare and
MIDAS will run on the HW30 with a
separate XI 1 window terminal avaltable
for on-line analysis.
2 Obsewing Modes
IRAC2 providesfor imaging at a varIe-
ty of image scales through broad and
narrow band filters between 1 and
2.5 pm and a K(2.2 pm) band m i n g
Fabry mot W o n yiddlng R 1000.-
The available filters, image We6 and
corresponding field sizes are
summarized in Table 1. The scales A-D
are measured values derived From im-
ages of astrometric double stars. Al-
though objectives D and E should pro-
vide a drwlar 3' field limited by the
entrance window this is slightly vignet-
ted on two sides at present by the di-
chroic m i m In the F/35 adapter. For
b r o a d h d imaging. when badrground
noise dominates, It is recommended in
any case to use objective C (0.4#"/pixm)
in general. This objective ~ R the S high-
est efficiency, yields the maximum
square field and provides reasonable
sampling under average seeing mdi-
tions. Objective B(0.27Vplx.) can be
used when bettar samplinglspatialreso-
lutton Is more lrnpwtant than Reid.
The desired observing made, filter, ferentlal focus changes during the nigM waveIengths which are automatically
magnification and detector -em due to te1escop h p m t u r e changes writfen in the file headers.
are set via the workstation user inter- can be made uslng a ~allbrELtjoncuwe The detector set-up Includes sdec-
face. A present, h e standard modes are without needlq to repeat the star ma- tion of the m d mode; the on-chip inte-
{i)focus QI) DC observing (staring) and surements. A focus shift is required gration time PIT); the number of Integ-
(ill) Faby Perot scan. Chopping and when using the Fabry Perot. rations (NOIT) to be averaged in the pre
automatic beamswitching could be im- The DC M e used for obsming re- process~M o r e transmission to the
plemented but are not considered par- quires little explanation. Each image is workstation and the number of such
ticularly useful with this array. Real time WTW into a separate 819 with its own measurements to be made (cycles) and
shift and add is more complbted to identifier and a header which c o d m stbred In s e w 9 files. If In doubt, the
set-up and Is not yet available as a all the instrument and detwtor p a m w read-mode sh~#Idbe set to double-
standard mode. ters plus the time and telescope coor- correlatd. MuMple, non-destructive,
For focussing on a star the focus dinates. sampllng Is needed for the shift and add
mode Is used to automatically step the In the Fabty Perot mde the required W e and yields somewhat lower wad-
Mescope secondary mirror through a narrow band order isotatlng filter can be noise for long measurements but invd-
specifled range of p i t i o n s and record set manually or automatidy and both ves largertime overheads and increases
images which are displayed In a line at the filter transmission curve and the the amplifier glow in the comers of the
the end d the rneasument. The tieat wavelengths corrmpondng to the dlf- array. The main considerdons in
focus can then be determined by fsrent orders displayed on the screen. selecting DIT are that It should be shM
measuring the FWHM using MIDAS and
the secondary sei to that position. Dlf-
R sequence of images can be made
by entering a Ilst of the desired -
enough to avoid saturation (K 4 for DIT
1s with objective C) but long enough
63
polation/replacement using a bad pixel
mask.
-
cally such that DlTxNDrr was 2-5 rnln
and CYCtES 1. In order to remove
stars and achieve optimal sky subtrac-
don It is, in any case, necessary to have
several sky frames on different psi-
tions. For the optimal removal of bad
pixels it is also desirable to have several
object frames on different positions.
Pmcularly for faint source9 therfore the
best o b m i n g procedure b to combine
all requirements by making a serles of
exposures at telsscope positions sepa-
rated by 10-20 arcsac. on the sky. AIL
frames can then be used to derive the
mean sky with the stars r a m w d and,
after reregisteting, be combined into a
And object image in which bad pixels
haw been replaced with good ones
from other framm in the stack. This
technique was used to produce the
galaxy duster image reproduced in the
June 1992 Mr?ssenger. An alternative,
used for several of the test images re-
produced here, is to use the same o b
ject position but different sky positions
or, in th% limit, just single object and sky
frames. This simpliis the data reduc- Figure 5: K band Image of the m of the gMuk?f cIustw M15. Integmtim time was 60s
tion @mtlcularlythe on-line quick loak (30x2s) on a~wandsky a d the s& 15 ua7"lpiXal.
Figure 0: NGC5247. K4e left panel is a smoothed K' w l c Image; centre panel is the K' image after subtfactian of a fit to the Inner galaxy disk
component and the right panel is an R-band image obtained by scanning the POSS Eplate. N L down and E is to the left. The infrared i m p
have been constructedfmm four 1208 ( I Ox 125)exposum with the O.49'Yplxd objective on each of two overlapping fie/& on th galaxy and six
sky exposures of the same duraflon offset several arcmin. from the galaxy. Only the tram@ showing systematic differences less than 1 % were
used and stars in the sky frames were fitfed with gaussians and m o v e d individmUy before subfractfw,from the object frames. Smoothing
using the MIDAS adaptive lglter technique was applied to enhence the vrtsibllity of low surface brightness features. Not8 that a spur off the
northern spiral arm is only ~isiblein the POSS U i m e and not K' suggasting that It is not part of the grand design density wave 1n the galaxy.
from overlapping images ( s e ~9.g. some instabilities at the edges cauld be rather sharply defined strip along one
the RCW103 Image in the June present. These appear to be variations edge. Curiously, however, this effect
MessengM, however, suggest that at th6 few % level and are confined to a appears on different, orthogonal, edges
in the J and K bands! Pendinn further
investigation we assume thw- are in-
trinslc to the array 0.0. as opposed to
variattons in the background Illumination
which would be hard to explain).
4. Sample Images
A K' (2.1 pn) image of the z
galaxy cluster A1689 and a narrow-
- 0.2
' Conclusions
J The overall measured performance of
Figure 8: J image of the v~swflyobscured nucleus In the nmdy edge on galaxy NGC4945 lRAC2 is close to that ~ r e d i c t din ad-
made from three 120s (6x20s) exposures on the galaxy and two on the sky. Scale is o.W/ vance of the test and, although some
plxel. aspects still require further investiga-
(middle) and
-
Figure 10: Narrow-bend ;maps of the pkwtaty nebula tVGC6SW at
O.Z7"/p,x@ in the ISIW fl.96#nt) m m a l (top), FdIf P.WClmJ
(2.18 pm) b m lines. The upper and l o w images
were o b W N with the scanning Fabry Parot and a@ d i f f m t ?of
images measured wtth the e W n centred on the line wawlrnth and
in the ad-t coIlfInUum. 7 7 centre
~ image was o b t a M Wh the
namw bend Fe Ig f i I k and has been sky subtracted. The expo-
~
Figure 1 1 : Example of partial w i n g correction using the software
shift and add feature of the multiple non-destnrctiveread mode. The
upper and lower panels show the same smaN region (-3.5~3.57
36x36" K' image of the globular cluster MZ observed at d 14Wxel
of a
with and without real time application o f image shifts. The integration
time in both cases was 30s during which time the integration ramp
was non-destructively sampled every 700 msec. In the tracked case,
sum tim for each frame was # m i . (8x30s). blots the pro- each difference pair of non-destructively read images was shifted by
nounced, extended, Feld IIkmmis WM ate twf preserrl In the an amount corresponding to the movement of the brightest pixel in
Other lines. the reference star image before computing the slopes of the integm-
tion ramps.
8
A New 2048 x 2048 CCD for the CES Long Camera
S. DE/R/ESI, S. D'ODORICO1and R. REISS7
L. PASQUINll, H.W. DUERBECK~~~,
'European Southern Observatory; a~stronomischeslnstitut der Universifiit Munster, Germany
"
bility and performance of the systems.
The CCD belongs to a batch that ESO
-.
LJ
i
has procured from Ford Aerospace in
1991. This particular chip has subse- -10 . -
quently been lurnigen coated at E l 3 in / --
order to enhance its blue response. The
quantum efficiency curve is shown in
Figure 1. The 15-prn pixel sine is well 25
1
i
i -\ .
*\> . .-
/ A
*.
matched to the spectral and spatial res- 'Icl--tL-L----
\
olution given by the spectrograph. -\.
0
Results of the Tests 300 400 500 600 700 800 71:C I COO
Wavelength IA)
,3.B%
6450 4.6 %
rn 22%
No binning
Binning 2
-
--
- 4, d flve-minute normalized W r n of
the standard star HR 718 Is shown fn the
- region around 8092 A. This spactrum
has not b m flat field corrected and the
- variations in the continuum are of h
- order of 0.9 % or less.
tast but not least, in evaluating the
I I I I I I I I Instrumental peflormances, we have to
consider that almost the doubie of the
12 10 8 6 spectral covwag~is obbaind in ww
Magnitude frame;this feature is very ~mportantnot
only when the simultaneous absmation
Figure 2: Expmted W d m ws a function of sfeltar magnfiude and infegmtiPn t h . An d w e r a l llncts is required, but dsa in
eiti5emy of d B % at 6450 A is assum&. No slit b s w were applied Id the * o m ~ u f a f ~ . th~gecases where broad lins are ob-
w e d and a large coverage is essential
to determinethe continuum level.
As a scientific applica€ion,in Figure3,
lryr Mciendes given In Table 2 are in where N, Is the number of detected e-/
a 1-hour Ha spectrum of the recurrent
vmy good qreement with what b ex- slhbin for a star of magnttude m, T is
nova V745 Sco Is &own. Thii object
pectd from the ratio of the Ford and the integration time in hwrs, W is the
has a vlsual magnitude of 15.9 and an R
RCA CCD quantum fl~lencies, width of the spectrum In pixels, H, ts the
magnitude of 13.8, as measured from
The new conflguratlan has a lower RON, b the binning factor perpendicular
absolute cailbrated EFOSC spectra. The
overall ePficlency but in order to evaluate to the dipmion,and D the dark current
the iwtwrnent mrformmce, all the In e-ipkhwr. The points En Figure 2
CES spectrum in Flgure 3 shows that a
chmcten*~tic~ Of the detector mud be w w computed assuming the Ford
-
WN of 5 is reached in the ctmnthuurn
close to the Ha line.
Wen in amount; in particular its RON charadetistici; as given In Table 1 and
Considetbg dl the p w o u s points It
and Dark Current level. This is partiw- an overall efficiency of 446%. Atthough
lady important in the CES Long Camera, these numbew must be taken only as
may therefore be advisable to use the
tong Camera and the Ford detector
where the spectrum is spread In the indicattw (slit losses were not consid- l$o for absewatlons at red wavehgths
spatlal dlredlon over a conslderable ered), a, direct comparison with the per-
number of plxels (typic811y a), Wrth only fmances of the CAT + CES and RCA
8 e-/pix RON (compared wjth the 33 e-/ CCD can be perfomad. The two almost
and at lower resolution, for which the
Short Camera is now used 0.9. R
59000). On-chip binning and the ab-
-
pix of the RCA)the advantage of using constant lines in Figure 2 limit the loci of
the Ford with respect t0 the R W CCD equal pedonances between the old sence d fringes will compensate in
becomes prominent, at [east for all and new configuration, both for un- many types of observations the lower
effickcies of the Ford CCD and of the
fhose observations requiring intermedi- binned (continuws lin4 and binned
long Camera.
ate to high S/N ratios, Figure 2 show (dashed line) CCD's. For observations
the expected WM ratios as a function of requiting S/N ratlos lower than -260 in
integration time and stellar magnNudes. unMnnad mode and -130 with a bin- Advice to the Users
To compute thwn the same formula ning of 2, fhe use of the Ford is more
Considering the results obtained from
used In the C I S manual was adopted: convenient,
this test, fSO will normally offer from
3900 x hT10-"b' now on the Ford CCD on the Long Cam-
m= era as a standard wmblnatition. fhls im-
(3800x N,TIUMh-* + (VVb-' NJZ pies that the use of both the Reticon
and the RCA # 9 at the same camera
will be discontinued and that the RCA
CCD will be permanently mounted on
the CES Short Camera.
We regard this as an optimum com-
promise between scientific perfor-
mances and the severe operational and
maintenance constraints of the observa-
twy.
Users must however be cautioned
that this new configuration has not yet
k e n extensively debugged In the next
months, their feedback on the as-
tronomical performance and any gener-
d wrnrnents wltl be much appreciated.
Some problems have already been
identifled and are baing Investigated.
Namely:
(1) Some vignetting Is present at the Rgure 3: A Smmute, nomalked s m of fhe standard star HFI 718 centred at 8090 4,Mo
blue edge of the specha and this makes tlat-Tdd mmction has been applied. Note the absence d inttwf#nce fringes.
6.m - d
higher than the measured RON. Both of
these problems have already be8n ob-
sewed in the past with other CCDs, but
they are transient in nature and hence
-Yg 4.m-
not easlly debuggd. A careful monitw-
-fl Ing of these CCD parameters by the
scientific users is recommended and It
&:I
c wlll be useful to optimize the CCD per-
4
formance.
2.00 - 31 1
'1' :93
< Acknowledgements
bOO - The mechanics and detector groups at
I 1 I 4
La Silk worked hard and successfullyto
-w Bj60. m m.m
-3 ttm adapt the new CCD to the Long Cam-
Rgure 4: A f-hour Ha spectrum of the m m t nova V745 Soo. fhe S/hr Is
continuum,
- 5 in the era. H.V. Winckel kindly provided m e
of the observations.
References
D'OdoPie~,S., Avlla, Q., M o b , P. 1989: The
IW6ssanger =,Mi.
--
the first 150 rows of little use. Vignet-
ting was present at a lower level in the
Ford shows this problem much more
clearly.
Hamuy, M., et al. 1992: A. J., in press.
Undgren, tl., Gllllotte, R 1989: The C O W
-
Echelle Spectrometer ESQ Operating
Reticon spsctra: the larger format of the (2) In order to reach t b predicted per- Manual No, 8.
Therefore we engaged In the deslgn ffOSC2 users at the 2.2-m telescope. cooling is stressed through a 3rd night
of a short CCD head connected to an Problems? Occasional slippage in the of autonomy1
Mastorage dewar via a cotd flnger feed, LN2 refilling schedule brings the system L. G O ~ L UD., HOFSTADT,
In the figures the dewar arrangement Is to an unhappy user's scream when the R. TIGHE, ESO-La Silta
sketched, A 70-cm-long copper bar,
radiation shletded under vacuum, trans-
fers the LN2 temperature (77K) from the
storage dewar to the detector head. The
thermal Impedance of the cold finger
plus copper braids and thenal connec-
DEWAR, MODEL HD-2181
OUTLINE SKETCH
tors was carefully designed In order to
reach the detector cold plate with a
temperature of 140K. This brings the
coollng near the operational tempera-
ture range of the CCO and allows to
minimize the onergy input for the tem-
perature tqutation in the detector head.
The results h terms of temperature
stability and autonomy are excellent
(1.e.: c 0.2" stabilliy and 48 hours hold
time at the telescope).
The unit was designed and Integrated
by Mr. Leonardo Gonzalez, the La Sllla
cryogenic technician, while the detector
head was machined In the mechanical
workshop.
The cryostat was mounted early Feb-
ruary this year and free access to the
MagelIanic Clouds was grantd to the
- Vacwm 10*/1 O4
- Codlngtime Istaningfrom ambient T):
6 hwrsa p m .
- uJ2 consumptiom3 Wday
- Temperatureregulationpower Input:
(3.4 Watts