Archive for October, 2016

How many exoplanets in our Galaxy?

Posted October 30, 2016 By grigoris

In Cassan et al. 2012 (Nature, 481, 167), “One or more bound planets per Milky Way star from microlensing observations“) we read the following very interesting statement:

Here we report a statistical analysis of microlensing data (gathered in 2002–07) that reveals the fraction of bound planets 0.5–10 AU (Sun–Earth distance) from their stars. We find that 17 +6/-9 % of stars host Jupiter-mass planets (0.3–10 MJ , where MJ = 318 M⊕ and M⊕ is Earth’s mass). Cool Neptunes (10–30 M⊕) and super-Earths (5–10 M⊕ ) are even more common: their respective abundances per star are 52 +22/-29 % and 62 +35/-37 %. We conclude that stars are orbited by planets as a rule, rather than the exception.

LambdaCDM vs. MOND

Posted October 21, 2016 By grigoris

Even though the fight between Lambda(Λ)CDM and MOND theories is a confirmed fact, automatic processes (like listing of new arxiv papers) make it more … provocative and/or funny.

lcdmmond

Finally after almost a year, our proceedings paper on the B[e] supergiant LHA 120-S 73 is out! It is based on a poster (2015-58aaa-torres-s73) presented on the 58th Annual Meeting of the Argentinian Astronomical Society (La Plata, Argentina, Sep 14-18, 2015) and connected also with our last refereed paper.

Exploring the circumstellar disk-like structure of the B[e] supergiant LHA 120-S 73

Torres A. F., Cidale L., Kraus M., Arias M. L., Maravelias G., Borges Fernandes M., Vallverdú R.

The Large Magellanic Cloud hosts the peculiar B8-type star LHA 120-S 73. Belonging to the B[e] supergiant group, this star is surrounded by large amounts of material which forms a circumstellar disk-like structure, seen more or less pole-on. Within its dense and cool circumstellar disk, molecules form and dust condensates. Based on medium and high-resolution optical and infrared spectroscopic data, we study the structure, kinematics and physical properties of the disk using different tracers, as the emission lines of [Oi] and [Caii] for the innermost gaseous atomic region and the first-overtone bands of CO for the inner border of the molecular disk. We also analyze near-infrared mid-resolution spectra to search for the presence of other molecules and mid-infrared low-resolution spectroscopic observations to study the composition of the dust component.

NASA ADS: 2016BAAA…58..120T

LaTeX tip to comment out large portion of text

Posted October 10, 2016 By grigoris

Not very obvious but:

\iffalse
blablabla
blublublublu

and some more bla here
\fi

so LaTeX doesn’t compile anything within this if clause.

[1] TeX.stackexchange- Commenting out large sections, accessed on Oct 10, 2016