University of Kentucky UKnowledge Theses and Dissertations--Physics and Astronomy Physics and Astronomy 2018 RR LYRAE CALIBRATION USING SDSS, SINGLE-EPOCH SPECTROSCOPY Stacy Long University of Kentucky, [email protected] Author ORCID Identifier: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0726-424X Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2018.334 Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Long, Stacy, "RR LYRAE CALIBRATION USING SDSS, SINGLE-EPOCH SPECTROSCOPY" (2018). Theses and Dissertations--Physics and Astronomy. 56. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/physastron_etds/56 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Physics and Astronomy at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations--Physics and Astronomy by an authorized administrator of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 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Stacy Long, Student Dr. Ron Wilhelm, Major Professor Dr. Chris Crawford, Director of Graduate Studies RR LYRAE CALIBRATION USING SDSS, SINGLE-EPOCH SPECTROSCOPY DISSERTATION A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky By Stacy Long Lexington, Kentucky Director: Dr. Ron Wilhelm, Professor of Physics Lexington, Kentucky 2018 c Copyright Stacy Long 2018 ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION RR LYRAE CALIBRATION USING SDSS, SINGLE-EPOCH SPECTROSCOPY I use single-epoch, SDSS spectroscopy of RR Lyraes identified in the Catalina survey to separate the spectra into same-temperature groups. Then I draw temperature- phase diagrams of the groups. I find shocked stars, improperly phased stars, low amplitude stars, and a few that are more likely eclipsing binaries. The RR Lyraes are then given precise metallicities by measurements of the CaII K and H-β, H-γ, and H-δ lines. This leads to better distance measurements, which allow me to confirm a distinction between the inner and outer galactic halo. KEYWORDS: stars: variables: RR Lyrae, surveys: Sloan, surveys: Catalina, metal- licity calibration, galactic halo Author’s signature: Stacy Long Date: August 2, 2018 RR LYRAE CALIBRATION USING SDSS, SINGLE-EPOCH SPECTROSCOPY By Stacy Long Director of Dissertation: Ron Wilhelm Director of Graduate Studies: Chris Crawford Date: August 2, 2018 To my wife, Jessica, whose attraction to me was stronger than predicted by Newton’s law of universal gravitation in the relativity class we once took together, and to our son, Orion, whose birth delayed the completion of this dissertation. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to my advisor, Professor Ron Wilhelm, for his help in organizing and presenting my work, providing the synthetic spectra, and measuring the spectral lines. I am thankful for useful comments by the rest of my committee. Renbin Yan provided information about how SDSS spectra were combined. Tom Troland suggested the normalization technique that I eventually settled on. Carolyn Brock’s comments made this dissertation more readable. I am grateful for introduction section revisions suggested by Jessica Short-Long. This research made use of unpublished McDonald Observatory spectra provided by Eckhart Spalding. He also provided a template for the SQL code to select the SDSS spectra. I thank Nathan De Lee for checking the ephemerides and providing assistance with spline algorithms. I thank Tim Beers and Vinicius Placco for running nSSPP. This research has made use of the VizieR catalogue access tool, CDS, Strasbourg, France. The original description of the VizieR service was published in A&AS 143, 23. The VizieR web site is http://vizier.cfa.harvard.edu/. This research has made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services. The ADS web site is http://adsabs.harvard.edu. The CSS survey is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under Grant No. NNG05GF22G issued through the Science Mission Directorate Near-Earth Objects Observations Program. The CRTS survey is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under grants AST-0909182 and AST-1313422. The CSS web site is http://nesssi.cacr.caltech.edu/. Funding for SDSS-III has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department iii of Energy Office of Science. The SDSS-III web site is http://www.sdss3.org/. SDSS-III is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Partici- pating Institutions of the SDSS-III Collaboration including the University of Arizona, the Brazilian Participation Group, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Carnegie Mel- lon University, University of Florida, the French Participation Group, the German Participation Group, Harvard University, the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, the Michigan State/Notre Dame/JINA Participation Group, Johns Hopkins Univer- sity, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, New Mexico State University, New York University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Portsmouth, Princeton University, the Spanish Participation Group, University of Tokyo, University of Utah, Vanderbilt University, University of Virginia, University of Washington, and Yale University. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments.................................. iii ListofTables.................................... vi ListofFigures ................................... vii Chapter1 Introduction.............................. 1 1.1 ABriefHistoryofVariableStars . .. .. 1 1.2 OverviewofRRLyraeProperties . 1 1.3 Halodisputes ............................... 6 1.4 TheRestofthisWork .......................... 7 Chapter2 DataCollection ............................ 9 2.1 SDSS.................................... 9 2.2 Catalina.................................. 9 2.3 McDonald................................. 10 2.4 Syntheticmodelspectra ......................... 10 Chapter3 Methods................................ 11 3.1 Spectrumnormalization ......................... 11 3.2 Thetemperaturefindingalgorithm . 12 3.3 Grouping ................................. 13 3.4 Testing the code on noise-injected synthetic spectra . ... 13 Chapter 4 Temperature-phase diagrams, shocks, and mislabeled RRLyraes 15 4.1 Validation of the temperature-phase diagram . 15 4.2 Application to the Stripe 82 and Catalina Stars . 16 4.3 TheRRcs ................................. 22 Chapter 5 Metallicity Calibration . 35 Chapter 6 Galactic Geometry Implications . 40 6.1 Finding Stellar position . 40 6.2 Stellar Velocities . 43 Chapter7 Conclusion............................... 53 Bibliography .................................... 54 Vita ......................................... 58 v LIST OF TABLES 4.1 ShockedStars................................. 19 4.2 LowamplitudecoolRRabs.......................... 24 4.3 RRc-EWcrosslistings............................. 26 4.4 CoolRRcs................................... 28 6.1 Metallicity dependent rotation . 47 vi LIST OF FIGURES 1.1 Apparent magnitude v period in Reticulum . 2 1.2 HRdiagram.................................. 3 1.3 Period-amplitudediagramofM15. 4 1.4 ExampleRRLyraelightcurves ....................... 5 1.5 Halo metallicity histograms . 7 3.1 Systematiccontinuumerror . .. .. 11 3.2 Cubicspline.................................. 12 3.3 Noisymodelparameterreproduction . 14 4.1 Temperature-phase diagram for For and McDonald RRabs . ... 15 4.2 Temperature-phase diagrams four RRabs from For . ... 16 4.3 Temperature-phase diagrams for four RRabs from Chadid . .... 17 4.4 Temperature-phase diagramforStripe82RRabs . .. 18 4.5 Temperature-phase diagramfor Catalina RRabs . .. 19 4.6 Phase discrepancies Stripe 82 v Catalina . 22 4.7 Balmerlinesofashockedstar . .. .. 23 4.8 FWHM/EWcurveofashockedstar . 23 4.9 FWHM/EW fits for H-δ and H-γ ...................... 25 4.10 FWHM/EW fits for H-β andCaIIK ...................