Related papers: Stream eclipse mapping with 'fire-flies'
In the last decade, ground-based high-resolution spectroscopy (HRS) has emerged as a powerful method to probe exoplanet atmospheres both in transit and thermal emission. With HRS science now maturing to reveal these planet's thermal,…
We present SPEAR/FIMS far-ultraviolet observations near the North Ecliptic Pole. This area, at b~30 degrees and with intermediate HI column, seems to be a fairly typical line of sight that is representative of general processes in the…
Spectro-astrometry is applied to echelle spectra of the young intermediate mass star T CrA. The aim is to better understand the origin of the [O I] and [S II] emission from T CrA and further explore the usefulness of spectro-astrometry to…
The post-shock flow in the accretion region of MCVs is considered to be a magnetically confined cooling flow. The X-ray spectrum from this hot plasma is emitted from a range of temperatures and densities. Extracting information from such…
The efforts to probe the horizon-scale structure of black holes, such as Event Horizon Telescope and GRAVITY interferometer, might provide valuable insights into the strong-field regime of Einstein's theory of gravity. In the near field…
We report on XMM-Newton and NuSTAR X-ray observations of the prototypical polar, AM Herculis, supported by ground-based photometry and spectroscopy, all obtained in high accretion states. In 2005, AM Herculis was in its regular mode of…
The accurate determination of the masses of cataclysmic variable stars is critical to our understanding of their origin, evolution and behaviour. Observations of cataclysmic variables also afford an excellent opportunity to constrain…
Images from the vicinity of the black hole horizon at the Galactic centre (Sgr A*) could be obtained in the near future with a Very Large Baseline Array of sub-millimetre telescopes. The recently observed short-term infrared and X-ray…
Spectral retrieval techniques are currently our best tool to interpret the observed exoplanet atmospheric data. Said techniques retrieve the optimal atmospheric components and parameters by identifying the best fit to an observed…
Recently, mid-infrared Spitzer observations have been presented that show the light decrement due to the passage of a planet behind its host star. These measurements of HD209458b and TrES-1 are the first detections of direct light from an…
Spectral features can arise by reflection of coronal X-rays on a black hole accretion disc. The resulting profile bears various imprints of strong gravitational field acting on the light emitting gas. The observed shape of the reflection…
Accurate emission line fluxes from planetary nebulae (PNe) provide important constraints on the nature of the final phases of stellar evolution. Large, evolved PNe may trace the latest stages of PN evolution, where material from the AGB…
Dust has long been identified as a barrier to measuring inherent galaxy properties. However, the link between dust and attenuation is not straightforward and depends on both the amount of dust and its distribution. Herschel imaging of…
State-of-the-art techniques to identify H\alpha emission line sources in narrow-band photometric surveys consist of searching for H\alpha excess with reference to nearby objects in the sky (position-based selection). However, while this…
Observations of the fluorescent Fe K-alpha emission line from the inner accretion flows of stellar mass black holes in X-ray binaries and supermassive black holes in Active Galactic Nuclei have become an important tool to study the…
Mapping exoplanets across phases and during secondary eclipse is a powerful technique for characterizing Hot Jupiters in emission. Since these planets are expected to rotate about axes normal to their orbital planes, with rotation periods…
We propose an eclipsing light-curve diagnosis for black-hole accretion flows. When emission from an inner accretion disk around a black hole is occulted by a companion star, the observed light curve becomes asymmetric at ingress and egress…
Extreme gravitational lensing and relativistic frequency shifts, combined together, imply that radiation emitted from a black hole's vicinity can echo at different frequencies and times, leading to spectrotemporal correlations in observed…
We propose a novel approach for optical flow estimation , targeted at large displacements with significant oc-clusions. It consists of two steps: i) dense matching by edge-preserving interpolation from a sparse set of matches; ii)…
We describe briefly the properties of the recently completed Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), along with its first light imager SALTICAM. Using this instrument, we present 4.3 hr of high speed unfiltered photometric observations of…