Miguel de Val-Borro

Stellar rotational periods in the planet hosting open cluster Praesepe

By using the dense coverage of the extrasolar planet survey project HATNet, we Fourier analyze 381 high-probability members of the nearby open cluster Praesepe (Beehive/M44/NGC 2632). In addition to the detection of 10 variables (of \delta Scuti and other types), we identify 180 rotational variables (including the two known planet hosts). This sample increases the number of known rotational variables in this cluster for spectral classes earlier than M by more than a factor of three. These stars closely follow a color/magnitude -- period relation from early F to late K stars. We approximate this relation by polynomials for an easier reference to the rotational characteristics in different colors. The total (peak-to-peak) amplitudes of the large majority (94%) of these variables span the range of 0.005 to 0.04 mag. The periods cover a range from 2.5 to 15 days. These data strongly confirm that Praesepe and the Hyades have the same gyrochronological ages. Regarding the two planet hosts, Pr0211 (the one with the shorter orbital period) has a rotational period that is ~2 days shorter than the one expected from the main rotational pattern in this cluster. This, together with other examples discussed in the paper, may hint that star-planet interaction via tidal dissipation can be significant in some cases in the rotational evolution of stars hosting Hot Jupiters.

Report on the Third Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE3).

This report records and discusses the Third Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE3). The report includes a description of the keynote presentation of the workshop, which served as an overview of sustainable scientific software. It also summarizes a set of lightning talks in which speakers highlighted to-the-point lessons and challenges pertaining to sustaining scientific software. The final and main contribution of the report is a summary of the discussions, future steps, and future organization for a set of self-organized working groups on topics including developing pathways to funding scientific software; constructing useful common metrics for crediting software stakeholders; identifying principles for sustainable software engineering design; reaching out to research software organizations around the world; and building communities for software sustainability. For each group, we include a point of contact and a landing page that can be used by those who want to join that group’s future activities. The main challenge left by the workshop is to see if the groups will execute these activities that they have scheduled, and how the WSSSPE community can encourage this to happen.

The perihelion activity of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as seen by robotic telescopes

Around the time of its perihelion passage the observability of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from Earth was limited to very short windows each morning from any given site, due to the low solar elongation of the comet. The peak in the comets activity was therefore difficult to observe with conventionally scheduled telescopes, but was possible where service/queue scheduled mode was possible, and with robotic telescopes. We describe the robotic observations that allowed us to measure the total activity of the comet around perihelion, via photometry (dust) and spectroscopy (gas), and compare these results with the measurements at this time by Rosettas instruments. The peak of activity occurred approximately two weeks after perihelion. The total brightness (dust) largely followed the predictions from Snodgrass et al. (2013), with no significant change in total activity levels from previous apparitions. The CN gas production rate matched previous orbits near perihelion, but appeared to be relatively low later in the year.

The Main Belt Comets and ice in the Solar System

We review the evidence for buried ice in the asteroid belt; specifically the questions around the so-called Main Belt Comets (MBCs). We summarise the evidence for water throughout the Solar System, and describe the various methods for detecting it, including remote sensing from ultraviolet to radio wavelengths. We review progress in the first decade of study of MBCs, including observations, modelling of ice survival, and discussion on their origins. We then look at which methods will likely be most effective for further progress, including the key challenge of direct detection of (escaping) water in these bodies.

Investigating interoperability of the LSST data management software stack with Astropy

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will be an 8.4m optical survey telescope sited in Chile and capable of imaging the entire sky twice a week. The data rate of approximately 15TB per night and the requirements to both issue alerts on transient sources within 60 seconds of observing and create annual data releases means that automated data management systems and data processing pipelines are a key deliverable of the LSST construction project. The LSST data management software has been in development since 2004 and is based on a C++ core with a Python control layer. The software consists of nearly a quarter of a million lines of code covering the system from fundamental WCS and table libraries to pipeline environments and distributed process execution. The Astropy project began in 2011 as an attempt to bring together disparate open source Python projects and build a core standard infrastructure that can be used and built upon by the astronomy community. This project has been phenomenally successful in the years since it has begun and has grown to be the de facto standard for Python software in astronomy. Astropy brings with it considerable expectations from the community on how astronomy Python software should be developed and it is clear that by the time LSST is fully operational in the 2020s many of the prospective users of the LSST software stack will expect it to be fully interoperable with Astropy. In this paper we describe the overlap between the LSST science pipeline software and Astropy software and investigate areas where the LSST software provides new functionality. We also discuss the possibilities of re-engineering the LSST science pipeline software to build upon Astropy, including the option of contributing affliated packages.