ALBERT

Description: High extinction and crowding create a natural limitation for optical surveys towards the central regions of the Milky Way, where the gas and dust are mainly confined. Large-scale near-infrared (IR) surveys of the Galactic plane and bulge are a good opportunity to explore open scientific questions as well as to test our capability to explore future data sets efficiently. Thanks to the VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) ESO public survey, it is now possible to explore a large number of objects in those regions. This paper addresses the variability analysis of all VVV point sources having more than 10 observations in VVVDR4 using a novel approach. In total, the near-IR light curves of 288 378 769 sources were analysed using methods developed in the New Insight Into Time Series Analysis project. As a result, we present a complete sample having 44 998 752 variable star candidates (VVV-CVSC), which include accurate individual coordinates, near-IR magnitudes (Z,Y,J, and Hs), extinctions A(Ks), variability indices, periods, amplitudes, among other parameters to assess the science. Unfortunately, a side effect of having a highly complete sample, is also having a high level of contamination by non-variable (contamination ratio of non-variables to variables is slightly over 10:1). To deal with this, we also provide some flags and parameters that can be used by the community to decrease the number of variable candidates without heavily decreasing the completeness of the sample. In particular, we cross-identified 339 601 of our sources with Simbad and AAVSO data bases, which provide us with information for these objects at other wavelengths. This subsample constitutes a unique resource to study the corresponding near-IR variability of known sources as well as to assess the IR variability related with X-ray and gamma-ray sources. On the other hand, the other ${sim }99.5{{ m per cent}}$ sources in our sample constitutes a number of potentially new objects with variability information for the heavily crowded and reddened regions of the Galactic plane and bulge. The present results also provide an important queryable resource to perform variability analysis and to characterize ongoing and future surveys like TESS and LSST.

Description: The discovery and characterization of Algol eclipsing binaries (EAs) provide an opportunity to contribute for a better picture of the structure and evolution of low-mass stars. However, the cadence of most current photometric surveys hinders the detection of EAs since the separation between observations is usually larger than the eclipse(s) duration and hence few measurements are found at the eclipses. Even when those objects are detected as variable, their periods can be missed if an appropriate oversampling factor is not used in the search tools. In this paper, we apply this approach to find the periods of stars catalogued in the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey (CRTS) as EAs having unknown period (EAup). As a result, the periods of ${sim} 56{ m {per , cent}}$ of them were determined. Eight objects were identified as low-mass binary systems and modelled with the Wilson & Devinney synthesis code combined with a Markov chain Monte Carlo optimization procedure. The computed masses and radii are in agreement with theoretical models and show no evidence of inflated radii. This paper is the first of a series aiming to identify suspected binary systems in large surveys.

Description: We aim at identifying very low-mass isolated planetary-mass member candidates in the nearest OB association to the Sun, Upper Scorpius (145 pc; 5–10 Myr), to constrain the form and shape of the luminosity function and mass spectrum in this regime. We conducted a deep multi-band (Y = 21.2, J = 20.5, Z = 22.0 mag) photometric survey of six square degrees in the central region of Upper Scorpius. We extend the current sequence of astrometric and spectroscopic members by about two magnitudes in Y and one magnitude in J, reaching potentially T-type free-floating members in the association with predicted masses below 5 Jupiter masses, well into the planetary-mass regime. We extracted a sample of 57 candidates in this area and present infrared spectroscopy confirming two of them as young L-type members with characteristic spectral features of 10 Myr-old brown dwarfs. Among the 57 candidates, we highlight 10 new candidates fainter than the coolest members previously confirmed spectroscopically. We do not see any obvious sign of decrease in the mass spectrum of the association, suggesting that star processes can form substellar objects with masses down to 4–5 Jupiter masses.

Description: New time-series analysis tools are needed in disciplines as diverse as astronomy, economics and meteorology. In particular, the increasing rate of data collection at multiple wavelengths requires new approaches able to handle these data. The panchromatic correlated indices $K^{(s)}_{(fi)}$ and $L^{(s)}_{(pfc)}$ are adapted to quantify the smoothness of a phased light-curve resulting in new period-finding methods applicable to single- and multi-band data. Simulations and observational data are used to test our approach. The results were used to establish an analytical equation for the amplitude of the noise in the periodogram for different false alarm probability values, to determine the dependency on the signal-to-noise ratio, and to calculate the yield-rate for the different methods. The proposed method has similar efficiency to that found for the String Length period method. The effectiveness of the panchromatic and flux independent period finding methods in single waveband as well as multiple-wavebands that share a fundamental frequency is also demonstrated in real and simulated data.

Description: We present the results of a new, deeper, and complete search for high-redshift 6.5 〈 z 〈 9.3 quasars over 977 deg2 of the VISTA Kilo-Degree Infrared Galaxy (VIKING) survey. This exploits a new list-driven data set providing photometry in all bands Z, Y, J, H, Ks, for all sources detected by VIKING in J. We use the Bayesian model comparison (BMC) selection method of Mortlock et al., producing a ranked list of just 21 candidates. The sources ranked 1, 2, 3, and 5 are the four known z 〉 6.5 quasars in this field. Additional observations of the other 17 candidates, primarily DESI Legacy Survey photometry and ESO FORS2 spectroscopy, confirm that none is a quasar. This is the first complete sample from the VIKING survey, and we provide the computed selection function. We include a detailed comparison of the BMC method against two other selection methods: colour cuts and minimum-χ2 SED fitting. We find that: (i) BMC produces eight times fewer false positives than colour cuts, while also reaching 0.3 mag deeper, (ii) the minimum-χ2 SED-fitting method is extremely efficient but reaches 0.7 mag less deep than the BMC method, and selects only one of the four known quasars. We show that BMC candidates, rejected because their photometric SEDs have high χ2 values, include bright examples of galaxies with very strong [O iii] λλ4959,5007 emission in the Y band, identified in fainter surveys by Matsuoka et al. This is a potential contaminant population in Euclid searches for faint z 〉 7 quasars, not previously accounted for, and that requires better characterization.