Disk Detective Talk

Interesting SDSS images.

  • Maria_Mar by Maria_Mar

    Hi everyone!
    I think it's can't be a good candidate, on a first three images ( SDSS U 0.359 μm) , SDSS I 0.764 μm) and SDSS Z 0.906 μm) ) the object looks as if it's not a star. Am I right?

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  • Artman40 by Artman40

    If the object looks like that in high-resolution images, it is probably a star. I don't know though if it specifies what kind of a star that is.

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  • WizardHowl by WizardHowl

    The appearance on the first three images resembles a point source object that is out of focus.

    Since these are SDSS images, you can check what the SDSS DR10 survey has to say about it, by going to http://skyserver.sdss3.org/public/en/tools and selecting 'Navigate' from the list of options presented in the text. Entering the co-ordinates of the object into the Right Ascension and Declination (ra and dec for short, in the box top-left) gives you the region of the sky centred on the object, the small box being at the co-ordinates provided, if it is in the survey (not all the sky is covered). In this case you can clearly see a red star right in the centre: click on the Explore option beneath the thumbnail close-up on the right and it will take you to what information there is on the object in the survey.

    This star is SDSS J171018.77+250557.4 and, to me, the only unusual feature about it is that it is about two magnitudes brighter in the SDSS i band than in the neighbouring r and z bands. As objects in Disk Detective were selected to have infrared excess this is perhaps not surprising. From memory, the i band is something like 1-2 microns (it corresponds to a broadband filter and I don't remember exactly what the range is), closer to the visual part of the spectrum than the shortest wavelength WISE images at 3.4 microns. Perhaps one of the SCIENTISTS can comment on whether this is likely to be due to a debris disk but it's definitely a #goodcandidate .

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  • jdebes by jdebes scientist, admin

    The SED looks pretty good, the strange structure of the SDSS images is most likely due to #saturation--just as the DSS images look blobby, the SDSS images similarly have a strange shape. SDSS saturates at magnitudes of ~14.

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