Mrs. Minor’s AAA SOFIA Flight

Tonight’s flight was a tremendous success! We were able to collect data on 6 celestial targets, we saw the Northern Lights at 60 degrees North latitude, and I was able to sit in the cockpit for our landing. NASA747 Heavy did not disappoint. Videos posted separately.

Going to Flight briefing and then we are ready to take off!

Tonight’s revised flight path will take us over northern Canada.

New Flight Plan for January 6:

2022 January 6-7 Flight Plan OC9I IRWIN

(Note that “NGC” designates objects in the New General Catalog, a 19th-century British catalog of non-stellar objects such as nebulas and galaxies.)

Leg 6 (66 mins): R-90.1+190.2 (d ~ 31 million light-years)
Proposal ID = 08_0183 PI = J.D. Smith (Univ. of Toledo, Ohio)
Target is the central region of relatively nearby face-on spiral galaxy NGC 628 a.k.a. Messier 74. The name appears to designate a particular radio source within the galaxy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_74

Leg 7 (91 mins): NGC 595 (d ~ 2.7 million light-years)
Proposal ID = 09_0023 PI = Tucker Jones (Univ. of California - Davis)
Target is a large star forming region in the nearby galaxy M33 a.k.a. the Triangulum Galaxy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_595
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangulum_Galaxy

Leg 8 (64 mins): NGC 6946_Nucleus (d ~ 25 million light-years)
Proposal ID = 09_0198 PI = Cody Lamarche (Univ. of Toledo, Ohio)
Target is the nucleus of the nearby spiral galaxy NGZC 6946 a.k.a. the Fireworks Galaxy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_6946

Leg 10 (125 mins): NGC 4848 (d ~ 340 million light-years)
Proposal ID = 09_0221 PI = Ming Sun (Univ. of Alabama, Huntsville)
NGC 4848 is an exceptionally large barred spiral galaxy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_4848

Leg 11 (72 mins): II SZ010 (d ~ 480 million light-years)
Proposal ID = 08_0226 PI = Andreea Petric (Univ. of Hawai`i)
Target is a relatively nearby quasar, a supermassive black hole in a galaxy nucleus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasar

Leg 12 (39 mins): NGC 3125 (d ~ 50 million light-years)
Proposal ID = 09_0023 PI = Tucker Jones (Univ. of California - Davis)
Target is a large star-forming region in galaxy NGC 3125.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2016/hubble-views-a-galaxy-fit-to-burst


Program proposal abstracts in numerical order

Proposal ID: 08_0183
Principal Investigator: J.D. Smith (University of Toledo)
Title: Unlocking Far-Infrared Metal Abundances in NGC628
Abstract: Elements heavier than helium make up only a small fraction of the mass of the present day Universe, yet they heavily impact how galaxies and stars form and evolve. The chemical enrichment history of the Universe therefore forms an essential part of any complete understanding of galaxy evolution. The ground-state fine structure of the abundant metals oxygen and nitrogen which are accessible to SOFIA in the far-infrared will play a major role in uncovering this history. [OIII] 88µm is already the highest redshift line ever detected in a galaxy (z=9.1), and both potential future FIR missions SPICA and Origins feature the rise of metals as a chief science case. With the ability to pe*****te large columns of obscuration in the dusty galaxies that dominate the peak epoch of star formation, and little sensitivity to the unknown temperature structure of ionized nebulae that has plagued traditional optical strong line metal abundances for decades, FIR abundances offer many powerful advantages. Yet substantial work is still needed locally to take full advantage of this potential. We propose a pilot study of the well-studied galaxy NGC628, targeting a dozen regions drawn from the CHAOS program on the LBT -- the largest, deepest survey of direct spectroscopic optical auroral line metal abundances ever undertaken in the local Universe. Combining SOFIA/FIFI-LS with CHAOS spectroscopy, archival Herschel/PACS and Spitzer/IRS, and even VLA free-free continuum observations of carefully selected regions in NGC628, we will fully develop several interrelated temperature insensitive infrared abundance tools, including direct [OIII] abundances normalized to hydrogen using recombination or free-free emission, and expand and validate the novel O3N3 pure FIR-line abundance relationship. Our ancillary data also include deep optical IFU spectral mapping data, to bridge the resolution divide between the SOFIA and ground-optical surveys.

Proposal ID: 08_0226
Principal Investigator: Andreea Petric (Institute for Astronomy, U. Hawai`i)
Title: Star-formation efficiencies in nearby, optically luminous Quasars
Abstract: Most bulge-dominated galaxies have at their centers black holes with masses that tightly correlate with the masses of their hosts' bulges. This may indicate that the black holes may regulate galaxy growth, or vice versa, or that they may grow in lock-step. The quest to understand how, when, and where those black-holes formed motivates much of extragalactic astronomy. The [CII] 157.74 micron fine structure line of singly ionized carbon has been calibrated both as a measure of star-formation rates and as a way to estimate the star-formation efficiencies. Recent SOFIA observations of [CII] in nearby low-luminosity AGN suggest that: high ratios of [CII] to FIR may be associated with obscured AGN outflows and that the [CIII] may be at the interface between warm and cold gas in those outflows. The observations we propose here will test whether luminous, obscured AGN have higher [CII]/FIR ratios than luminous, non-obscured AGN.

Proposal ID: 09_0023
Principal Investigator: Tucker Jones (University of California - Davis)
Title: Accurate chemical abundance measurements: from z=0 to the reionization epoch
Abstract: The gas-phase metallicity of galaxies encodes information about current and past gas inflows, outflows, and star formation. Accordingly, obtaining accurate metallicity measurements for large samples of galaxies is a major goal of galaxy formation and evolution studies. However, current results suffer from large systematic uncertainty in the absolute metallicity scale, revealed by disagreement between different direct measurement techniques. This disagreement can plausibly be explained by fluctuations in the gas temperature within HII regions, but an independent test is needed to determine whether this is indeed the case. We propose to use the unique capabilities of FIFI-LS onboard SOFIA to obtain measurements of the diagnostic [OIII] 52 um emission line for a sample of carefully-selected local HII regions with high-quality optical spectra. The addition of [OIII] 52 um data will provide an independent determination of the magnitude of temperature fluctuations and the absolute metallicity scale. The results will have an immediate benefit of eliminating the dominant systematic uncertainty in metallicity measurements of >100,000 galaxies at z=0 and >1,000 at z>1. Furthermore, these measurements will provide the framework necessary to combine ALMA measurements of far-IR lines with JWST rest-optical spectra to determine accurate metallicities at z>6 in the epoch of reionization. We will simultaneously observe the [CII] 158 um line to aid in understanding extremely high far-IR [OIII]/[CII] ratios found for z>6 galaxies using ALMA.

Principal Investigator: Cody Lamarche (University of Toledo)
Title: Securing Far-Infrared Metal Abundances in NGC 6946
Abstract: Elements heavier than helium contribute less than one percent to the total mass of the local Universe, yet they significantly affect the way in which stars and galaxies form and evolve. Therefore, understanding the chemical enrichment history of the Universe is an essential part of understanding galaxy evolution. The ground-state fine-structure levels of the abundant metals oxygen and nitrogen, accessible to SOFIA in the far-infrared, will play a major role in uncovering this history. With the ability to pe*****te the significant dust columns present in galaxies during the peak epoch of cosmic star formation, and little sensitivity to the unknown temperature structure of ionized nebulae that has plagued traditional optical strong-line metal-abundances for decades, FIR abundances offer many powerful advantages. Yet substantial work is still needed locally before these FIR methods can be extended to high-redshift galaxies. We propose a program to study NGC 6946, a bright, metal-rich, nearby spiral galaxy, targeting 8 HII regions that will be observed in concert with the ongoing CHAOS program on the LBT -- the largest, deepest survey of direct spectroscopic optical auroral-line metal-abundances ever undertaken in the local Universe. Combining SOFIA/FIFI-LS with CHAOS spectroscopy, archival Herschel/PACS and Spitzer/IRS, and VLA free-free continuum observations of the targeted HII regions in NGC 6946, we will explore several interrelated temperature-insensitive infrared abundance tools, including direct [OIII] abundances normalized to hydrogen using recombination or free-free emission, and expand and validate the novel O3N3 pure FIR-line abundance diagnostic. Our ancillary data also include deep optical IFU spectral mapping data, which bridge the resolution divide between the SOFIA and ground-based optical surveys.

Proposal ID: 09_0221
Principal Investigator: Ming Sun (University of Alabama in Huntsville)
Title: [C II] in the cluster galaxies undergoing ram pressure stripping
Abstract: Ram pressure stripping (RPS) is an important process in galaxy evolution. Recent multi-wavelength data have revealed many examples of galaxies undergoing RPS, often accompanied with multi-phase tails. As energy transfer in multi-phase medium is an outstanding question in astrophysics, important for e.g., galaxy formation and AGN feedback, RPS galaxies provide great examples to address the significant questions in multi-phase medium and star formation. [C II] has been established as an important tracer of the cold gas and star formation. However, there has not been a systematical study for the [C II] emission from RPS galaxies (especially their tails). On the other hand, we do know that [C II] emission can be enhanced by additional pressure from shocks, turbulence and collisional heating, which is ubiquitous in RPS galaxies. We propose SOFIA/FIFI-LS observations on five galaxies in the Coma cluster and A1367 for the first sample study for the [C II] emission from galaxies undergoing strong RPS. The [C II] data will be combined with the FIR, CO and Halpha data for multi-wavelength diagnostics and study. We will examine whether [C II] emission is enhanced in galaxies undergoing strong RPS and search for [C II] emission in the tails. [O I] from galaxies is also expected to provide additional constraints. We emphasize that the proposed science can only be done by SOFIA now and has never been tried before. Luckily, this is still within SOFIA's reach!

Hubble Views a Galaxy Fit to Burst This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the vibrant core of the galaxy NGC 3125. Discovered by John Herschel in 1835, NGC 3125 is a great example of a starburst galaxy — a galaxy in which unusually high numbers of new stars are forming, springing to life within intensely hot clouds of g...

Although we didn’t get to fly last night, we did go to the Instrument Lab and were able to return to the aircraft to speak to researchers who need to ‘babysit’ to instrument already on board the flight. Avionics mechanics were diligently working to repair the high frequency radio but we won’t need that for tonight’s flight. Everything looks good, so far, for a successful mission.

Thursday night flight is NOT over the ocean so we should be able to fly. Keep our fingers crossed for no issues.

Well everyone, our flight was cancelled tonight due to an Avionics issue. We need a working high frequency radio to fly over the ocean and it isn’t cooperating. We’ll try again tomorrow.

Flight path (relative to US land mass) for tonight's flight

The following information covers what we will study on tonight’s flight. To see specific information about our research targets, you can find the url embedded in the text, below, and paste it in your browswer. The abstracts for the research, in flight leg order, are at the bottom of this post.

Take off 5:35 pm PST

Instrument Setup

Instrument Calibration viewing Jupiter’s largest moon

2022 January 5-6 Flight Plan OC9I IGOR

(Note that “NGC” designates objects in the New General Catalog, a 19th-century British catalog of non-stellar objects such as nebulas and galaxies.)

Leg 6 (175 mins): NGC 253 (d ~ 11 million light-years)
Proposal ID = 09_0066 PI = André Beck (Deutsches SOFIA Insitute)
NGC 253 a.k.a. the Silver Dollar Galaxy, a relatively nearby spiral galaxy undergoing a burst of star formation.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sculptor_Galaxy

Leg 7 (51 mins): NGC 2146 (d ~ 70 million light-years)
Proposal ID = 09_0185 PI = Gordon Stacey (Cornell Univ.)
Target is a starburst galaxy with a peculiar shape possibly caused by a relatively recent collision.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_2146

Leg 8 (105 mins): M82 (d ~ 12 million light-years)
Proposal ID = 09_0149 PI = Serina Latzko (Univ. of Stuttgart)
M82 a.k.a. Messier 82 is a relatively nearby edge-on starburst galaxy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_82

Leg 9 (48 mins): IRAS 07299-1651 (d ~ 5,800 light-years)
Proposal ID = 09_0169 PI = Yao-Lun Yang (Univ. of Virginia)
Target is a massive binary protostar near the Sharpless 302 nebula. The name means the object is in the Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS) catalog of infrared sources; the numbers are the object’s celestial coordinates.https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/528033-sharpless-302/

Leg 10 (63 mins): AB Aur (d ~ 450 light-years)
Proposal ID = 09_0131 PI = Jeroen Bouwman (Max Planck Inst., Heidelberg)
AB Aurigae is a variable star that is surrounded by a dusty ‘debris disk’ indicating a planetary system in the late stages of formation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AB_Aurigae

Leg 11 (30 mins): M101 (d ~ 21 million light-years)
Proposal ID = 75_0085 Director’s Discretionary Time
Messier 101 a.k.a. The Pinwheel Galaxy is a relatively nearby face-on spiral galaxy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinwheel_Galaxy

LANDING

Abstracts of Research Proposals

Proposal ID: 09_0066
Principal Investigator: André Beck (Deutsches SOFIA Insitut)
Title: Disentangling Excitation Conditions in the Outflow of NGC 253
Abstract: We propose to observe the southeastern outflow of the starburst galaxy NGC 253 in [OIII] 52µm and 88µm line emission. The ratio of theses two lines is a direct measure of the electron- and thus H+ density in the observed region (Osterbrock & Ferland 2005). Recent observations of M82 with FIFI-LS show that, in contrast to current assumptions (e.g. Contursi et al. 2013, Fischer et al. 2010), gas in galactic outflows consists not only of neutral atomic and molecular gas, but also to a large fraction of ionized gas with H+ densities of ~200cm^-3 (C. Fischer in prep.). With the proposed observations we want to investigate gas density of the ionized gas component in galactic outflows. Furthermore, we want to analyze which mechanisms are responsible for gas excitation in these outflows. To do so, we will use the [OI] 145µm emission (which can be simultaneously be observed), as well as photometric data from Spitzer/IRAC, Spitzer/MIPS and Herschel/PACS (all photometric bands from 3.6 to 160µm) and [CII] line emission from SOFIA/FIFI-LS. With this wealth of data we will use the spectral synthesis code "Cloudy" (Ferland et al. 2017) which predicts emission from a molecular cloud of given parameters (e.g. metallicity, gas density, ...) heated by a source of given variables (e.g. spectral shape, intensity, ...). Comparing predictions from the code with our proposed and observed data will help us to disentangle which processes are responsible for gas excitation in galactic outflows, and whether shock excitation has to be taken into account.

Proposal ID: 09_0185
Principal Investigator: Gordon Stacey (Cornell University)
Title: FIFI-LS Spectroscopy of Nearby IR Bright Galaxies: Tracing Stellar Populations; the N/O Abundance Ratio; and Absolute Abundances
Abstract: We propose to use FIFI-LS to map the [OIII] 52 um line emission from the central regions of 8 IR-bright nearby star forming galaxies including both normal and low metallicity systems. All but one of our sources has prior Herschel/PACS detections of [OIII] 88 um, [NII] 122 um, and [NIII] 57 um emission lines, Spitzer IRS detections or limits to the [NeII] 12.8 um, [NeIII] 15.5 um and [NeV] 14.3 um lines and radio free-free or hydrogen recombination lines. The sole incomplete source is NGC 2146, which is missing the [NIII] line, and we seek time here to observe this line with FIFI-LS. These observations will allow us to constrain the ionized gas density and mass, the hardness of the stellar radiation fields (hence most massive star on the main sequence), the N/O ratio (which reflects the numbers of cycles for star formation) and the absolute ionized gas phase N/H and O/H ratios which reflect the star formation efficiency integrated over time. We will also use Herschel archival [OI] 63 and 146 um, and [CII] 158 um data to characterize the neutral ISM and the strength of the FUV (6-13.6 eV) stellar radiation fields. In this way, we will have a continuous measure of the stellar UV radiation fields from 6 to 54 eV thereby constraining the numbers of upper main sequence stars. The proposed FIFI-LS [OIII] 52 um line observations are the lynch-pin that holds the analysis together. These measurements provide a local benchmark for our line-ratio techniques that can be applied to similar studies of high-z galaxies where it is expected that stellar radiation fields will be harder, and the N/O radio will be smaller for the lowest metallicity galaxies. Therefore, the proposed observations are fundamentally important to our understanding of the star formation process over cosmic time.

Proposal ID: 09_0149
Principal Investigator: Serina Latzko (University of Stuttgart)
Title: Revealing the mysteries of CII in the outflows of M82
Abstract: Starburst driven outflows and winds are features that have been observed in connection with starburst events. The processes and mechanisms, however remain unclear due to the very high extinction of the centres of those galaxies. For a long time the [CII]158 µm emission line was thought to be a good tracer for star formation only. However, in many galaxies observations reveal that [CII]158 µm emission arises from almost everywhere in the galaxy. M82 with its proximity and its intense starburst is one of the best candidates to find an answer to the question which mechanisms are responsible for the occurrence of the [CII]158 µm emission we see all over the galaxy. With this proposal we are in particular addressing the origin and characterisation of the [CII]158 µm emission in the outflow and the disk of M82.

Proposal ID: 09_0169
Principal Investigator: Yao-Lun Yang (University of Virginia)
Title: Probing the radiative cooling from shocks and PDRs in intermediate- and high-mass protostars
Abstract: The feedback from star formation affects the outcome of star formation. Particularly, formation of massive stars drives feedback into surrounding environment, regulating the ongoing star formation and the formation nearby. The UV radiation and outflows driven by massive star formation produce photodissociation regions (PDRs) and shocks around the forming massive protostars, resulting in rich spectra of atomic and molecular emission at far-infrared wavelengths. In particular, the emission of CO and [OI] dominates the far-infrared line luminosity of massive protostars, making them a unique tracer of the feedback from the outflow-core interaction. By measuring the far-IR transitions, we will constrain the properties of shocks and PDRs produced by the outflows of massive protostars and test the turbulent core model of massive star formation. Thus, we propose a survey program to utilize the FIFI-LS to observe [OI] 63 and 145 um lines, [OIII] 52 um, and CO J=14-13 lines to measure the energy budgets carried by CO and O, which are the dominate coolants in shocks and PDRs. From the sources already observed by the SOFIA Massive (SOMA) Star Formation survey, we will survey massive protostars in different environments to characterize the dominant cooling species. We will characterize the evolution of outflow-core interaction via the energetics measured from the far-IR emission. The measured far-IR cooling budget will test the protostellar properties estimated by the SOFIA Massive Protostars (SOMA) survey. Furthermore, we will collect archival observations of HST and ALMA to constrain the emission of jets via the emission of [FeII] and unveil the driving sources of jets. This program will measure the line fluxes of key cooling lines at far-IR wavelengths, probing the cooling budget in both PDRs and shocks for massive protostars in different environments.

Proposal ID: 09_0131
Principal Investigator: Jeroen Bouwman (MPIA Heidelberg)
Title: The nature of crystalline silicates in the protoplanetary disk of AB Aurigae
Abstract: We propose to observe the circumstellar disk in the Herbig Ae/Be system AB Aurigae with the FIFI-LS spectrograph. Specifically, we want to target the 69 micron region, where a spectral feature of the crystalline variety of the iron-magnesium silicate Olivine leaves its mark. The derived shape, width and exact wavelength centroid of this spectral feature can be exploited to infer the temperature during the grain formation as well as to constrain the ratio of iron to magnesium in these silicate grains. This in turn gives decisive insights into the thermal and chemical conditions when these grains formed. For our target, Herschel/PACS observations had indicated the existence of the 69 micron emission feature for that disk, but those observations achieved just a relatively low signal-to-noise ratio, and the ambiguous feature fit placed this object in a peculiar part of the parameter space. Such spectral dust features are much broader than common gas spectral lines, and hence a moderate spectral resolution is sufficient to do such a measurement. The FIFI-LS instrument is thus perfectly suited to attempt such an observation for which we will employ a spectral scan with a wide sweep of 3 micron to cover the feature. No other active facility is currently able to do such a measurement. It will settle the question whether AB Aurigae is indeed a special disk in terms of its dust properties. If the PACS indication for Iron enhancement in the dust of AB Aur is confirmed this would imply that beside the normal high-temperature gas-phase condensation, also alternative slower routes via parent-body type alterations can occur already in the protoplanetary stage. Our proposal can be a pathfinder to further such observations with FIFI-LS.