Mira variables in the Milky Way's nuclear stellar disc: discovery and classification

Abstract

The properties of the Milky Way's nuclear stellar disc give crucial information on the epoch of bar formation. Mira variables are promising bright candidates to study the nuclear stellar disc, and through their period-age relation dissect its star formation history. We report on a sample of $1782$ Mira variable candidates across the central $3\times 3{\mathrm{deg}}^2$ of the Galaxy using the multi-epoch infrared VISTA Variables in Via Lactea (VVV) survey. We describe the algorithms employed to select candidate variable stars and then model their light curves using periodogram and Gaussian process methods. By combining with WISE, 2MASS and other archival photometry, we model the multi-band light curves to refine the periods and inspect the amplitude variation between different photometric bands. The infrared brightness of the Mira variables means many are too bright and missed by VVV. However, our sample follows a well-defined selection function as expected from artificial star tests. The multi-band photometry is modelled using stellar models with circumstellar dust that characterise the mass loss rates. We demonstrate how $\gtrsim 90$ per cent of our sample is consistent with O-rich chemistry. Comparison to period-luminosity relations demonstrates that the bulk of the short period stars are situated at the Galactic Centre distance. Many of the longer period variables are very dusty, falling significantly under the O-rich Magellanic Cloud and solar neighbourhood period-luminosity relations and exhibit high mass-loss rates of $\sim 2.5\times 10^{-5}{M}_{\odot }{\mathrm{yr}}^{-1}$. The period distribution appears consistent with the nuclear stellar disc forming $\gtrsim 8\mathrm{Gyr}$ ago although it is not possible to disentangle the relative contributions of the nuclear stellar disc and the contaminating bulge.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in MNRAS, 25 pages, 21 figures

References in corpus (136)

• SciPy 1.0--Fundamental Algorithms for Scientific Computing in Python
• Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
• The NumPy array: a structure for efficient numerical computation
• Gaia Data Release 2. Summary of the contents and survey properties
• The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE): Mission Description and Initial On-orbit Performance
• The Astropy Project: Building an inclusive, open-science project and status of the v2.0 core package
• The Gaia mission
• The Man Behind the Curtain: X-rays Drive the UV through NIR Variability in the 2013 AGN Outburst in NGC 2617
• The generalised Lomb-Scargle periodogram. A new formalism for the floating-mean and Keplerian periodograms
• The Galaxy in Context: Structural, Kinematic and Integrated Properties
• Understanding the Lomb-Scargle Periodogram
• VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV): The public ESO near-IR variability survey of the Milky Way
• Fast and scalable Gaussian process modeling with applications to astronomical time series
• The AKARI/IRC Mid-Infrared All-Sky Survey
• Chemical evolution of the Galactic bulge as traced by microlensed dwarf and subgiant stars. V. Evidence for a wide age distribution and a complex MDF
• The Ages of 55 Globular Clusters as Determined Using an Improved delta V_TO^HB Method Along with Color-Magnitude Diagram Constraints, and Their Implications for Broader Issues
• The Nuclear Bulge of the Galaxy. III. Large-Scale Physical Characteristics of Stars and Interstellar Matter
• The Optical to Mid-Infrared Extinction Law Based on the APOGEE, Gaia DR2, Pan-STARRS1, SDSS, APASS, 2MASS and WISE Surveys
• The ACS Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters. IX. Horizontal Branch Morphology and the Second Parameter Phenomenon
• Age and Metallicity Distribution of the Galactic Bulge from Extensive Optical and Near-IR Stellar Photometry
• The ASAS-SN Catalog of Variable Stars I: The Serendipitous Survey
• Self-similarity and scaling behavior of IR emission from radiatively heated dust: I. Theory
• VVV DR1: The First Data Release of the Milky Way Bulge and Southern Plane from the Near-Infrared ESO Public Survey VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea
• Mapping the Three-Dimensional Density of the Galactic Bulge with VVV Red Clump Stars
• AGB Variables and the Mira Period-Luminosity Relation
• Flexible and Scalable Methods for Quantifying Stochastic Variability in the Era of Massive Time-Domain Astronomical Data Sets
• Line derived infrared extinction towards the Galactic Center
• Periodograms for Multiband Astronomical Time Series
• Hi-GAL, the Herschel infrared Galactic Plane Survey: photometric maps and compact source catalogues. First data release for Inner Milky Way: +68°> l > -70°
• The Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA): Design, Technical Overview and Performance
• Life in the fast lane: a direct view of the dynamics, formation, and evolution of the Milky Way's bar
• Chemodynamical history of the Galactic Bulge
• Lifting the Dusty Veil With Near- and Mid-Infrared Photometry: I. Description and Applications of the Rayleigh-Jeans Color Excess Method
• Hubble Space Telescope Observations of Mira Variables in the Type Ia Supernova Host NGC 1559: An Alternative Candle to Measure the Hubble Constant
• The ASAS-SN Catalog of Variable Stars II: Uniform Classification of 412,000 Known Variables
• Improved GRAVITY astrometric accuracy from modeling of optical aberrations
• An Extended Star Formation History for the Galactic Center from Hubble Space Telescope/NICMOS Observations
• Synthetic photometry for carbon rich giants, I. Hydrostatic dust-free models
• Double Bars, Inner Disks, and Nuclear Rings in Early-Type Disk Galaxies
• The wind speeds, dust content, and mass-loss rates of evolved AGB and RSG stars at varying metallicity
• Obscured Asymptotic Giant Branch Variables in the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Period-Luminosity Relation
• Variable Stars in the Magellanic Clouds: Results from OGLE and SIRIUS
• The DECam Plane Survey: Optical photometry of two billion objects in the southern Galactic plane
• VIRAC: The VVV Infrared Astrometric Catalogue
• The VISTA ZYJHKs Photometric System: Calibration from 2MASS
• A 24 Micron Point Source Catalog of the Galactic Plane from Spitzer/MIPSGAL
• Uncloaking globular clusters in the inner Galaxy
• Time Inference with MUSE in Extragalactic Rings (TIMER): Properties of the Survey and High-Level Data Products
• Dusty winds: I. Self-similar solutions
• Early formation and recent starburst activity in the nuclear disc of the Milky Way
• Global 3D radiation-hydrodynamics models of AGB stars. Effects of convection and radial pulsations on atmospheric structures
• Kinematic signatures of nuclear discs and bar-driven secular evolution in nearby galaxies of the MUSE TIMER project
• Three classical Cepheid variable stars in the nuclear bulge of the Milky Way
• A near-infrared survey of Miras and the distance to the Galactic Centre
• Broad-band photometric colors and effective temperature calibrations for late-type giants. I. Z=0.02
• The nuclear cluster of the Milky Way: Our primary testbed for the interaction of a dense star cluster with a massive black hole
• The pulsation modes, masses and evolution of luminous red giants
• A Galactic Bar to Beyond the Solar Circle and its Relevance for Microlensing
• Gaia Data Release 2: The first Gaia catalogue of long-period variable candidates
• Point Sources from a Spitzer IRAC Survey of the Galactic Center
• The ASAS-SN Catalog of Variable Stars V: Variables in the Southern Hemisphere
• The inside-out formation of nuclear discs and the absence of old central spheroids in barred galaxies of the TIMER survey
• ISOGAL: A deep survey of the obscured inner Milky Way with ISO at 7 and 15 micron and with DENIS in the near-infrared
• The Age and Structure of the Galactic Bulge from Mira Variables
• Luminosities and mass-loss rates of Local Group AGB stars and Red Supergiants
• Synthetic photometry for M and K giants and stellar evolution: hydrostatic dust-free model atmospheres and chemical abundances
• A Near-Infrared Period-Luminosity Relation for Miras in NGC 4258, an Anchor for a New Distance Ladder
• Star formation history of the Galactic bulge from deep HST imaging of low reddening windows
• Long Period Variables in the Magellanic Clouds: OGLE + 2MASS + DENIS
• GALACTICNUCLEUS: A high-angular-resolution JHKs imaging survey of the Galactic centre II. First data release of the catalogue and the most detailed CMDs of the GC
• The Properties of Long-Period Variables in the Large Magellanic Cloud from MACHO
• The meaning of WISE colours - I. The Galaxy and its satellites
• MUSE tells the story of NGC 4371: The dawning of secular evolution
• A new method to identify subclasses among AGB stars using Gaia and 2MASS photometry
• New constraints on the structure of the nuclear stellar cluster of the Milky Way from star counts and MIR imaging
• Infrared Period-Luminosity Relations of Evolved Variable Stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Magnetically Confined Interstellar Hot Plasma in the Nuclear Bulge of our Galaxy
• Improving Cosmological Distance Measurements Using Twin Type Ia Supernovae
• Period-Magnitude relation of Mira-like variables in the Large Magellanic Cloud as a tool to understand circumstellar extinction
• Modelling Long-Period Variables - I. A new grid of O-rich and C-rich pulsation models
• Nuclear Stellar Disks in Spiral Galaxies
• 86 GHz SiO maser survey of late-type stars in the Inner Galaxy. I. Observational data
• Mapping the Galactic disk with the LAMOST and Gaia Red clump sample: I: precise distances, masses, ages and 3D velocities of $\sim$ 140000 red clump stars
• The evolution of the Mira variable R Hydrae
• Age Dating the Galactic Bar with the Nuclear Stellar Disc
• The Milky Way's nuclear stellar disc: A dynamically cool and metal-rich component formed from the Central Molecular Zone?
• The Local Group Galaxy NGC 6822 and its Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars
• SiO Maser Survey of IRAS Sources in the Inner Galactic Disk
• Kinematic Detection of the Galactic Nuclear Disc
• Age Demographics of the Milky Way Disk and Bulge
• Globular Clusters and the Mira Period-Luminosity Relation
• A Fast Chi-squared Technique For Period Search of Irregularly Sampled Data
• Carbon-Rich Mira Variables: Kinematics and Absolute Magnitudes
• Transverse kinematics of the Galactic bar-bulge from VVV and Gaia
• Exploring the stellar age distribution of the Milky Way Bulge using APOGEE
• The Clouds are breaking: tracing the Magellanic system with Gaia DR1 Mira variables
• Large Magellanic Cloud Near-Infrared Synoptic Survey. V. Period-Luminosity Relations of Miras
• Discovery of RR Lyrae Stars in the Nuclear Bulge of the Milky Way
• Gaia Data Release 2: All-sky classification of high-amplitude pulsating stars
• The Local Group Galaxy IC1613 and its Asymptotic Giant Branch Variables
• Dynamically Driven Inflow onto the Galactic Center and its Effect upon Molecular Clouds
• An Infrared Census Of Dust In Nearby Galaxies With Spitzer (DUSTiNGS): V. The Period-luminosity Relation For Dusty Metal-Poor AGB Stars
• A database of circumstellar OH masers
• Galactic distributions of carbon- and oxygen-rich AGB stars revealed by the AKARI mid-infrared all-sky survey
• The LMC's Top 250: Classification of the Most Luminous Compact 8 micron Sources in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Kinematics of classical Cepheids in the Nuclear Stellar Disk
• Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars in the Sculptor Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy
• Analysis of physical processes in eruptive YSOs with near infrared spectra and multi-wavelength light curves
• Age Gradients Throughout the Galaxy with O-Miras
• 86 GHz SiO maser survey of late-type stars in the Inner Galaxy II. Infrared photometry of the SiO Target Stars
• The M33 Synoptic Stellar Survey. II. Mira Variables
• SiO Maser Survey of the Inner Bar of the Galactic Bulge
• Cool stars in the Galactic Center as seen by APOGEE: M giants, AGB stars and supergiant stars/candidates
• A Fast, 2D Gaussian Process Method Based on Celerite: Applications to Transiting Exoplanet Discovery and Characterization
• Absolute Magnitudes of Seismic Red Clumps in the Kepler Field and SAGA: the age dependency of the distance scale
• Mid-Infrared Period$-$Luminosity Relations for Miras in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Multiwavelength Period-Luminosity and Period-Luminosity-Color relations at maximum-light for Mira variables in the Magellanic Clouds
• Absence of an X-shaped Structure in the Milky Way Bulge Using Mira Variable Stars
• Discovery of carbon-rich Miras in the Galactic bulge
• Variable star classification across the Galactic bulge and disc with the VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea survey
• The period-age relation of long-period variables
• Period estimation for sparsely-sampled quasi-periodic light curves applied to Miras
• The extinction law in the inner $3\times 3$ deg${}^2$ of the Milky Way and the red clump absolute magnitude in the inner bar-bulge
• Large amplitude periodic outbursts and long period variables in the VVV VIRAC2-$\beta$ database
• Semi-regular red giants as distance indicators I. The period-luminosity relations of semi-regular variables revisited
• A proper motion catalogue for the Milky Way's nuclear stellar disc
• New type II Cepheids from VVV data towards the Galactic center
• Carbon stars with increased oxygen and nitrogen abundances: hydrostatic dust-free model atmospheres
• The VVV survey: Long-period variable stars I. Photometric catalog of ten VVV/OGLE tiles
• Turbulent convection and pulsation stability of stars - III. Non-adiabatic oscillations of red giants
• Variable classification in the LSST era: Exploring a model for quasi-periodic light curves
• Luminous AGB variables in the dwarf Irregular Galaxy, NGC 3109
• Characterizing AGB stars in Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) bands
• Long-term Stellar Variability in the Galactic Centre Region
• The Dusty Evolved Star Kit (DESK): A Python package for fitting the Spectral Energy Distribution of Evolved Stars
• Difference of photometric properties between regular and non-regular Miras in the Magellanic Clouds

Cited by in corpus (16)

• unTimely: a Full-sky, Time-Domain unWISE Catalog
• The VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea eXtended (VVVX) ESO public survey: Completion of the observations and legacy
• The period--luminosity relation for Mira variables in the Milky Way using Gaia DR3: a further distance anchor for $H_0$
• A three-dimensional map of the Milky Way using 66,000 Mira variable stars
• VIRAC2: NIR Astrometry and Time Series Photometry for 500M+ Stars from the VVV and VVVX Surveys
• Hunting for C-rich long-period variable stars in the Milky Way's bar-bulge using unsupervised classification of Gaia BP/RP spectra
• The formation history of our Galaxy's nuclear stellar disc constrained from HST observations of the Quintuplet field
• Bar ages derived for the first time in nearby galaxies: Insights on secular evolution from the TIMER sample
• Disc galaxies are still settling: The discovery of the smallest nuclear discs and their young stellar bars
• The Prime Focus Infrared Microlensing Experiment (PRIME): First Results
• Radial and azimuthal gradients of the moving groups in Gaia DR3: The slow/fast bar degeneracy problem
• Deciphering the Milky Way disc formation time encrypted in the bar chrono-kinematics
• Self-Excited Pulsations and the Instability Strip of Long-Period Variables: the Transition from Small-Amplitude Red Giants to Semi-Regular Variables
• Unveiling VVV/WISE Mira variables on the far side of the Galactic disk: Distances, kinematics and a new extinction law
• Metallicity-dependent kinematics and orbits in the Milky Way's nuclear stellar disc
• AGN feeding along a one-armed spiral in NGC 4593: A study using ALMA CO(2-1) observations