We study the effects of substructure in the Galactic halo on direct detection of dark matter, on searches for energetic neutrinos from weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP) annihilation in the Sun and Earth, and on the enhancement in the WIMP annihilation rate in the halo. Our central result is a probability distribution function (PDF) Pð Þ for the local dark-matter density. This distribu...

Projections onto convex sets (POCS) algorithms have been widely used for image restoration problem. However, the relaxation parameter (l ) of POCS is strongly data-dependent and difficult to tune. In this work we focus on optimally selecting such parameter in POCS algorithm for image restoration. A stein’s unbiased risk estimate (SURE) based POCS (SPOCS) for image restoration algorithm is propo...

We present the SCUBA Legacy Catalogues, two comprehensive sets of continuum maps (and catalogues) using data at 850 μm and 450 μm of the various astronomical objects obtained with the Submillimetre Common User Bolometer Array (SCUBA). The Fundamental Map Dataset contains data only where superior atmospheric opacity calibration data were available. The Extended Map Dataset is comprised of data r...

We present deep, wide-field, Ks-band (2.14 μm) images towards 87 southern massive star formation regions traced by methanol maser emission. Using point-spread function fitting, we generate 2.14μm point source catalogues (PSCs) towards each of the regions. For the regions between 10◦ < l < 350◦ and |b| <1, we match the 2.14 μm sources with the GLIMPSE point source catalogue to generate a combine...

The Romanian Astronomical Plate Archive consists of 10550 plates of which 8169 are of ast roids observations. A total of 850 asteroids and 78 comets were observed in the 1930-2005 period. After a careful investigation of the whole plate archive we discovered that a series of observations were not capitalized, such as a set of minor planets which were observed during 1930-1955. The lack of accur...

Abstract. TOPCAT is a widely used desktop application for manipulation of astronomical catalogues and other tables, which has long provided fast interactive visualisation features including 1, 2 and 3-d plots, multiple datasets, linked views, color coding, transparency and more. In Version 4 a new plotting library has been written from scratch to deliver new and enhanced visualisation capabilit...

BDB is developed atin the Institute of Astronomy RAS, and contains information on physical and positional parameters of binary stars, belonging to various observational types: visual, spectroscopic, eclipsing, etc. Problems of information aggregation on binaries of various types binaries (obtained from heterogeneous sources of data astronomical catalogues and surveys) aggregation in a uniquefie...

We have collected the largest existing set of radio source lists in machine-readable form : 320 tables with 1.75 million records. Only a minor fraction of these is accessible via public databases. We describe our plans to make this huge amount of heterogeneous data accessible in a homogeneous way via the World Wide Web, with reliable cross-identifications, and searchable by various observables....

This paper describes our experience in trying to transfer our revised software engineering curriculum from UC Berkeley to other universities. Our original plan was just to develop an inexpensive electronic textbook, but we were swept up in the first wave of Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) while we were writing it. Thus, the paper lists the lessons learned about educational technology transfe...