# Publications by Chris Lintott

## Planet Hunters. VI: An Independent Characterization of KOI-351 and Several Long Period Planet Candidates from the Kepler Archival Data

ArXiv (2013)

JR Schmitt, J Wang, DA Fischer, KJ Jek, JC Moriarty, TS Boyajian, ME Schwamb, C Lintott, S Lynn, AM Smith, M Parrish, K Schawinski, R Simpson, D LaCourse, MR Omohundro, T Winarski, SJ Goodman, T Jebson, HM Schwengeler, DA Paterson, J Sejpka, I Terentev, T Jacobs, N Alsaadi, RC Bailey, T Ginman, P Granado, KV Guttormsen, F Mallia, AL Papillon, F Rossi, M Socolovsky

We report the discovery of 14 new transiting planet candidates in the Kepler field from the Planet Hunters citizen science program. None of these candidates overlapped with Kepler Objects of Interest (KOIs) at the time of submission. We report the discovery of one more addition to the six planet candidate system around KOI-351, making it the only seven planet candidate system from Kepler. Additionally, KOI-351 bears some resemblance to our own solar system, with the inner five planets ranging from Earth to mini-Neptune radii and the outer planets being gas giants; however, this system is very compact, with all seven planet candidates orbiting $\lesssim 1$ AU from their host star. A Hill stability test and an orbital integration of the system shows that the system is stable. Furthermore, we significantly add to the population of long period transiting planets; periods range from 124-904 days, eight of them more than one Earth year long. Seven of these 14 candidates reside in their host star's habitable zone.

## Crowd-Sourced Assessment of Technical Skills: a novel method to evaluate surgical performance

Journal of Surgical Research (2013)

C Chen, D Holst, L White, T Kowalewski, R Aggarwal, C Lintott, B Comstock, K Kuksenok, C Aragon, T Lendvay

## The Ultraviolet Attenuation Law in Backlit Spiral Galaxies

ArXiv (2014)

WC Keel, AM Manning, BW Holwerda, CJ Lintott, K Schawinski

(Abridged) The effective extinction law (attenuation behavior) in galaxies in the emitted ultraviolet is well known only for actively star-forming objects and combines effects of the grain properties, fine structure in the dust distribution, and relative distributions of stars and dust. We use GALEX, XMM Optical Monitor, and HST data to explore the UV attenuation in the outer parts of spiral disks which are backlit by other UV-bright galaxies, starting with candidates provided by Galaxy Zoo participants. Our analysis incorporates galaxy symmetry, using non-overlapping regions of each galaxy to derive error estimates on the attenuation measurements. The entire sample has an attenuation law close to the Calzetti et al. (1994) form; the UV slope for the overall sample is substantially shallower than found by Wild et al. (2011), a reasonable match to the more distant galaxies in our sample but not to the weighted combination including NGC 2207. The nearby, bright spiral NGC 2207 alone gives accuracy almost equal to the rest of our sample, and its outer arms have a very low level of foreground starlight. This "grey" law can be produced from the distribution of dust alone, without a necessary contribution from differential escape of stars from dense clouds. The extrapolation needed to compare attenution between backlit galaxies at moderate redshifts, and local systems from SDSS data, is mild enough to allow use of galaxy overlaps to trace the cosmic history of dust. For NGC 2207, the covering factor of clouds with small optical attenuation becomes a dominant factor farther into the ultraviolet, which opens the possibility that widespread diffuse dust dominates over dust in star-forming regions deep into the ultraviolet. Comparison with published radiative-transfer models indicates that the role of dust clumping dominates over differences in grain populations, at this spatial resolution.

## Galaxy Zoo: An independent look at the evolution of the bar fraction over the last eight billion years from HST-COSMOS

ArXiv (2014)

T Melvin, K Masters, C Lintott, RC Nichol, B Simmons, SP Bamford, KRV Casteels, E Cheung, EM Edmondson, L Fortson, K Schawinski, RA Skibba, AM Smith, KW Willett

We measure the redshift evolution of the bar fraction in a sample of 2380 visually selected disc galaxies found in Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images. The visual classifications used to identify both the disc sample and to indicate the presence of stellar bars were provided by citizen scientists via the Galaxy Zoo: Hubble (GZH) project. We find that the overall bar fraction decreases by a factor of two, from 22+/-5% at z=0.4 (tlb = 4.2 Gyr) to 11+/-2% at z=1.0 (tlb = 7.8 Gyr), consistent with previous analysis. We show that this decrease, of the strong bar fraction in a volume limited sample of massive disc galaxies [stellar mass limit of log(Mstar/Msun) > 10.0], cannot be due to redshift dependent biases hiding either bars or disc galaxies at higher redshifts. Splitting our sample into three bins of mass we find that the decrease in bar fraction is most prominent in the highest mass bin, while the lower mass discs in our sample show a more modest evolution. We also include a sample of 98 red disc galaxies. These galaxies have a high bar fraction (45+/-5%), and are missing from other COSMOS samples which used SED fitting or colours to identify high redshift discs. Our results are consistent with a picture in which the evolution of massive disc galaxies begins to be affected by slow (secular) internal process at z~1. We discuss possible connections of the decrease in bar fraction to the redshift, including the growth of stable disc galaxies, mass evolution of the gas content in disc galaxies, as well as the mass dependent effects of tidal interactions.

## Planet Hunters. V. A Confirmed Jupiter-Size Planet in the Habitable Zone and 42 Planet Candidates from the Kepler Archive Data

ArXiv (2013)

J Wang, DA Fischer, T Barclay, TS Boyajian, JR Crepp, ME Schwamb, C Lintott, KJ Jek, AM Smith, M Parrish, K Schawinski, J Schmitt, MJ Giguere, JM Brewer, S Lynn, R Simpson, AJ Hoekstra, TL Jacobs, D LaCourse, HM Schwengeler, M Chopin

We report the latest Planet Hunter results, including PH2 b, a Jupiter-size (R_PL = 10.12 \pm 0.56 R_E) planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a solar-type star. PH2 b was elevated from candidate status when a series of false positive tests yielded a 99.9% confidence level that transit events detected around the star KIC 12735740 had a planetary origin. Planet Hunter volunteers have also discovered 42 new planet candidates in the Kepler public archive data, of which 33 have at least three transits recorded. Most of these transit candidates have orbital periods longer than 100 days and 20 are potentially located in the habitable zones of their host stars. Nine candidates were detected with only two transit events and the prospective periods are longer than 400 days. The photometric models suggest that these objects have radii that range between Neptune to Jupiter. These detections nearly double the number of gas giant planet candidates orbiting at habitable zone distances. We conducted spectroscopic observations for nine of the brighter targets to improve the stellar parameters and we obtained adaptive optics imaging for four of the stars to search for blended background or foreground stars that could confuse our photometric modeling. We present an iterative analysis method to derive the stellar and planet properties and uncertainties by combining the available spectroscopic parameters, stellar evolution models, and transiting light curve parameters, weighted by the measurement errors. Planet Hunters is a citizen science project that crowd-sources the assessment of NASA Kepler light curves. The discovery of these 43 planet candidates demonstrates the success of citizen scientists at identifying planet candidates, even in longer period orbits with only two or three transit events.

## Galaxy Zoo: A Catalog of Overlapping Galaxy Pairs for Dust Studies

ArXiv (2012)

WC Keel, A Manning, BW Holwerda, M Mezzoprete, CJ Lintott, K Schawinski, P Gay, KL Masters

Analysis of galaxies with overlapping images offers a direct way to probe the distribution of dust extinction and its effects on the background light. We present a catalog of 1990 such galaxy pairs selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) by volunteers of the Galaxy Zoo project. We highlight subsamples which are particularly useful for retrieving such properties of the dust distribution as UV extinction, the extent perpendicular to the disk plane, and extinction in the inner parts of disks. The sample spans wide ranges of morphology and surface brightness, opening up the possibility of using this technique to address systematic changes in dust extinction or distribution with galaxy type. This sample will form the basis for forthcoming work on the ranges of dust distributions in local disk galaxies, both for their astrophysical implications and as the low-redshift part of a study of the evolution of dust properties. Separate lists and figures show deep overlaps, where the inner regions of the foreground galaxy are backlit, and the relatively small number of previously-known overlapping pairs outside the SDSS DR7 sky coverage.

## Planet Hunters: New Kepler planet candidates from analysis of quarter 2

ArXiv (2012)

CJ Lintott, ME Schwamb, T Barclay, C Sharzer, DA Fischer, J Brewer, M Giguere, S Lynn, M Parrish, N Batalha, S Bryson, J Jenkins, D Ragozzine, JF Rowe, K Schwainski, R Gagliano, J Gilardi, KJ Jek, JP Pääkkönen, T Smits

We present new planet candidates identified in NASA Kepler quarter two public release data by volunteers engaged in the Planet Hunters citizen science project. The two candidates presented here survive checks for false-positives, including examination of the pixel offset to constrain the possibility of a background eclipsing binary. The orbital periods of the planet candidates are 97.46 days (KIC 4552729) and 284.03 (KIC 10005758) days and the modeled planet radii are 5.3 and 3.8 R_Earth. The latter star has an additional known planet candidate with a radius of 5.05 R_Earth and a period of 134.49 which was detected by the Kepler pipeline. The discovery of these candidates illustrates the value of massively distributed volunteer review of the Kepler database to recover candidates which were otherwise uncatalogued.

## Morphology in the era of large surveys

ASTRONOMY & GEOPHYSICS 54 (2013) 16-19

C Lintott, K Masters, B Simmons, S Bamford, S Kaviraj

## Galaxy Zoo 2: detailed morphological classifications for 304,122 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

ArXiv (2013)

KW Willett, CJ Lintott, SP Bamford, KL Masters, BD Simmons, KRV Casteels, EM Edmondson, LF Fortson, S Kaviraj, WC Keel, T Melvin, RC Nichol, MJ Raddick, K Schawinski, RJ Simpson, RA Skibba, AM Smith, D Thomas

We present the data release for Galaxy Zoo 2 (GZ2), a citizen science project with more than 16 million morphological classifications of 304,122 galaxies drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Morphology is a powerful probe for quantifying a galaxy's dynamical history; however, automatic classifications of morphology (either by computer analysis of images or by using other physical parameters as proxies) still have drawbacks when compared to visual inspection. The large number of images available in current surveys makes visual inspection of each galaxy impractical for individual astronomers. GZ2 uses classifications from volunteer citizen scientists to measure morphologies for all galaxies in the DR7 Legacy survey with m_r>17, in addition to deeper images from SDSS Stripe 82. While the original Galaxy Zoo project identified galaxies as early-types, late-types, or mergers, GZ2 measures finer morphological features. These include bars, bulges, and the shapes of edge-on disks, as well as quantifying the relative strengths of galactic bulges and spiral arms. This paper presents the full public data release for the project, including measures of accuracy and bias. The majority (>90%) of GZ2 classifications agree with those made by professional astronomers, especially for morphological T-types, strong bars, and arm curvature. Both the raw and reduced data products can be obtained in electronic format at http://data.galaxyzoo.org .

## Galaxy Zoo: Motivations of Citizen Scientists

ArXiv (2013)

MJ Raddick, G Bracey, PL Gay, CJ Lintott, C Cardamone, P Murray, K Schawinski, AS Szalay, J Vandenberg

Citizen science, in which volunteers work with professional scientists to conduct research, is expanding due to large online datasets. To plan projects, it is important to understand volunteers' motivations for participating. This paper analyzes results from an online survey of nearly 11,000 volunteers in Galaxy Zoo, an astronomy citizen science project. Results show that volunteers' primary motivation is a desire to contribute to scientific research. We encourage other citizen science projects to study the motivations of their volunteers, to see whether and how these results may be generalized to inform the field of citizen science.

## Planet Hunters: A Transiting Circumbinary Planet in a Quadruple Star System

ArXiv (2012)

ME Schwamb, JA Orosz, JA Carter, WF Welsh, DA Fischer, G Torres, AW Howard, JR Crepp, WC Keel, CJ Lintott, NA Kaib, D Terrell, R Gagliano, KJ Jek, M Parrish, AM Smith, S Lynn, RJ Simpson, MJ Giguere, K Schawinski

We report the discovery and confirmation of a transiting circumbinary planet (PH1b) around KIC 4862625, an eclipsing binary in the Kepler field. The planet was discovered by volunteers searching the first six Quarters of publicly available Kepler data as part of the Planet Hunters citizen science project. Transits of the planet across the larger and brighter of the eclipsing stars are detectable by visual inspection every ~137 days, with seven transits identified in Quarters 1-11. The physical and orbital parameters of both the host stars and planet were obtained via a photometric-dynamical model, simultaneously fitting both the measured radial velocities and the Kepler light curve of KIC 4862625. The 6.18 +/- 0.17 Earth radii planet orbits outside the 20-day orbit of an eclipsing binary consisting of an F dwarf (1.734 +/- 0.044 Solar radii, 1.528 +/- 0.087 Solar masses) and M dwarf (0.378+/- 0.023 Solar radii, 0.408 +/- 0.024 Solar masses). For the planet, we find an upper mass limit of 169 Earth masses (0.531 Jupiter masses) at the 99.7% confidence level. With a radius and mass less than that of Jupiter, PH1b is well within the planetary regime. Outside the planet's orbit, at ~1000 AU,a previously unknown visual binary has been identified that is likely bound to the planetary system, making this the first known case of a quadruple star system with a transiting planet.

## A Herschel-ATLAS study of dusty spheroids: probing the minor-merger process in the local Universe

ArXiv (2013)

S Kaviraj, K Rowlands, M Alpaslan, L Dunne, YS Ting, M Bureau, S Shabala, CJ Lintott, DJB Smith, THATLAS collaboration

We use multi-wavelength (0.12 - 500 micron) photometry from Herschel-ATLAS, WISE, UKIDSS, SDSS and GALEX, to study 23 nearby spheroidal galaxies with prominent dust lanes (DLSGs). DLSGs are considered to be remnants of recent minor mergers, making them ideal laboratories for studying both the interstellar medium (ISM) of spheroids and minor-merger-driven star formation in the nearby Universe. The DLSGs exhibit star formation rates (SFRs) between 0.01 and 10 MSun yr^-1, with a median of 0.26 MSun yr^-1 (a factor of 3.5 greater than the average SG). The median dust mass, dust-to-stellar mass ratio and dust temperature in these galaxies are around 10^7.6 MSun yr^-1, ~0.05% and ~19.5 K respectively. The dust masses are at least a factor of 50 greater than that expected from stellar mass loss and, like the SFRs, show no correlation with galaxy luminosity, suggesting that both the ISM and the star formation have external drivers. Adopting literature gas-to-dust ratios and star formation histories derived from fits to the panchromatic photometry, we estimate that the median current and initial gas-to-stellar mass ratios in these systems are ~4% and ~7% respectively. If, as indicated by recent work, minor mergers that drive star formation in spheroids with (NUV-r)>3.8 (the colour range of our DLSGs) have stellar mass ratios between 1:6 and 1:10, then the satellite gas fractions are likely >50%.

## Morphology in the Era of Large Surveys

ArXiv (2013)

C Lintott, K Masters, B Simmons, S Bamford, S Kaviraj

The study of galaxies has changed dramatically over the past few decades with the advent of large-scale astronomical surveys. These large collaborative efforts have made available high-quality imaging and spectroscopy of hundreds of thousands of systems, providing a body of observations which has significantly enhanced our understanding not only of cosmology and large-scale structure in the universe but also of the astrophysics of galaxy formation and evolution. Throughout these changes, one thing that has remained constant is the role of galaxy morphology as a clue to understanding galaxies. But obtaining morphologies for large numbers of galaxies is challenging; this topic, "Morphology in the era of large surveys", was the subject of a recent discussion meeting at the Royal Astronomical Society, and this "Astronomy and Geophysics" article is a report on that meeting.

## Galaxy Zoo: Observing Secular Evolution Through Bars

ArXiv (2013)

E Cheung, E Athanassoula, KL Masters, RC Nichol, A Bosma, EF Bell, SM Faber, DC Koo, C Lintott, T Melvin, K Schawinski, RA Skibba, KW Willett

In this paper, we use the Galaxy Zoo 2 dataset to study the behavior of bars in disk galaxies as a function of specific star formation rate (SSFR), and bulge prominence. Our sample consists of 13,295 disk galaxies, with an overall (strong) bar fraction of $23.6\pm 0.4\%$, of which 1,154 barred galaxies also have bar length measurements. These samples are the largest ever used to study the role of bars in galaxy evolution. We find that the likelihood of a galaxy hosting a bar is anti-correlated with SSFR, regardless of stellar mass or bulge prominence. We find that the trends of bar likelihood and bar length with bulge prominence are bimodal with SSFR. We interpret these observations using state-of-the-art simulations of bar evolution which include live halos and the effects of gas and star formation. We suggest our observed trends of bar likelihood with SSFR are driven by the gas fraction of the disks; a factor demonstrated to significantly retard both bar formation and evolution in models. We interpret the bimodal relationship between bulge prominence and bar properties as due to the complicated effects of classical bulges and central mass concentrations on bar evolution, and also to the growth of disky pseudobulges by bar evolution. These results represent empirical evidence for secular evolution driven by bars in disk galaxies. This work suggests that bars are not stagnant structures within disk galaxies, but are a critical evolutionary driver of their host galaxies in the local universe ($z<1$).

## Measuring the conceptual understandings of citizen scientists participating in zooniverse projects: A first approach

Astronomy Education Review 12 (2013)

EE Prather, S Cormier, CS Wallace, C Lintott, M Jordan Raddick, A Smith

The Zooniverse projects turn everyday people into "citizen scientists" who work online with real data to assist scientists in conducting research on a variety of topics related to galaxies, exoplanets, lunar craters, and solar flares, among others. This paper describes our initial study to assess the conceptual knowledge and reasoning abilities of citizen scientists participating in two Zooniverse projects: Galaxy Zoo and Moon Zoo. In order to measure their knowledge and abilities, we developed two new assessment instruments, the Zooniverse Astronomical Concept Survey (ZACS) and the Lunar Cratering Concept Inventory (LCCI). We found that citizen scientists with the highest level of participation in the Galaxy Zoo and Moon Zoo projects also have the highest average correct scores on the items of the ZACS and LCCI. However, the limited nature of the data provided by Zooniverse participants prevents us from being able to evaluate the statistical significance of this finding, and we make no claim about whether there is a causal relationship between one's participation in Galaxy Zoo or Moon Zoo and one's level of conceptual understanding or reasoning ability on the astrophysical topics assessed by the ZACS or the LCCI. Overall, both the ZACS and the LCCI provide Zooniverse's citizen scientists with items that offer a wide range of difficulties. Using the data from the small subset of participants who responded to all items of the ZACS, we found evidence suggesting the ZACS is a reliable instrument (α=0.78), although twenty-one of its forty items appear to have point biserials less than 0.3. The work reported here provides significant insight into the strengths and limitations of various methods for administering assessments to citizen scientists. Researchers who wish to study the knowledge and abilities of citizen scientists in the future should be sure to design their research methods to avoid the pitfalls identified by our initial findings. © 2013 The American Astronomical Society.

## Sir Patrick Moore, 'The Sky at Night' and modern astronomy in the UK

ASTRONOMY & GEOPHYSICS 54 (2013) 37-38

P Abel, C Lintott, M Barstow

## Erratum: Planet hunters. V. A confirmed jupiter-size planet in the habitable zone and 42 planet candidates from the kepler archive data (ApJ (2013) 776 (10))

Astrophysical Journal Institute of Physics Publishing 778 (2013)

J Wang, DA Fischer, T Barclay, TS Boyajian, JR Crepp, ME Schwamb, C Lintott, KJ Jek, AM Smith, M Parrish, K Schawinski, JR Schmitt, MJ Giguere, JM Brewer, S Lynn, R Simpson, AJ Hoekstra, TL Jacobs, D Lacourse, HM Schwengeler, M Chopin, R Herszkowicz

## The Milky Way Project: A statistical study of massive star formation associated with infrared bubbles

ArXiv (2012)

S Kendrew, RJ Simpson, E Bressert, MS Povich, R Sherman, C Lintott, TP Robitaille, K Schawinski, G Wolf-Chase

The Milky Way Project citizen science initiative recently increased the number of known infrared bubbles in the inner Galactic plane by an order of magnitude compared to previous studies. We present a detailed statistical analysis of this dataset with the Red MSX Source catalog of massive young stellar sources to investigate the association of these bubbles with massive star formation. We particularly address the question of massive triggered star formation near infrared bubbles. We find a strong positional correlation of massive young stellar objects (MYSOs) and H II regions with Milky Way Project bubbles at separations of < 2 bubble radii. As bubble sizes increase, a statistically significant overdensity of massive young sources emerges in the region of the bubble rims, possibly indicating the occurrence of triggered star formation. Based on numbers of bubble-associated RMS sources we find that 67+/-3% of MYSOs and (ultra)compact H II regions appear associated with a bubble. We estimate that approximately 22+/-2% of massive young stars may have formed as a result of feedback from expanding H II regions. Using MYSO-bubble correlations, we serendipitously recovered the location of the recently discovered massive cluster Mercer 81, suggesting the potential of such analyses for discovery of heavily extincted distant clusters.

## Spheroidal post-mergers in the local Universe

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 420 (2012) 2139-2146

A Carpineti, S Kaviraj, D Darg, C Lintott, K Schawinski, S Shabala

Galaxy merging is a fundamental aspect of the standard hierarchical galaxy formation paradigm. Recently, the Galaxy Zoo project has compiled a large, homogeneous catalogue of 3373 mergers, through direct visual inspection of the entire Sloan Digital Sky Survey spectroscopic sample. We explore a subset of galaxies from this catalogue that are spheroidal 'post-mergers' (SPMs) - where a single remnant is in the final stages of relaxation after the merger and shows evidence for a dominant bulge, making them plausible progenitors of early-type galaxies. Our results indicate that the SPMs have bluer colours than the general early-type galaxy population possibly due to merger-induced star formation. An analysis using optical emission-line ratios indicates that 20 of our SPMs exhibit LINER or Seyfert-like activity (68 per cent), while the remaining 10 galaxies are classified as either star forming (16 per cent) or quiescent (16 per cent). A comparison to the emission-line activity in the ongoing mergers from Darg et al. indicates that the active galactic nuclei (AGN) fraction rises in the post-mergers, suggesting that the AGN phase probably becomes dominant only in the very final stages of the merger process. The optical colours of the SPMs and the plausible mass ratios for their progenitors indicate that, while a minority are consistent with major mergers between two early-type galaxies, the vast majority are remnants of major mergers where at least one progenitor is a late-type galaxy. © 2012 The Authors Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2012 RAS.

## Galaxy Zoo and ALFALFA: Atomic Gas and the Regulation of Star Formation in Barred Disc Galaxies

ArXiv (2012)

KL Masters, RC Nichol, MP Haynes, WC Keel, C Lintott, B Simmons, R Skibba, S Bamford, R Giovanelli, K Schawinski

We study the observed correlation between atomic gas content and the likelihood of hosting a large scale bar in a sample of 2090 disc galaxies. Such a test has never been done before on this scale. We use data on morphologies from the Galaxy Zoo project and information on the galaxies' HI content from the ALFALFA blind HI survey. Our main result is that the bar fraction is significantly lower among gas rich disc galaxies than gas poor ones. This is not explained by known trends for more massive (stellar) and redder disc galaxies to host more bars and have lower gas fractions: we still see at fixed stellar mass a residual correlation between gas content and bar fraction. We discuss three possible causal explanations: (1) bars in disc galaxies cause atomic gas to be used up more quickly, (2) increasing the atomic gas content in a disc galaxy inhibits bar formation, and (3) bar fraction and gas content are both driven by correlation with environmental effects (e.g. tidal triggering of bars, combined with strangulation removing gas). All three explanations are consistent with the observed correlations. In addition our observations suggest bars may reduce or halt star formation in the outer parts of discs by holding back the infall of external gas beyond bar co-rotation, reddening the global colours of barred disc galaxies. This suggests that secular evolution driven by the exchange of angular momentum between stars in the bar, and gas in the disc, acts as a feedback mechanism to regulate star formation in intermediate mass disc galaxies.