On the frequency of star-forming galaxies in the vicinity of powerful AGNs: The case of SMM J04135+10277

(Abridged) The 7-year WMAP data and improved astrophysical data rigorously test the standard cosmological model and its extensions. By combining WMAP with the latest distance measurements from BAO and H0 measurement, we determine the parameters of the simplest LCDM model. The power-law index of the primordial power spectrum is n_s=0.968+-0.012, a measurement that excludes the scale-invariant spectrum by 99.5%CL. The other parameters are also improved from the 5-year results. Notable examples of improved parameters are the total mass of neutrinos, sum(m_nu)<0.58eV, and the effective number of neutrino species, N_eff=4.34+0.86-0.88. We detect the effect of primordial helium on the temperature power spectrum and provide a new test of big bang nucleosynthesis. We detect, and show on the map for the first time, the tangential and radial polarization patterns around hot and cold spots of temperature fluctuations, an important test of physical processes at z=1090 and the dominance of adiabatic scalar fluctuations. With the 7-year TB power spectrum, the limit on a rotation of the polarization plane due to potential parity-violating effects has improved to Delta(alpha)=-1.1+-1.4(stat)+-1.5(syst) degrees. We report significant detections of the SZ effect at the locations of known clusters of galaxies. The measured SZ signal agrees well with the expected signal from the X-ray data. However, it is a factor of 0.5 to 0.7 times the predictions from "universal profile" of Arnaud et al., analytical models, and hydrodynamical simulations. We find, for the first time in the SZ effect, a significant difference between the cooling-flow and non-cooling-flow clusters (or relaxed and non-relaxed clusters), which can explain some of the discrepancy. This lower amplitude is consistent with the lower-than-theoretically-expected SZ power spectrum recently measured by the South Pole Telescope collaboration.

We present measurements of dust reddening using the colors of stars with spectra in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We measure reddening as the difference between the measured and predicted colors of a star, as derived from stellar parameters from the SEGUE Stellar Parameter Pipeline (Lee et al. 2008a). We achieve uncertainties of 56, 34, 25, and 29 mmag in the colors u-g, g-r, r-i, and i-z, per star, though the uncertainty varies depending on the stellar type and the magnitude of the star. The spectrum-based reddening measurements confirm our earlier "blue tip" reddening measurements (Schlafly et al. 2010, S10), finding reddening coefficients different by -3%, 1%, 1%, and 2% in u-g, g-r, r-i, and i-z from those found by the blue tip method, after removing a 4% normalization difference. These results prefer an R_V=3.1 Fitzpatrick (1999) reddening law to O'Donnell (1994) or Cardelli et al. (1989) reddening laws. We provide a table of conversion coefficients from the Schlegel et al. (1998) maps of E(B-V) to extinction in 88 bandpasses for 4 values of R_V, using this reddening law and the 14% recalibration of SFD first reported by S10 and confirmed in this work.

The Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) is one of three focal plane instruments in the Spitzer Space Telescope. IRAC is a four-channel camera that obtains simultaneous broad-band images at 3.6, 4.5, 5.8, and 8.0 microns. Two nearly adjacent 5.2x5.2 arcmin fields of view in the focal plane are viewed by the four channels in pairs (3.6 and 5.8 microns; 4.5 and 8 microns). All four detector arrays in the camera are 256x256 pixels in size, with the two shorter wavelength channels using InSb and the two longer wavelength channels using Si:As IBC detectors. IRAC is a powerful survey instrument because of its high sensitivity, large field of view, and four-color imaging. This paper summarizes the in-flight scientific, technical, and operational performance of IRAC.