This is the third paper in a series aimed at finding reionization-era quasars with the combination of DESI Legacy imaging Surveys (DELS), the Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) Survey, and near-infrared imaging surveys, such as the UKIRT Hemisphere Survey (UHS), as well as the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mid-infrared survey. In this paper, we describe the updated quasar candidate selection procedure, report the discovery of 16 quasars at 6.4 z6.9 from an area of ∼13,020 deg 2 , and present the quasar luminosity function (QLF) at z∼6.7. The measured QLF follows F µ-L L 1450 1450 2.35 () in the magnitude range −27.6<M 1450 <−25.5. We determine the quasar comoving spatial density at á ñ z =6.7 and M 1450 <−26.0 to be 0.39±0.11 Gpc −3 and find the exponential density evolution parameter to be k=−0.78±0.18 from z∼6 to z∼6.7, corresponding to a rapid decline by a factor of ∼6 per unit redshift toward earlier epochs. This indicates that the rapid decline of quasar spatial density at z>5 that was found by previous works continues to z>6, at a rate significantly faster than the average decline rate between z∼3 and 5. We measured quasar comoving emissivity at z∼6.7, which indicates that high-redshift quasars are highly unlikely to make a significant contribution to hydrogen reionization. The broad absorption line quasar fraction at z6.5 is measured to be 22%. In addition, we also report the discovery of six additional quasars at z∼6 in the Appendix.

We present a novel infrared spectral energy distribution (SED) modeling methodology that uses likelihood-based weighting of the model fitting results to construct probabilistic H-R diagrams (pHRD) for X-ray identified, intermediate-mass (2-8 M ), pre-main sequence young stellar populations. This methodology is designed specifically for application to young stellar populations suffering strong, differential extinction (∆A V > 10 mag), typical of Galactic massive star-forming regions. We pilot this technique in the Carina Nebula Complex (CNC) by modeling the 1-8 µm SEDs of 2269 likely stellar members that exhibit no excess emission from circumstellar dust disks at 4.5 µm or shorter wavelengths. A subset of ∼100 intermediate-mass stars in the lightly-obscured Trumpler 14 and 16 clusters have available spectroscopic T eff , measured from the Gaia-ESO survey. We correctly identify the stellar temperature in 70% of cases, and the aggregate pHRD for all sources returns the same peak in the stellar age distribution as obtained using the spectroscopic T eff . The SED model parameter distributions of stellar mass and evolutionary age reveal significant variation in the duration of star formation among four large-scale stellar overdensities within the CNC and a large distributed stellar population. Star formation began ∼10 Myr ago and continues to the present day, with the star formation rate peaking 3 Myr ago when the massive Trumpler 14 and 16 clusters formed. We make public the set of 100,000 SED models generated from standard pre-main sequence evolutionary tracks and our custom software package for generating pHRDs and mass-age distributions from the SED fitting results.

We demonstrate that using up to seven stellar abundance ratios can place observational constraints on the star formation histories (SFHs) of Local Group dSphs, using Sculptor dSph as a test case. We use a one-zone chemical evolution model to fit the overall abundance patterns of α elements (which probe the core-collapse supernovae that occur shortly after star formation), s-process elements (which probe AGB nucleosynthesis at intermediate delay times), and iron-peak elements (which probe delayed Type Ia supernovae). Our best-fit model indicates that Sculptor dSph has an ancient SFH, consistent with previous estimates from deep photometry. However, we derive a total star formation duration of ∼0.9 Gyr, which is shorter than photometrically derived SFHs. We explore the effect of various model assumptions on our measurement and find that modifications to these assumptions still produce relatively short SFHs of duration ≲1.4 Gyr. Our model is also able to compare sets of predicted nucleosynthetic yields for supernovae and AGB stars, and can provide insight into the nucleosynthesis of individual elements in Sculptor dSph. We find that observed [Mn/Fe] and [Ni/Fe] trends are most consistent with sub-M Ch Type Ia supernova models, and that a combination of “prompt” (delay times similar to core-collapse supernovae) and “delayed” (minimum delay times ≳50 Myr) r-process events may be required to reproduce observed [Ba/Mg] and [Eu/Mg] trends.

We use X-ray and infrared observations to study the properties of three classes of young stars in the Carina Nebula: intermediate-mass (2-5 M e ) pre-main-sequence stars (IMPS; i.e., intermediate-mass T Tauri stars), late-B and A stars on the zero-age main sequence (AB), and lower-mass T Tauri stars (TTS). We divide our sources among these three subclassifications and further identify disk-bearing young stellar objects versus diskless sources with no detectable infrared (IR) excess emission using IR (1-8 μm) spectral energy distribution modeling. We then perform X-ray spectral fitting to determine the hydrogen-absorbing column density (N H ), absorption-corrected X-ray luminosity (L X ), and coronal plasma temperature (kT) for each source. We find that the X-ray spectra of both IMPS and TTS are characterized by similar kT and N H , and on average L X /L bol ∼4×10 −4 . IMPS are systematically more luminous in X-rays (by ∼0.3 dex) than all other subclassifications, with median L X =2.5×10 31 erg s −1 , while AB stars of similar masses have X-ray emission consistent with TTS companions. These lines of evidence converge on a magnetocoronal flaring source for IMPS X-ray emission, a scaled-up version of the TTS emission mechanism. IMPS therefore provide powerful probes of isochronal ages for the first ∼10 Myr in the evolution of a massive stellar population, because their intrinsic, coronal X-ray emission decays rapidly after they commence evolving along radiative tracks. We suggest that the most luminous (in both X-rays and IR) IMPS could be used to place empirical constraints on the location of the intermediate-mass stellar birth line.