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We describe a population of compact objects in the centre of the Fornax Cluster which were discovered as part of our 2dF Fornax Spectroscopic Survey. These objects have spectra typical of old stellar systems, but are unresolved on…
The detection and identification of distant galaxies is a prominent goal of observational cosmology because distant galaxies are seen as they were in the distant past and hence probe early galaxy formation, due to the cosmologically…
Massive galaxy clusters at intermediate redshift can magnify the flux of distant background sources by several magnitudes and we exploit this effect to search for lensed distant supernovae that may otherwise be too faint to be detected. A…
Light from `point sources' such as supernovae is observed with a beam width of order of the sources' size - typically less than 1 AU. Such a beam probes matter and curvature distributions that are very different from coarse-grained…
Supernova remnants (SNRs) embody the information of the influence on dust properties by the supernova explosion. Based on the color indexes from the 2MASS photometric survey and the stellar parameters from the SDSS$-$DR12$/$APOGEE and…
In the absence of a parallax distance to a pulsar or a surviving binary in a supernova remnant (SNR), distances to Galactic SNRs are generally very uncertain. However, by combining Gaia data with wide field, multi-fiber echelle…
We present the results of an isophotal shape analysis of galaxies in the Coma and Perseus clusters. These data, together with those of two previous papers, provide two complete samples of galaxies with reliable Hubble types in rich…
Several conclusions have been reached over the last few years concerning high-redshift galaxies: (1) The excess of faint blue galaxies is due to dwarf galaxies. (2) Star formation peaks at redshifts z ~1-2. (3) It appears to occur piecemeal…
If the Sun was born in a relatively compact open cluster, it is quite likely that a massive (10MSun) star was nearby when it exploded in a supernova. The repercussions of a supernova can be rather profound, and the current Solar System may…
Available data on the luminosities of supernovae of Type Ia (SNe Ia) that have been calibrated by Cepheids are collected and discussed. The objects in the present sample show a range of ~20 in luminosity. The data strongly confirm the…
The systemic velocity or redshift of galaxies is a convenient tool to calculate their distances in the absence of primary methods, but the uncertainties on these flow distances may be substantial due to galaxy peculiar motions. Here, we…
We report the discovery of a new dwarf galaxy, Andromeda XXVIII, using data from the recently-released SDSS DR8. The galaxy is a likely satellite of Andromeda, and, at a separation of $365^{+17}_{-1}$ kpc, would be one of the most distant…
Highly magnified lensed galaxies allow us to probe the morphological and spectroscopic properties of high-redshift stellar systems in great detail. However, such objects are rare, and there are only a handful of lensed galaxies which are…
We model the distance, extinction, and magnitude probability distributions of a successful Galactic core-collapse supernova (ccSN), its shock breakout radiation, and its massive star progenitor. We find, at very high probability (~100%),…
The cluster soft excess emission indicates the presence of large amounts of warm gas (T ~ 10^6 K) in the neighborhood of galaxy clusters. Among the clusters that display this phenomenon is the Coma cluster, the nearest rich galaxy cluster.…
The galaxy cluster 1E 0657-56 has a bullet-like subcluster that is moving away from the centre of the main cluster at high speed. Markevitch et al. (2004) recently estimated a relative velocity of V_bullet = 4500 +1100/-800 km/s, based on…
We summarize evidence that multiple supernovae exploded within 100 pc of Earth in the past few Myr. These events had dramatic effects on the heliosphere, compressing it to within ~20 au. We advocate for cross-disciplinary research of nearby…
Two groups have recently discovered a statistically significant deviation in the fluxes of high-redshift type Ia supernovae from the predictions of a Friedmann model with zero cosmological constant. In this Letter, I argue that bright,…
Distance measurements of supernova remnants (SNRs) are essential and important. Accurate estimates of physical size, dust masses, and some other properties of SNRs depend critically on accurate distance measurements. However, the…
Given the number of recently discovered galaxy-galaxy lens systems, we anticipate that a gravitationally lensed supernova will be observed within the next few years. We explore the possibility that stars in the lens galaxy will produce…