Related papers: Dusty MgII Absorbers: Implications for the GRB/Qua…
We measure the mean halo-mass of z=0.5 MgII absorbers using the cross-correlation (over co-moving scales 0.05-13h^{-1}Mpc) between 1806 MgII quasar absorption systems and ~250,000 Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs), both selected from the SDSS…
Observations of quasars (QSOs) shining through or close to galaxies offer a way to probe the properties of the foreground matter through dust extinction and gravitational lensing. In this paper the feasibility of measuring the dust…
Abundances of galaxies at redshifts z > 4 are difficult to obtain from damped Ly {\alpha} (DLA) systems in the sightlines of quasars (QSOs) due to the Ly {\alpha} forest blanketing and the low number of high-redshift quasars detected.…
We present the results of a survey of the analogs of weak MgII absorbers (rest frame equivalent width W(2796) < 0.3 A) at 0 < z < 0.3. Our sample consisted of 25 HST/STIS echelle quasar spectra (R = 45,000) which covered SiII 1260 and CII…
Two-thirds of long duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) show soft X-ray absorption in excess of the Milky Way. The column densities of metals inferred from UV and optical spectra differ from those derived from soft X-ray spectra, at times by an…
We present HST spectra for a sample of six QSOs with intermediate redshift (z_a < 1) damped Ly-alpha systems. These observations aim at measuring the HI column density and detect metal lines in order to investigate the metal enrichment of…
Dust in the host galaxies of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) dims and reddens their afterglow spectra. Knowledge of the nature of this dust is crucial for correcting for extinction, providing clues to the nature of GRB progenitors, and probing the…
We use realistic Monte-Carlo simulations including both gravitational-wave and short gamma-ray burst selection effects to revisit the coincident rate of binary systems composed of two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole. We…
One way to characterize and understand HI-selected galaxies is to study their metallicity properties. In particular, we show that the metallicity of absorbers is a bivariate function of the HI column density (NHI) and the MgII equivalent…
Using the six years of the spectroscopic monitoring of the luminous quasar HE 0435-4312 ($z=1.2231$) with the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), in combination with the photometric data (CATALINA, OGLE, SALTICAM, and BMT), we…
Extra-galactic X-ray absorption and optical extinction are often found in gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglows and they could be tracers of both circumburst and host galaxy environments. By performing spectral analyses for spectral energy…
The physical origin of the large-scale conformity in the colours and specific star formation rates of isolated low mass central galaxies and their neighbours on scales in excess of 1 Mpc is still under debate. One possible scenario is that…
Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data release 3 (SDSS DR3) we investigate how narrow (<700km/s) CIV and MgII quasar absorption line systems are distributed around quasars. The CIV absorbers lie in the redshift range 1.6 < z < 4…
The abundance of dust within galaxies directly influences their evolution. Contemporary models attempt to match this abundance by simulating the processes of dust creation, growth, and destruction. While these models are accurate, they…
We present a sample of 46 [OIII]-emitting galaxies at z<0.8 detected in the fibre spectra of quasars from the SDSS-DR7 through an automatic search procedure. We also detect [OII] and Hb emission lines from most of these galaxies in the SDSS…
We present a new sample of 31 CaII(H&K) 3935,3970 absorption line systems with 0.84<z_abs<1.3 discovered in the spectra of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 3 quasars, together with an analysis of their dust content. The presence…
We present the results of a spectroscopic survey of galaxies in the vicinity of an ultra-strong MgII \lambda\lambda 2786,2803 absorber of rest-frame absorption equivalent width W_r(2796)=4.2\AA\ at z=0.5624. This absorber was originally…
Using the MEGAFLOW survey, which consists of a combination of MUSE and UVES observations of 22 quasar fields selected to contain strong MgII absorbers, we measure covering fractions of CIV and MgII as a function of impact parameter $b$…
We have collected 10025 foreground-background quasar pairs with projected distances $d_p<500$ kpc from the large quasar catalog of the SDSS DR16Q. We investigate the properties of the Mg II absorption lines with $W_r>0.15$ \AA\ around…
The composition and amount of interstellar dust within gamma-ray burst (GRB) host galaxies is of key importance when addressing selection effects in the GRB redshift distribution, and when studying the properties of their host galaxies. As…