Related papers: The WFIRST Galaxy Survey Exposure Time Calculator
Studies of strong gravitational lensing in current and upcoming wide and deep photometric surveys, and of stellar kinematics from (integral-field) spectroscopy at increasing redshifts, promise to provide valuable constraints on galaxy…
Observations of high-redshift galaxies have provided us with a rich tool to study the physics at play during the epoch of reionisation. The luminosity function (LF) of these objects is an indirect tracer of the complex processes that govern…
Redshift-space distortions in galaxy surveys happen along the radial direction, breaking statistical translation invariance. We construct estimators for radial distortions that, using only Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs) of the overdensity…
Spectroscopic observations for a new survey of 250 000 galaxy redshifts are underway, using the 2dF instrument at the AAT. The input galaxy catalogue and commissioning data are described. The first result from the preliminary data is a new…
Traditional galaxy-galaxy lensing is a well-established method of probing the statistical properties of the Universe's matter and galaxy distribution. However, this measure does not carry all the statistical information, provided the matter…
We investigate the dependence of galaxy clustering on luminosity and spectral type using the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS). Spectral types are assigned using the principal component analysis of Madgwick et al. We divide the sample…
We have been undertaking a programme on the Gemini 8-m telescopes to demonstrate the power of integral field spectroscopy, using the optical GMOS spectrograph, and the new CIRPASS instrument in the near-infrared. Here we present some…
A robust measurement of the clustering amplitude of the sub-mm population of starburst galaxies requires large-area surveys (>> 1 deg^2). The largest-format arrays subtend only 10 arcmin^2 on the sky and hence scan-mapping is a necessary…
WFIRST is NASA's first flagship mission with pre-defined core science programs to study dark energy and perform a statistical census of wide orbit exoplanets with a gravitational microlensing survey. Together, these programs are expected to…
We present the first results of our application of photometric redshifts to the study of galaxy populations in high-redshift clusters. For this survey, we are examining a sample of galaxy clusters at z > 0.6 which have already been…
The redshift distribution of galactic-scale lensing systems provides a laboratory to probe the velocity dispersion function (VDF) of early-type galaxies (ETGs) and measure the evolution of early-type galaxies at redshift z ~ 1. Through the…
The Wide-Field X-ray Telescope (WFXT) is a proposed NASA mission dedicated to performing surveys of the sky in the soft X-ray band (0.3-6 keV). The key characteristics of this missions are a constant point spread function with Half Energy…
We present a new scheme, $\it{galtag}$, for refining the photometric redshift measurements of faint galaxies by probabilistically tagging them to observed galaxy groups constructed from a brighter, magnitude-limited spectroscopy survey.…
Understanding the epochs of cosmic dawn and reionisation requires us to leverage multi-wavelength and multi-tracer observations, with each dataset providing a complimentary piece of the puzzle. To interpret such data, we update the public…
In the current era of JWST, we continue to uncover a wealth of information about the Universe deep into the Epoch of Reionization. In this work, we use a suite of simulations with 21cmSPACE, to explore the astrophysical properties of early…
The outer regions of globular clusters can enable us to answer many fundamental questions concerning issues ranging from the formation and evolution of clusters and their multiple stellar populations to the study of stars near and beyond…
[ABRIDGED] I perform a detailed comparison of the shape of the optical luminosity functions as a function of galaxy class and filter, which have been obtained from redshift surveys with an effective depth ranging from z~0.01 to z~0.6. This…
It is anticipated that the large sky areas covered by planned wide-field weak lensing surveys will reduce statistical errors to such an extent that systematic errors will instead become the dominant source of uncertainty. It is therefore…
Modern galaxy surveys focus on the galaxy power spectrum or 2-point correlation function to test and constrain cosmological models. Additional information comes from higher-order N-point functions, but their analysis is challenging. A…
Galaxy redshift surveys are outstanding tools for observational cosmology. Mapping the universe as outlined by galaxies leads to fundamental measurements which refine our knowledge of its structure and evolution. Redshift acquisition has…