Related papers: 3D Extinction Mapping Using Hierarchical Bayesian …
Variable stars have been used for over one hundred years as probes for determining astronomical distances; these distances can be used to map the three-dimensional (3D) structure of nearby galaxies. Exploiting the effect that moving to the…
Galaxy models are fundamental to exploiting surveys of our Galaxy. There is now a significant body of work on axisymmetric models. A model can be defined by giving the DF of each major class of stars and of dark matter. Then the…
We report results concerning the distribution and properties of galactic extinction at high galactic latitudes derived from stellar statistics using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We use the classical Wolf diagram method to identify…
We present a large catalogue of molecular clouds with accurate distance estimates in the southern sky. Based on the three-dimensional (3D) dust extinction map and the best-fit extinction and distance information of over 17 million stars…
The chemical enrichment of the Universe; the mass spectrum of planetary nebulae, white dwarfs and gravitational wave progenitors; the frequency distribution of Type I and II supernovae; the fate of exoplanets ... a multitude of phenomena…
The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy, with physical properties inferred from various tracers informed by the extrapolation of structures seen in other galaxies. However, the distances of these tracers are measured indirectly and are…
High-resolution 3D maps of interstellar dust are critical for probing the underlying physics shaping the structure of the interstellar medium, and for foreground correction of astrophysical observations affected by dust. We aim to construct…
The ongoing Gaia mission of ESA will provide accurate spatial and kinematical information for a large fraction of stars in the Galaxy. Interstellar extinction and line absorption studies toward a large number of stars at different distances…
Near-infrared spectroscopy from APOGEE and wide-field optical photometry from Pan-STARRS1 have recently made possible precise measurements of the shape of the extinction curve for tens of thousands of stars, parameterized by R(V). These…
We present a new method for deriving UV-through-IR extinction curves, based on the use of stellar atmosphere models to provide estimates of the intrinsic (i.e., unreddened) stellar spectral energy distributions (SEDs), rather than…
We study the integral Galactic extinction and reddening based on the galaxy catalog of the South Galactic Cap U-band Sky Survey (SCUSS), where $u$ band galaxy number counts and $u-r$ color distribution are used to derive the Galactic…
Galaxy spectra are a rich source of kinematical information since the shapes of the absorption lines reflect the movement of stars along the line-of-sight. We present a technique to directly build a dynamical model for a galaxy by fitting…
We are studying the column density distribution of all nearby giant molecular clouds. As part of this project we generated several all sky extinction maps. They are calculated using the median near infrared colour excess technique applied…
We present a study of the dust-to-gas ratios in five nearby galaxies NGC 628 (M74), NGC 6503, NGC 7793, UGC 5139 (Holmberg I), and UGC 4305 (Holmberg II). Using Hubble Space Telescope broad band WFC3/UVIS UV and optical images from the…
We study the IR-through-UV interstellar extinction curves towards 328 Galactic B and late-O stars. We use a new technique which employs stellar atmosphere models in lieu of unreddened "standard" stars. This technique is capable of virtually…
We present an extinction map of the inner $\sim$\SI{15}{\arcminute} by {16}{\arcminute} of the Galactic Center (GC) with map `pixels' measuring \SI{5}{\arcsecond} $\times$ \SI{5}{\arcsecond} using integrated light color measurements in the…
Mass extinction is a phenomenon in the history of life on Earth when a considerable number of species go extinct over a relatively short period of time. The magnitude of extinction varies between the events, the most well known are the…
For nearly a century, imaging and spectroscopic surveys of galaxies have given us information about the contents of the universe. We attempt to define the logical endpoint of such surveys by defining not the next galaxy survey, but the…
High-volume feature-rich data sets are becoming the bread-and-butter of 21st century astronomy but present significant challenges to scientific discovery. In particular, identifying scientifically significant relationships between sets of…
In this paper, using a significantly improved version of the model-independent, cosmographic approach to cosmology (John, M. V. 2004, ApJ, 614, 1), we address an important question: Was there a decelerating past for the universe? To answer…