Related papers: Resolving stellar populations with crowded field 3…
Uncertainty in the wide-angle Point Spread Function (PSF) at large angles (tens of arcseconds and beyond) is one of the dominant sources of error in a number of important quantities in observational astronomy. Examples include the stellar…
Stars form in clustered environments, but how they form when the available resources are shared is still not well understood. A related question is whether the IMF is in fact universal across galactic environments, a galactic initial mass…
One of the most important techniques for astrophysics with adaptive optics is the ability to do spectroscopy at diffraction limited scales. The extreme difficulty of positioning a faint target accurately on a very narrow slit can be avoided…
Clustering is an effective tool for astronomical spectral analysis, to mine clustering patterns among data. With the implementation of large sky surveys, many clustering methods have been applied to tackle spectroscopic and photometric data…
Spectroastrometry is a technique which has the potential to resolve flux distributions on scales of milliarcseconds. In this study, we examine the application of spectroastrometry to binary point sources which are spatially unresolved due…
We explore the use of Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS) to observe extrasolar planet transits. Although this technique should find its full potential in space observations (e.g. JWST, TPF), we have tested its basics with ground based time…
We give an introduction into the observational technique of integral field or 3D spectroscopy. We discuss advantages and drawbacks of this type of observations and highlight a few science projects enabled by this method. In the second part…
We present a novel approach for simultaneous extraction of stellar population parameters and internal kinematics from the spectra integrated along a line of sight. We fit a template spectrum into an observed one in a pixel space using a…
The TESS mission will survey ~85 % of the sky, giving us the opportunity of extracting high-precision light curves of millions of stars, including stellar cluster members. In this work, we present our project "A PSF-based Approach to TESS…
The reduction of integral-field spectrograph (IFS) data is demanding work. Many repetitive operations are required in order to convert raw data into, typically a large number of, spectra. This effort can be markedly simplified through the…
We present a new method for quantifying the abundance of satellites around field galaxies and in groups. The method is designed to work with samples, such as local photometric redshift catalogues, that do not have full spectroscopic…
Fossil record methods based on spectral synthesis techniques have matured over the past decade, and their application to integrated galaxy spectra fostered substantial advances on the understanding of galaxies and their evolution. Yet,…
Integral field, or 3D, spectroscopy is the technique of obtaining spectral information over a two-dimensional, hopefully contiguous, field of view. While there is some form of astronomical 3D spectroscopy at all wavelengths, there has been…
We present the implementation and use of algorithms for matching point-spread functions (PSFs) within the Pan-STARRS Image Processing Pipeline (IPP). PSF-matching is an essential part of the IPP for the detection of supernovae and…
Recently introduced angular-memory-effect based techniques enable non-invasive imaging of objects hidden behind thin scattering layers. However, both the speckle-correlation and the bispectrum analysis are based on the statistical average…
We present a new method for photometering objects in galaxy clusters. We introduce a mode-filtering technique for removing spatially variable backgrounds, improving both detection and photometric accuracy (roughly halving the scatter in the…
It is currently impossible to determine the abundances and ages of the stellar populations of distant, dense stellar systems star by star. Therefore, methods to analyze the composite light of stellar systems are required. I review the…
We present PyGFit, a program designed to measure PSF-matched photometry from images with disparate pixel scales and PSF sizes. While PyGFit has a number of uses, its primary purpose is to extract robust spectral energy distributions (SEDs)…
Precise photometric and astrometric measurements on astronomical images require an accurate knowledge of the Point Spread Function (PSF). When the PSF cannot be modelled directly from the image, PSF-reconstruction techniques become the only…
The point-spread function (PSF) of an adaptive optics (AO) system is often poorly known. This ignorance can lead to significant systematic errors in photometry. Since the degree of AO correction is sensitive to the observing conditions:…