Related papers: Primordial star clusters at extreme magnification
We consider the feasibility of detecting Population III pair-instability supernovae (PISN) at very high redshifts with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Four published estimates for the PISNe rate show a rather wide dispersion, between…
Observational identification of the first stars is one of the great challenges in the modern astronomy. Although a single first star is too faint to be detected, supernova explosions of the first stars can be bright enough. An important…
In the course of a weak gravitational lensing survey of 39 clusters of galaxies,covering a total sky area of ~1 square degree, we have serendipitously discovered mass concentrations in the fields of A1705 and A1722 which are most probably…
We report on deep near-infrared observations obtained with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) onboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) of the first five confirmed gravitational lensing events discovered by the Herschel Astrophysical Terahertz…
Strong gravitational lensing by clusters of galaxies probes the mass distribution at the core of each cluster and magnifies the universe behind it. MACS J0417.5-1154 at z=0.443 is one of the most massive clusters known based on weak…
Number counts of galaxy clusters across redshift are a powerful cosmological probe, if a precise and accurate reconstruction of the underlying mass distribution is performed -- a challenge called mass calibration. With the advent of wide…
An earlier analysis of the Milky Way Star Cluster (MWSC) catalogue revealed an apparent lack of old (> 1 Gyr) open clusters in the solar neighbourhood (< 1 kpc). To fill this gap we undertook a search for hitherto unknown star clusters,…
Extreme magnifications of distant objects by factors of several thousand have recently become a reality. Small very luminous compact objects, such as supernovae (SNe), giant stars at z=1-2, Pop III stars at z>7 and even gravitational waves…
Massive quiescent galaxies at z>1 have been found to have small physical sizes, hence to be superdense. Several mechanisms, including minor mergers, have been proposed for increasing galaxy sizes from high- to low-z. We search for…
We present a fully self-consistent simulation of a synthetic survey of the furthermost cosmic explosions. The appearance of the first generation of stars (Population III) in the Universe represents a critical point during cosmic evolution,…
In a systematic search over 11 cluster fields from Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH) we identify ten passively evolving massive galaxies at redshift z~2.We derive the stellar properties of these galaxies using HST…
The ESA cornerstone mission The Far-Infrared and Submillimetre Sapce Telescope (FIRST) has the ideal combination of sensitivity and angular resolving power to determine the bright counts of galaxies over a large area of sky in the…
The surface mass density of a cluster of galaxies, and thus its total mass, can be estimated from its lens magnification. The magnification can be determined from the variation in number counts of its background galaxies. In the weak…
We report on the first results of an imaging survey to detect strong gravitational lensing targeting the richest clusters selected from the photometric data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) with follow-up deep imaging observations…
We present results of a weak gravitational lensing survey of six X-ray selected high-redshift clusters of galaxies. We find that the masses of the clusters derived from weak lensing are comparable to those derived from the X-ray…
We are currently undertaking a Spitzer GTO program to image ~30 massive lensing clusters at moderate redshift with both IRAC and MIPS. By taking advantage of the gravitatinoal lensing power of these clusters, we will study the population of…
The first stars continue to elude modern telescopes, but much has been accomplished in observing the glow of the first galaxies. As detection capabilities improve we will eventually resolve these galaxies, but hopes of observing an…
Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in Universe. They are very important as both cosmological probes and astrophysical laboratories. Several methods have been developed to detect galaxy clusters with different techniques (optical,…
Most gravitational lenses are early-type galaxies in relatively low density environments -- a ``field'' rather than a ``cluster'' population. We show that field early-type galaxies with 0 < z < 1, as represented by the lens galaxies, lie on…
We discuss a method to build up and study a sample of distant galaxies, with 2<z<5, using the gravitational amplification effect in cluster-lenses for which the mass distribution is well known. The candidates are selected close to the…