Related papers: Dust Content, Galaxy Orientations, and Shape Noise…
Using the Millennium Galaxy Catalogue we quantify the dependency of the disc and bulge luminosity functions on galaxy inclination. Using a contemporary dust model we show that our results are consistent with galaxy discs being optically…
Weak gravitational lensing is a very sensitive way of measuring cosmological parameters, including dark energy, and of testing current theories of gravitation. In practice, this requires exquisite measurement of the shapes of billions of…
In the last decade, it has become clear that the dust-enshrouded star formation contributes significantly to early galaxy evolution. Detection of dust is therefore essential in determining the properties of galaxies in the high-redshift…
I discuss the use of cross correlations between galaxies with distance information and projected weak lensing dark matter maps to obtain a fully three dimensional dark matter map and power spectrum. On large scales l<100 one expects the…
Measuring the masses of protoplanetary disks is crucial for understanding their planet-forming potential. Typically, dust masses are derived from (sub-)millimeter flux density measurements plus assumptions for the opacity, temperature, and…
We present a new approach to measure the shapes of galaxies, a fundamental task in observational astronomy. This approach is based on the decomposition of a galaxy image into a series of orthogonal basis functions, or `shapelets'. Our…
We present a joint weak lensing and X-ray analysis of 4 deg$^2$ from the CFHTLS and XMM-LSS surveys. Our weak lensing analysis is the first analysis of a real survey using shapelets, a new generation weak lensing analysis method. We create…
We study the applicability of several galaxy environment measures (n^th-nearest-neighbor distance, counts in an aperture, and Voronoi volume) within deep redshift surveys. Mock galaxy catalogs are employed to mimic representative…
We present Swift/Ultraviolet Optical Telescope (UVOT) integrated light photometry of the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey (SINGS) and the Key Insights on Nearby Galaxies: A Far-Infrared Survey with Herschel (KINGFISH) samples of…
We quantify the performance of mass mapping techniques on mock imaging and gravitational lensing data of galaxy clusters. The optimum method depends upon the scientific goal. We assess measurements of clusters' radial density profiles,…
Ongoing and future wide-field galaxy surveys can be used to locate a number of clusters of galaxies with cosmic shear measurement alone. We study constraints on cosmological models using statistics of weak lensing selected galaxy clusters.…
We describe the first results from two observational projects aimed at measuring the amount and spatial distribution of dark matter in distant early-type galaxies (E/S0s) and clusters of galaxies. At the galaxy scale, the Lenses Structure…
The stellar and dust content of spiral galaxies as function of radius has been investigated using near-infrared and optical broadband surface photometry of 86 face-on spiral galaxies. Colors of galaxies correlate with the azimuthally…
Galaxies behind the Milky Way suffer size reduction and dimming due to their obscuration by dust in the disk of our Galaxy. The degree of obscuration is wavelength dependent. It decreases towards longer wavelengths. Compared to the optical,…
Accurate statistical measurement with large imaging surveys has traditionally required throwing away a sizable fraction of the data. This is because most measurements have have relied on selecting nearly complete samples, where variations…
We propose and discuss a new experimental approach to measure the centroid shift induced by gravitational microlensing in the images of lensed quasars (astrometric microlensing). Our strategy is based on taking the photocenter of a region…
Observations of the clustering of galaxies can provide useful information about the distribution of dark matter in the Universe. In order to extract accurate cosmological parameters from galaxy surveys, it is important to understand how the…
We present the first cosmology results from large-scale structure in the Dark Energy Survey (DES) spanning 5000 deg$^2$. We perform an analysis combining three two-point correlation functions (3$\times$2pt): (i) cosmic shear using 100…
The VST Optical Imaging of the CDFS and ES1 Fields (VOICE) Survey is proposed to obtain deep optical $ugri$ imaging of the CDFS and ES1 fields using the VLT Survey Telescope (VST). At present, the observations for the CDFS field have been…
We discuss cosmological inference from galaxy surveys at low and high redshifts. Studies of optical and IRAS redshift surveys with median redshift ${\bar z} \sim 0.02$ yield measurements of the density parameter $\Omega$ and the…