Related papers: New Surface Brightness Fluctuations Spectroscopic …
New space missions (e.g., NASA-TESS and ESA-PLATO) will perform an analysis of bright stars in large fields of the celestial sphere searching for extraterrestrial planets. Asteroseismic observations will search for exoplanet-hosting stars…
We determine a K-band luminosity-metallicity (K-Z) relation for dwarf irregular galaxies, over a large range of magnitudes, -20.5 < M_K < -13.5, using a combination of K photometry from either the 2-micron all sky survey (2MASS) or the…
We performed a fluctuation analysis of the Hubble Extremely Deep Field (XDF) at four optical wavelength bands and found large fluctuations that are significantly brighter than those expected for ordinary galaxies. Good cross-correlations…
We have created a framework to facilitate the construction of specialized target lists for radial velocity surveys that are biased toward stars that (1) possess planets and (2) are easiest to observe with current detection techniques. We…
High redshift star-forming galaxies are discovered routinely through a flux excess in narrowband filters (NB) caused by an emission line. In most cases, the width of such filters is broad compared to typical line widths, and the throughput…
We present analysis of local large scale flows using the Surface Brightness Fluctuation (SBF) Survey for the distances to 300 early-type galaxies. Our models of the distribution function of mean velocity and velocity dispersion at each…
Stellar streams are excellent probes of the gravitational potential in which they evolve. In the Milky Way (MW), globular cluster (GC) streams are routinely used to infer properties about time-dependent perturbations of the underlying…
This study presents a tomographic survey of a subset of the outer halo (10-40 kpc) drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 6. Halo substructure on spatial scales of $>3$ degrees is revealed as an excess in the local density of…
Several deep observations such as those carried out at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) have revealed prominent Low Surface Brightness (LSB) fine structures that change the apparent morphology of galaxies. Previous photometry…
We trace the tidal Stream of the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy (Sgr dSph) using Red Clump stars from the catalog of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey - Data Release 6, in the range 150{\deg} < RA < 220{\deg}, corresponding to the range of…
We have detected 535 planetary nebulae (PNs) in NGC 4697, using the classic on-band, off-band filter technique with the Focal Reducer and Spectrograph (FORS) at the Cassegrain focus of the first 8-meter telescope unit of the ESO Very Large…
We study the outer regions of the Milky Way globular cluster NGC6809 based on Dark Energy Camera (DECam) observations, which reach nearly 6 mag below the cluster main sequence (MS) turnoff. In order to unveil its fainter outermost…
As the fields of stellar and exoplanetary study grow and revolutionary new detection instruments are created, it is imperative that a homogeneous, precise source of stellar parameters is available. This first work of the gr8stars…
The metallicity distribution function and internal chemical variations of a galaxy are fundamental to understand its formation and assembly history. In this work, we analyze photometric metallicities for 3883 stars over seven half-light…
We report on a recently developed laser-probing diagnostic which allows direct measurements of ray-deflection angles in one axis, whilst retaining imaging capabilities in the other axis. This allows us to measure the spectrum of angular…
Large numbers of low-to-medium resolution spectra of M-type dwarf stars from both the local Galactic disk and halo are available from various surveys. In order to fully exploit these data, we develop a template-fit method using a set of…
We have identified a low surface brightness stellar stream from visual inspection of SDSS imaging for the edge-on, spiral galaxy NGC5387. A blue overdensity was also identified in SDSS coincident with the stream intersection with the…
NGC 2419 is a peculiar Galactic globular cluster in terms of size/luminosity, and chemical abundance anomalies. Here, we present Str\"omgren $uvby$ photometry of the cluster. Using the gravity- and metallicity-sensitive $c_1$ and $m_1$…
We present a new spectroscopic study of the dwarf galaxy Hercules (d ~ 132 kpc) with data from the Anglo-Australian Telescope and its AAOmega spectrograph together with the Two Degree Field multi-object system to solve the conundrum that…
We describe a new technique to measure stellar kinematics and line-strengths at large radii in nearby galaxies. Using the integral-field spectrograph SAURON as a 'photon-collector', we obtain spectra out to four effective radii (Re) in the…