Related papers: Revisiting Stephan's Quintet with deep optical ima…
As the second paper of a series on studying galaxy-galaxy lensing signals using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 (SDSS DR7), we present our measurement and modelling of the lensing signals around groups of galaxies. We divide the…
Intrinsic galaxy alignments constitute the major astrophysical systematic of forthcoming weak gravitational lensing surveys but also yield unique insights into galaxy formation and evolution. We build analytic models for the distribution of…
We propose the existence of ultracompact minihalos as a new type of massive compact halo object (MACHO) and suggest an observational test to discover them. These new MACHOs are a powerful probe into the nature of dark matter and physics in…
We study the dark matter halos of galaxies with galaxy-galaxy lensing using the COMBO-17 survey. This survey offers an unprecedented data set for studying lens galaxies at z=0.2-0.7 including redshift information and spectral classification…
Analysing the weak lensing distortions of the images of faint background galaxies provides a means to constrain the average mass distribution of cluster galaxies and potentially to test the extent of their dark matter haloes as a function…
We report the serendipitous discovery of an "Einstein Ring" in the optical band from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data and associated four images of a background source. The lens galaxy appears to be a nearby dwarf spheroid at a…
Results from the Hubble Deep Field (HDF) North and South show a large percentage of high-redshift galaxies whose appearance falls outside traditional classification systems. The nature of these objects is poorly understood, but sub-mm…
Giant low surface brightness galaxies (gLSBs) are galaxies with extremely extended, faint, optical disks over 50 kpc in radius and have high total masses which can reach 10^12 solar masses. The existence of such galaxies is problematic for…
Within 8 years, the current microlensing surveys of M31 will provide several hundred events affecting unresolved stars. They will thus allow a statistical study of the dark matter in M31's halo. The NGST will resolve these stars and…
We predict that there is a population of low-luminosity dwarf galaxies orbiting within the halo of the Milky Way that have surface brightnesses low enough to have escaped detection in star-count surveys. The overall count of stealth…
The developments summarized with the name ``weak gravitational lensing'' have led to exciting possibilities to study the (statistical properties of the) dark matter distribution in the Universe. Concentrating on those aspects which require…
Galaxy-galaxy weak lensing is a direct probe of the mean matter distribution around galaxies. The depth and sky coverage of the CFHT Legacy Survey yield statistically significant galaxy halo mass measurements over a much wider range of…
Galaxy-galaxy lensing is a powerful probe of the relation between galaxies and dark matter halos, but its theoretical interpretation requires a careful modeling of various contributions, such as the contribution from central and satellite…
Stars in globular clusters can act either as sources for MACHOs (Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects) located along the line of sight or as lenses for more distant background stars. Although the expected rate of microlensing events…
A diffuse component of intra-group light can be observed in compact groups of galaxies. This component is presumably due to stellar material tidally stripped from the member galaxies of the group, which gets trapped in the group potential.…
Cosmological structure formation predicts that our galactic halo contains an enormous hierarchy of substructures and streams, the remnants of the merging hierarchy that began with tiny Earth mass microhalos. If these structures persist…
We present the discovery of strong mid-infrared emission lines of molecular hydrogen of apparently high velocity dispersion (~870 km/s) originating from a group-wide shock wave in Stephan's Quintet. These Spitzer Space Telescope…
While recent sky surveys have uncovered large numbers of ever fainter Milky Way satellites, their classification as star clusters, low-luminosity galaxies, or tidal overdensities remains often unclear. Likewise, their contributions to the…
Discovery of strongly-lensed gravitational wave (GW) sources will unveil binary compact objects at higher redshifts and lower intrinsic luminosities than is possible without lensing. Such systems will yield unprecedented constraints on the…
We infer the connection between the stellar mass of galaxies from the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) survey, and their dark matter halo masses and its evolution in two bins of redshifts between $[0.3, 0.8]$. We use the measurements of the…