Related papers: Using the Modified Lognormal Power Law Distributio…
Clusters of galaxies are the most impressive gravitationally-bound systems in the Universe and its abundance (the cluster mass function) is one important statistics to probe the matter density parameter ($\Omega_m$) and the amplitude of…
We show that one can obtain a good fit to the measured main sequence mass function (MF) of a large sample of Galactic clusters (young and old) with a tapered Salpeter power law distribution function with an exponential truncation. The…
[Abridged] We have studied the optical spectra of 28 O- and early B-type stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, 22 of which are associated with the young star-forming region N11. Stellar parameters are determined using an automated fitting…
We examine the efficacy of the halo mass function as a probe of $f(R)$, symmetron and DGP gravity. We develop an excursion-set method to generalise a range of popular HMF fitting functions from GR to screened MG, considering the HMF…
Massive halos hosting groups and clusters of galaxies imprint coherent, arcminute-scale features across the spectrophotometric sky, especially optical-IR clusters of galaxies, distortions in the sub-mm CMB, and extended sources of X-ray…
Large high-quality samples of HII regions and their parent Giant Molecular Clouds (GMC) are now available for local galaxies. It is therefore possible to investigate links between the CO and H$\alpha$ luminosity functions and whether…
Using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) ACS/WFC data we present the photometry and spatial distribution of resolved stellar populations in the outskirts of NGC 2915, a blue compact dwarf with an extended HI disc. These observations reveal an…
We present the analysis of a deep colour-magnitude diagram (CMD) of NGC 1831, a rich star cluster in the LMC. The data were obtained with HST/WFPC2 in the F555W (~V) and F814W (~I) filters, reaching m_555 ~ 25. We discuss and apply a method…
We review the complications involved in the conversion of stellar luminosities into masses and apply a range of mass-to-luminosity relations to our Hubble Space Telescope observations of the young LMC star clusters NGC 1805 and NGC 1818.…
We introduce a new method to measure the dispersion of mmax values of star clusters and show that the observed sample of mmax is inconsistent with random sampling from an universal stellar initial mass function (IMF) at a 99.9% confidence…
The age distribution of star clusters in nearby galaxies plays a crucial role in evaluating the lifetimes and disruption mechanisms of the clusters. Two very different results have been found recently for the age distribution chi(t) of…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) seems to be variable and not universal, as argued in the literature in the last three decades. Several relations among the low-mass end of the IMF slope and other stellar population, photometric or…
Whether or not the initial star cluster mass function is established through a universal, galactocentric-distance-independent stochastic process, on the scales of individual galaxies, remains an unsolved problem. This debate has recently…
We study the amplitude of the weak gravitational lensing signal as a function of stellar mass around a sample of relatively isolated galaxies. This selection of lenses simplifies the interpretation of the observations, which consist of data…
Magellanic Cloud Planetary Nebulae (PNs) offer insight of both the population and evolution of low- and intermediate-mass stars, in environments that are free of the distance bias and the differential reddening that hinder the observations…
Recent observational studies using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) have derived the center-of-mass proper motion (CMPM) of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Although these studies carefully treated both rotation and perspective effects in…
The stellar initial mass functions (IMFs) for the Galactic bulge, the Milky Way, other galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and the integrated stars in the Universe are composites from countless individual IMFs in star clusters and associations…
From a study of the integrated light properties of 200 globular clusters (GCs) in M31, Strader et al. found that the mass-to-light ratios are lower than what is expected from simple stellar population (SSP) models with a `canonical' stellar…
In Schneider, King & Erben (2000) we developed likelihood techniques to compare the constraints on cluster mass profiles that can be obtained using the shear and magnification information. This work considered circularly symmetric power-law…
We present the underlying relations between colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) and synthesis models through the use of stellar luminosity distribution func- tions. CMDs studies make a direct use of the stellar luminosity distribution function…