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Recent studies suggest that only three of the twelve brightest satellites of the Milky Way (MW) inhabit dark matter halos with maximum circular velocity, V_max, exceeding 30km/s. This is in apparent contradiction with the LCDM simulations…
The Canadian MOST satellite is a unique platform for observations of bright transiting exoplanetary systems. Providing nearly continuous photometric observations for up to 8 weeks, MOST can produce important observational data to help us…
Halo model interpretations of the luminosity dependence of galaxy clustering assume that there is a central galaxy in every sufficiently massive halo, and that this central galaxy is very different from all the others in the halo. The halo…
We are analyzing a sample of closeby galaxy systems, each comprising a bright isolated spiral and its satellites. We find an excess (56%) of prograde satellites over retrograde, which basically holds for all angular displacements from the…
We present a measurement of the absolute surface brightness of the zodiacal light (3900-5100A) toward a fixed extragalactic target at high ecliptic latitude based on moderate resolution (~1.3A per pixel) spectrophotometry obtained with the…
The measurements of the possible gravitational microlensing events are analysed with a simple yet accurate disc--halo model of the Milky Way Galaxy. This comprises a luminous exponential disc embedded in a flattened dark matter halo with…
The BlueWalker 3 satellite is now fainter than during the first months after deployment. The greatest improvement is that the average maximum luminosity near zenith has been reduced from magnitude 1.0 to 2.2. However, the spacecraft is…
Previous studies of the strong lens system SDSSJ0946+1006 have reported a dark matter subhalo with an unusually high central density, potentially challenging the standard cold dark matter (CDM) paradigm. However, these analyses assumed the…
We use a volume-limited spectroscopic sample of isolated galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to investigate the frequency and radial distribution of luminous (M_r <~ -18.3) satellites like the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) around…
The low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite network with mega-constellations can provide global coverage while supporting the high-data rates. The coverage performance of such a network is highly dependent on orbit geometry parameters, including…
The "plane of satellites problem" describes the arrangement of the Milky Way's 11 brightest satellite galaxies in a remarkably thin plane, possibly supported by rotation. This is in apparent contradiction to the standard cosmological model,…
We report on the AAT-AAOmega LRG Pilot observing run to establish the feasibility of a large spectroscopic survey using the new AAOmega instrument. We have selected Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) using single epoch SDSS riz-photometry to…
The incidence of sub-galactic level substructures is an important quantity, as it is a generic prediction of high-resolution Cold Dark Matter (CDM) models which is susceptible to observational test. Confrontation of theory with observations…
We present photometric properties of six small (radii < 100 km) satellites of Uranus based on 32 H-(1.49-1.78 um) band images taken on August 29, 2015 from the Keck II Telescope on Maunakea, Hawaii with the near-infrared camera NIRC2…
We update constraints on cosmic opacity by combining recent SN Type Ia data compilation with the latest measurements of the Hubble expansion at redshifts between 0 and 2. The new constraint on the parameter $\epsilon$ parametrising…
The Milky Way's (MW) satellite population is a powerful probe of warm dark matter (WDM) models as the abundance of small substructures is very sensitive to the properties of the WDM particle. However, only a partial census of the MW's…
Control of systematic uncertainties in the use of Type Ia supernovae as standardized distance indicators can be achieved through contrasting subsets of observationally-characterized, like supernovae. Essentially, like supernovae at…
We correlate the positions of radio galaxies in the FIRST survey with the CMB lensing convergence estimated from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope over 470 square degrees to determine the bias of these galaxies. We remove optically…
Starlink has rapidly emerged as the world's largest satellite constellation and the de facto reference system for low Earth orbit (LEO) networking research. Existing literature predominantly models Starlink as a static, symmetric, and fully…
Lyman alpha (Lya) emission lines should be attenuated in a neutral intergalactic medium (IGM). Therefore the visibility of Lya emitters at high redshifts can serve as a valuable probe of reionization at about the 50% level. We present an…