Related papers: Microlensing and Galactic Structure
Many gravitationally lensed quasars exhibit flux ratio "anomalies" that cannot be explained under the hypothesis that the lensing potential is smooth on scales smaller than one kpc. Micro-lensing by stars is a natural source of granularity…
We present stellar mass surface density profiles of a mass-selected sample of 177 galaxies at 0.5 < z < 2.5, obtained using very deep HST optical and near-infrared data over the GOODS-South field, including recent CANDELS data. Accurate…
We present microlensing calculations for a Galactic model based on Han & Gould (2003), which is empirically normalised by star counts. We find good agreement between this model and data recently published by the MACHO and OGLE…
The cloud-scale density, velocity dispersion, and gravitational boundedness of the interstellar medium (ISM) vary within and among galaxies. In turbulent models, these properties play key roles in the ability of gas to form stars. New high…
Recently, it has been shown that it is possible to reconstruct the projected mass distribution of a cluster from weak lensing provided that both the geometry of the universe and the probability distribution of galaxy redshifts are known;…
To study large-scale structure in the Universe a full census of the contents are required. This is even more important when the processes of galaxy formation are being investigated. In the last year the population of distant galaxies that…
Clusters of galaxies are powerful cosmological probes, particularly if their masses can be determined. One possibility for mass determination is to study the cosmic microwave background (CMB) on small angular scales and observe deviations…
We measure the stellar mass surface densities of early type galaxies by observing the micro-lensing of macro-lensed quasars caused by individual stars, including stellar remnants, brown dwarfs and red dwarfs too faint to produce photometric…
The simple physics of microlensing provides a well-understood tool with which to probe the atmospheres of distant stars in the Galaxy and Local Group with high magnification and resolution. Recent results in measuring stellar surface…
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…
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…
Observationally, it has been reported that the densest stellar system in the Universe does not exceed a maximum stellar surface density, $\Sigma^{\max}_{*}$ = $3\times10^5$M$_{\odot}$pc$^{-2}$, throughout a wide physical scale ranging from…
Studies of strong gravitational lensing in current and upcoming wide and deep photometric surveys, and of stellar kinematics from (integral-field) spectroscopy at increasing redshifts, promise to provide valuable constraints on galaxy…
We describe the use of partially overlapping galaxies to provide direct measurements of the effective absorption in galaxy disks, independent of assumptions about internal disk structure. The non-overlapping parts of the galaxies and…
Explaining the formation and evolution of galaxies is one of the most challenging problems in observational cosmology. Many observations suggest that galaxies we see today could have evolved from the merging of smaller subsystems. Evolution…
The dense concentration of stars and high velocity dispersions in the Galactic centre imply that stellar collisions frequently occur. Stellar collisions could therefore result in significant mass loss rates. We calculate the amount of…
We present the results of a study of weak gravitational lensing by galaxies using imaging data that were obtained as part of the second Red Sequence Cluster Survey (RCS2). In order to compare to the baryonic properties of the lenses we…
Gravitational lensing is one of a number of methods used to probe the distribution of dark mass in the Universe. On galactic scales, complementary techniques include the use of stellar kinematics, kinematics and morphology of the neutral…
The longest microlensing events provide enough information to estimate the mass and distance of the lens. Among hundreds of millions of stars which were monitored for many years by the OGLE project we selected those with clear parallax…
Microlensing provides a unique tool to break the stellar to dark matter degeneracy in the inner Milky Way. We combine N-body dynamical models fitted to the Milky Way's Boxy/Peanut bulge with exponential disk models outside this, and compute…