Related papers: Surface Brightness Fluctuations: A Case for Extrem…
Current and future imaging surveys will measure cosmic shear with a statistical precision that demands a deeper understanding of potential systematic biases in galaxy shape measurements than has been achieved to date. We investigate the…
We describe a program to measure surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) distances to galaxies observed in the Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey (NGVS), a photometric imaging survey covering $104~deg^2$ of the Virgo cluster in the…
We establish a method, called pbFFS for photobleaching Fluctuation Fluorescence Spectroscopy, which aims at characterizing molecules or particles labelled with a unknown distribution or fluorophores. Using photobleaching as a control…
The convolution of galaxy images by the point-spread function (PSF) is the dominant source of bias for weak gravitational lensing studies, and an accurate estimate of the PSF is required to obtain unbiased shape measurements. The PSF…
The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) Virgo Cluster Survey is a large program to image 100 early-type Virgo galaxies using the F475W and F850LP bandpasses of the Wide Field Channel of the ACS instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).…
Planetary nebula (PN) surveys in systems beyond ~10 Mpc often find high-excitation, point-like sources with [O III] $\lambda 5007$ fluxes greater than the apparent bright-end cutoff of the planetary nebula luminosity function (PNLF). Here…
Most research on astrophysical lensing has been conducted using the geometric optics framework, where there exists a clear concept of lensing images. However, wave optics effects can be important for coherent sources, e.g. pulsars, fast…
We present the development of a data-driven, AI-based model of the Point Spread Function (PSF) that achieves higher accuracy than the current state-of-the-art approach, "PSF in the Full Field-of-View'' (PIFF). PIFF is widely used in leading…
The [O III] 5007 planetary nebula luminosity function (PNLF) occupies an important place on the extragalactic distance ladder. Since it is the only method that is applicable to all the large galaxies of the Local Supercluster, it is…
We describe galaxy surface photometry based on fitting ellipses to the isophotes of the galaxies. Example galaxies with different isophotal shapes are used to illustrate the process, including how the deviations from elliptical isophotes…
Measuring the integrated stellar halo light around galaxies is very challenging. The surface brightness of these haloes are expected to be many magnitudes below dark sky and the central brightness of the galaxy. Here I show that in some of…
A robust and extended characterization of the point spread function (PSF) is crucial to extract the photometric information produced by deep imaging surveys. Here, we present the extended PSFs of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), one of…
The weak gravitational lensing is a powerful tool in modern cosmology. To accurately measure the weak lensing signal, one has to control the systematic bias to a small level. One of the most difficult problems is how to correct the smearing…
The ultimate goal of the "Pi of the Sky" apparatus is observation of optical flashes of astronomical origin and other light sources variable on short timescales. We search mainly for optical emission of Gamma Ray Bursts, but also for…
From theoretical predictions, the introduction of 8-m class telescopes permits one to extend Surface Brightness Fluctuations measurements from the ground to ~7000 km/s, with a precision that is comparable to current space-based…
Luminosity profiles of galaxies acting as strong gravitational lenses can be tricky to study. Indeed, strong gravitational lensing images display several lensed components, both point-like and diffuse, around the lensing galaxy. Those…
Image subtraction is essential for transient detection in time-domain astronomy. The point spread function (PSF), photometric scaling, and sky background generally vary with time and across the field-of-view for imaging data taken with…
We show that it is possible to define a purely Photometric Fundamental Plane (PFP) for early-type galaxies. This relation is similar to the standard Fundamental Plane (FP), and is obtained by replacing the velocity dispersion parameter with…
We describe a simple and fast method to correct ellipticity measurements of galaxies from the distortion by the instrumental and atmospheric point spread function (PSF), in view of weak lensing shear measurements. The method performs a…
Incoherently illuminated or luminescent objects give rise to a low-contrast speckle-like pattern when observed through a thin diffusive medium, as such a medium effectively convolves their shape with a speckle-like point spread function…