Related papers: Cosmological Structures behind the Milky Way
Little is known about the portion of the Milky Way lying beyond the Galactic center at distances of more than 9 kilo-parsec from the Sun. These regions are opaque at optical wavelengths due to absorption by interstellar dust, and distances…
We report on the detection of a population of weak metal-line absorbers in the halo or nearby intergalactic environment of the Milky Way. Using high-resolution ultraviolet absorption-line spectra of bright QSOs obtained with the Space…
The spatial distribution of Ly-alpha forest absorption systems toward a group of 8, closely spaced QSOs has been analysed and evidence for large scale structure has been found at <z> = 2.8. Our technique is based on the first and second…
We present results of a method for an automatic search for HI shells in 3D data cubes and apply it to the Leiden-Dwingeloo HI survey of the northern Milky Way. In the 2nd Galactic quadrant, where identifications of structures are not…
Suzaku and Chandra X-ray observations detected a new cluster of galaxies, Suzaku J1759-3450, at a redshift z=0.13. It is located behind the Milky Way, and the high Galactic dust extinction renders it nearly invisible at optical wavelengths.…
We present high-resolution seeing limited and AO NIR imaging observations of the stellar cluster within about one parsec of Sgr A*, the massive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. Stellar number counts and the diffuse background…
The ~800 optically unseen (R>25.5) 24mum-selected sources in the complete Spitzer First Look Survey sample (Fadda et al. 2006) with F[24mum]>0.35 mJy are found to be very strongly clustered. If, as indicated by several lines of…
We present the results of a narrow-band infrared imaging survey of a narrow strip (12' wide) around the galactic equator between 6 deg and 21 deg of galactic longitude aimed at detecting field stars with strong CO absorption, mainly…
The Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) is now underway and will provide a complete census of galaxies as faint as 13.5 mag (3 mJy) at 2.2 microns for most of the sky, and ~12.1 mag (10 mJy) for regions veiled by the Milky Way. This census…
This study presents a tomographic survey of a subset of the outer halo (10-40 kpc) drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 6. Halo substructure on spatial scales of $>3$ degrees is revealed as an excess in the local density of…
Numerical simulations of cosmological structure formation show that the Universe's most massive clusters, and the galaxies living in those clusters, assemble rapidly at early times (2.5 < z < 4). While more than twenty proto-clusters have…
We aim at analysing systematically the distribution and physical properties of neutral and mildly ionised gas in the Milky Way halo, based on a large absorption-selected data set. Multi-wavelength studies were performed combining optical…
In order to constrain the evolutionary history of the Milky Way, we hunt for faint RR Lyrae stars (RRLs) using Dark Energy Camera data from the High cadence Transient Survey (HiTS) and the Halo Outskirts With Variable Stars (HOWVAST)…
The superimposed pair of spiral galaxies NGC 3314 offers a unique opportunity to trace the dust properties in a spiral galaxy. We analyze multicolor HST imaging, supported by ground-based near-IR imaging and fiber-array spectroscopy to…
The interstellar region within the few central parsecs around the super-massive black hole, Sgr A* at the very Galactic center is composed by a number of overlapping molecular structures which are subject to one of the most hostile physical…
We consider various possible scenarios to explain the recent observation of a claimed broad H$\alpha$ absorption in our Galactic halo with peak optical depth $\tau \simeq 0.01$ and equivalent width $W \simeq 0.17 \, \rm \AA$. We show that…
Based on the ROSAT All-Sky Survey we are constructing a sample of the X-ray brightest galaxy clusters for cosmological studies. We have already completed the compilation of a sample of about 1000 clusters in the sky excluding a 40 degree…
Aims: A pilot project has been carried out to measure circumstellar CO emission from three OH/IR stars close to the Galactic centre. The intention was to find out whether it would be possible to conduct a large-scale survey for mass-loss…
The observation of our home galaxy, the Milky Way (MW), is made difficult by our internal viewpoint. The Gaia survey that contains around 1.6 billion star distances is the new flagship of MW structure and can be combined with other…
We report distance measurements for the Norma cluster based on the near-infrared $J$- and $K_s$-band Fundamental Plane (FP) relations. Our simultaneous $J$ and $K_s$-band photometry analyses were performed using 31 early-type galaxies in…