Related papers: Cloudshine: New Light on Dark Clouds
Clusters of galaxies, the most massive virialized systems known, provide a powerful tool for studying the structure, the mass density, and the cosmology of our universe. Clusters furnish one of the best estimates of the dynamical mass…
The CAIRNS (Cluster And Infall Region Nearby Survey) project is a large spectroscopic survey of the infall regions surrounding nine nearby rich clusters of galaxies. I describe the survey and use the kinematics of galaxies in the infall…
Images from the next generation of telescopes will enable strikingly detailed reconstruction of the dark matter distributions in galaxy cluster cores using strong gravitational lensing analysis. This will provide a key test of Lambda-CDM…
We searched for X-ray shadowing toward two infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) using the MOS detectors on XMM-Newton to learn about the Galactic distribution of X-ray emitting plasma. IRDCs make ideal X-ray shadowing targets of 3/4 kev photons due…
We report on SPT-CLJ2011-5228, a giant system of arcs created by a cluster at $z=1.06$. The arc system is notable for the presence of a bright central image. The source is a Lyman Break galaxy at $z_s=2.39$ and the mass enclosed within the…
Diffuse Galactic emission at low frequencies is a major contaminant for studies of redshifted $21$ cm line studies. Removal of these foregrounds is essential for exploiting the signal from neutral hydrogen at high redshifts. Analysis of…
The diffuse light within galaxy groups and clusters provides valuable insight into the growth of massive cosmic structures. Groups are particularly interesting in this context, because they represent the link between galactic haloes and…
We investigate the shape of the extinction law in two 1-degree square fields of the Perseus Molecular Cloud complex. We combine deep red-optical (r, i, and z-band) observations obtained using Megacam on the MMT with UKIDSS near-infrared (J,…
Clusters of galaxies are studied from a theoretical point of view, comparing with observational results whenever possible. The problem is approached both analytically as well as by means of high-resoultion numerical simulations. The dark…
Constraining the physical and chemical evolution of molecular clouds is essential to our understanding of star formation. These investigations often necessitate knowledge of some local representative number density of the gas along the line…
When a star is observed behind an interstellar cloud of sufficient column density, we do not observe the direct light from the star, which is totally extinguished. Rather, we see only starlight scattered at small angles from the star. I use…
Modelling of Extreme Scattering Events suggests that the Galaxy's dark matter is an undetected population of cold, AU-sized, planetary-mass gas clouds. None of the direct observational constraints on this picture -- thermal/non-thermal…
The infrared sky from space is the sum of a cosmic signal from galaxies, quasars, and perhaps more exotic sources; and foregrounds from the Milky Way and from the Solar System. At a distance of 1 AU from the Sun, the foreground from…
Observations of clusters of galaxies that gravitationally lens faint background galaxies can probe the amount and the equation of state, $\5$, of the dark energy (quintessence) in the universe. Provided that the mass profile and the mass…
We investigate gravitational microlensing of point-like lenses surrounded by diffuse gas clouds. Besides gravitational bending, one must also consider refraction and absorption phenomena. According to the cloud density, the light curves may…
The study of anomalous electromagnetic emission in the sky is the basis of indirect searches for dark matter. It is also a powerful tool to constrain the radiative decay of active neutrinos. Until now, quantitative analyses have focused on…
The stellar and dust content of spiral galaxies as function of radius has been investigated using near-infrared and optical broadband surface photometry of 86 face-on spiral galaxies. Colors of galaxies correlate with the azimuthally…
Within the project Galactic Cold Cores we are carrying out Herschel photometric observations of cold interstellar clouds detected with the Planck satellite. The three fields observed as part of the Herschel science demonstration phase (SDP)…
Transient microstructure in the diffuse interstellar medium has been observed towards galactic and extragalactic sources for decades, usually in lines of atoms and ions, and, more recently, in molecular lines. Evidently, there is a…
We measure the optical spectrum of the Diffuse Galactic Light (DGL) -- the local Milky Way in reflection -- using 92,000 blank-sky spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We correlate the SDSS optical intensity in regions of blank…