Related papers: GaaP: PSF- and aperture-matched photometry using s…
We present a novel automatic adaptive aperture photometry algorithm for measuring the total magnitudes of merging galaxies with irregular shapes. First, we use a morphological pattern recognition routine for identifying the shape of an…
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…
Cosmic shear has been identified as the method with the most potential to constrain dark energy. To capitalise on this potential it is necessary to measure galaxy shapes with great accuracy, which in turn requires a detailed model for the…
Optimal error estimation is key to achieve accurate photometry and astrometry. Stellar fluxes and positions in high angular resolution images are typically measured with PSF fitting routines, such as StarFinder. However, the formal…
Extragalactic surveys provide significant statistical data for the study of crucial galaxy parameters used to constrain galaxy evolution, e.g. stellar mass (M$_*$) and star formation rate (SFR), under different environmental conditions.…
Traditional galaxy-galaxy lensing is a well-established method of probing the statistical properties of the Universe's matter and galaxy distribution. However, this measure does not carry all the statistical information, provided the matter…
Wide-area imaging surveys are one of the key ways of advancing our understanding of cosmology, galaxy formation physics, and the large-scale structure of the Universe in the coming years. These surveys typically require calculating…
Precision weak gravitational lensing experiments require measurements of galaxy shapes accurate to <1 part in 1000. We investigate measurement biases, noted by Voigt and Bridle (2009) and Melchior et al. (2009), that are common to shape…
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…
We propose a new technique to directly measure the shapes of dark matter halos of galaxies using weak gravitational lensing. Extending the standard galaxy-galaxy lensing method, we show that the shape parameters of the mass distribution of…
We present a new technique for monitoring microlensing activity even in highly crowded fields, and use this technique to place limits on low-mass MACHOs in the haloes of M31 and the Galaxy. Unlike present Galactic microlensing surveys, we…
The principles of measuring the shapes of galaxies by a model-fitting approach are discussed in the context of shape-measurement for surveys of weak gravitational lensing. It is argued that such an approach should be optimal, allowing…
Image coaddition is one of the most basic operations that astronomers perform. In Paper~I, we presented the optimal ways to coadd images in order to detect faint sources and to perfrom flux measurements under the assumption that the noise…
We introduce a new galaxy image decomposition tool, GALPHAT (GALaxy PHotometric ATtributes), to provide full posterior probability distributions and reliable confidence intervals for all model parameters. GALPHAT is designed to yield a high…
The first step toward doing high-precision astrometry is the measurement of individual stars in individual images, a step that is fraught with dangers when the images are undersampled. The key to avoiding systematic positional error in…
We present GASPHOT, a tool for automated surface photometry and morphological classification of galaxies in deep and wide fields. The requirements for any such tool are reviewed, and its use for the classification of high-z galaxies is…
The Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey is a multiwavelength photometric and spectroscopic survey, using the AAOmega spectrograph on the Anglo-Australian Telescope to obtain spectra for up to ~300000 galaxies over 280 square degrees, to…
With the dramatic rise in high-quality galaxy data expected from Euclid and Vera C. Rubin Observatory, there will be increasing demand for fast high-precision methods for measuring galaxy fluxes. These will be essential for inferring the…
The number density and correlation function of galaxies are two key quantities to characterize the distribution of the observed galaxy population. High-$z$ spectroscopic surveys, which usually involve complex target selection and are…
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…