Related papers: Optimal Galaxy Distance Estimators
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…
Combining redshift and galaxy shape information offers new exciting ways of exploiting the gravitational lensing effect for studying the large scales of the cosmos. One application is the three-dimensional reconstruction of the matter…
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…
The extragalactic distance scale is fundamental to our understanding of astrophysics and cosmology. In recent years, the surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) method, applied in the near-IR, has proven especially powerful for measuring…
We present results of a statistical analysis of the SFI catalog of peculiar velocities, a recently completed survey of spiral field galaxies with I-band Tully-Fisher distances (Haynes et al. 1999). The velocity field statistic utilized is…
As deeper observations discover increasingly distant galaxies, characterizing the properties of high-redshift galaxy populations will become increasingly challenging and paramount. We present a method for measuring the clustering bias of…
We present a strategy for estimating the mass per unit length along supercluster-scale filaments that are oriented across the sky, based on mock redshift surveys of 264 filaments from the Millennium simulation. In our fiducial scenario, we…
We construct a galaxy groups catalogue from the public 100K data release of the 2dF galaxy redshift survey. The group identification is carried out using a slightly modified version of the group finding algorithm developed by Huchra &…
Using SDSS DR15 to its full extent, we derived fundamental plane distances to over 317 000 early-type galaxies up to a redshift of 0.4. In addition to providing the largest sample of fundamental plane distances ever calculated, as well as a…
The use of the Tully-Fisher (TF) relation for the determination of the Hubble Constant relies on the availability of an adequate template TF relation and of reliable primary distances. Here we use a TF template relation with the best…
Since the volume accessible to galaxy surveys is fundamentally limited, it is extremely important to analyse available data in the most optimal fashion. One way of enhancing the cosmological information extracted from the clustering of…
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…
We propose a general formalism for galaxy biasing and apply it to methods for measuring cosmological parameters, such as regression of light versus mass, the analysis of redshift distortions, measures involving skewness and the cosmic…
We focus on the problem of manifold estimation: given a set of observations sampled close to some unknown submanifold $M$, one wants to recover information about the geometry of $M$. Minimax estimators which have been proposed so far all…
The KLUN (Kinematics of the Local UNiverse) sample of 6600 spiral galaxies is used in studying dark matter in different scales: Type dependence of the zero-point of Tully-Fisher relation indicates M/L \approx 9 -- 16 in galactic scale.…
Our aim is to constrain the properties of dark matter halos inhabiting high density environments, such as is the case in massive galaxy clusters. We use galaxy-galaxy lensing techniques that utilize a maximum likelihood method to constrain…
I review selected current observations of distant galaxies and our interpretation of the fragile (and occasionally contradictory) data. Galaxies at the ``contemporary limit'' of technology and redshift (z~6) are difficult to locate in the…
We infer distances and their asymmetric uncertainties for two million stars using the parallaxes published in the Gaia DR1 (GDR1) catalogue. We do this with two distance priors: A minimalist, isotropic prior assuming an exponentially…
We discuss a method to build up and study a sample of distant galaxies, with 2<z<5, using the gravitational amplification effect in cluster-lenses for which the mass distribution is well known. The candidates are selected close to the…
We present new long-slit Halpha spectroscopy for 403 non-interacting spiral galaxies, obtained at the Palomar Observatory 5 m Hale telescope, which is used to derive well-sampled optical rotation curves. Because many of the galaxies show…