Related papers: Optical Galaxy Selection
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…
The study of the morphology of galaxies is important in order to understand the formation and evolution of galaxies and their sub-components as a function of luminosity, environment, and star-formation and galaxy assembly over cosmic time.…
Despite consistent progress in numerical simulations, the observable properties of galaxy clusters are difficult to predict ab initio. It is therefore important to compare both theoretical and observational results to a direct measure of…
We present a new determination of the surface brightness of our Galaxy at the Solar Neighbourhood as observed from outside the Galaxy. We rely on various existing optical and infra-red surveys to obtain a multiwavelength estimate. On the…
Strong lensing is a powerful tool to address three major astrophysical issues: understanding the spatial distribution of mass at kpc and sub-kpc scale, where baryons and dark matter interact to shape galaxies as we see them; determining the…
It is not straightforward to determine the distribution of supernova remnants (SNRs) in the Galaxy. The two main difficulties are that there are observational selection effects that mean that catalogues of SNRs are incomplete, and distances…
Presence of dust in galaxies removes half or more of the stellar energy from the UV-optical budget of the Universe and has profound impact on our understanding of how galaxies evolve. Measures of opacity in local galaxies are reviewed…
Gravitational Lensing is a UNIQUE tool to constrain the mass distribution of collapsed structures, this is particularly true for galaxies, either on a case by case basis using multiple images of background sources (such as quasars), or…
Ground-based optical astronomy necessarily involves sensing the light of astronomical objects along with the contributions of many natural sources ranging from the Earth's atmosphere to cosmological light. In addition, astronomers have long…
We have measured a velocity dispersion for the foreground galaxy in this gravitationally lensed system. Our dispersion confirms the prediction from lens models, provided that the source is distant enough ($z_{_S}>0.2$). Current…
It is becoming increasingly clear that galaxy bias is complicated, with evidence indicating that it can be time-dependent, morphology-dependent, scale-dependent, non-linear and non-deterministic. We discuss strategies for overcoming these…
Optical surveys for galaxies are biased against the inclusion of low surface brightness (LSB) galaxies. Disney (1976) suggested that the constancy of disk central surface brightness noticed by Freeman (1970) was not a physical result, but…
A large fraction of known galaxy-lens systems require a component of external shear to explain the observed image geometries. In most cases, this shear can be attributed to a nearby group of galaxies. We discuss how the dark-matter mass…
Partially overlapping galaxies are used to directly determine the effective absorption in spiral galaxy disks. The non-overlapping parts of the galaxies and symmetry considerations are used to reconstruct, via differential photometry, how…
Galaxy shapes are not randomly oriented, rather they are statistically aligned in a way that can depend on formation environment, history and galaxy type. Studying the alignment of galaxies can therefore deliver important information about…
Most galaxies in the nearby Universe are gravitationally bound to a cluster or group of galaxies. Their optical contents, such as optical richness, are crucial for understanding the co-evolution of galaxies and large-scale structures in…
We investigate in detail the effects of sampling on our ability to accurately reconstruct the distribution of galaxies from galaxy surveys. We use a simple probability theory approach, Bayesian classifier theory and Bayesian transition…
After a brief introduction to gravitational lensing theory, a rough overview of the types of gravitational lensing statistics that have been performed so far will be given. I shall then concentrate on recent results of galaxy-galaxy…
The local space density of galaxies as a function of their basic structural parameters --like luminosity, surface brightness and scalesize-- is still poorly known. Our poor knowledge is mainly the result of strong selection biases against…
A variety of subtle, and not-so-subtle selection effects influence the interpretation of galaxy counts, sizes and redshift distributions in the Hubble Deep Field. Comparison of the different HDF catalogs available in the literature and on…