a deep imaging survey of massive galaxies and their surroundings
Context. A small fraction of early-type galaxies (ETGs) show prolate rotation, i.e. they rotate around their long photometric axis. In simulations, certain configurations of galaxy mergers are known to produce this type of rotation.
Aims. We investigate the association of prolate rotation and signs of (past) galaxy interactions among the observed galaxies.
Robustness to transformation is desirable in many computer vision tasks, given that input data often exhibits pose variance within classes. While translation invariance and equivariance is a documented phenomenon of CNNs, sensitivity to other transformations is typically encouraged through data augmentation. We investigate the modulation of complex valued convolutional weights with learned Gabor filters to enable orientation robustness. With Gabor modulation, the designed network is able to generate orientation dependent features free of interpolation with a single set of rotation-governing parameters. Moreover, by learning rotation parameters alongside traditional convolutional weights, the representation space is not constrained and may adapt to the exact input transformation. We present Learnable Convolutional Gabor Networks (LCGNs), that are parameter-efficient and offer increased model complexity while keeping backpropagation simple. We demonstrate that learned Gabor modulation utilising an end-to-end complex architecture enables rotation invariance and equivariance on MNIST and a new dataset of simulated images of galactic cirri.
Richards et al., 2020, Arxiv
Deep imaging, that is imaging capable of capturing very low surface brightness extended objects, is a quickly growing field of extragalactic astronomy. Not only can new types of faint objects be discovered, but deep images of bright galaxies are very valuable, too, since they reveal faint signs of past galaxy collisions, the tidal features. Such “archeological” record can be exploited for investigating how galaxies formed. In the MATLAS survey, we obtained extremely deep images of 177 nearby massive elliptical and lenticular galaxies using the 3.5m Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.
Continue reading “The MATLAS survey of faint outskirts of bright galaxies”
Accounting for the morphology is an essential constraint for the theory of galaxy formation. The low-surface brightness regions of galaxies host multiple morphological features that any realistic model should consider; however they are still not fully explored because of observational difficulties. Here we present the results of our visual inspections of very deep images of a complete large volume-limited sample of 177 nearby massive early-type galaxies (ETGs) from the MATLAS survey.
Continue reading “Census and classification of low-surface-brightness structures in nearby early-type galaxies from the MATLAS survey”
Stellar shells around galaxies could provide precious insights into their assembly history. However, their formation mechanism remains poorly empirically constrained, regarding in particular the type of galaxy collisions at their origin. We present MUSE at VLT data of the most prominent outer shell of NGC 474, to constrain its formation history. The stellar shell spectrum is clearly detected, with a signal-to-noise ratio of ∼65 pix-1. We used a full spectral fitting method to determine the line-of-sight velocity and the age and metallicity of the shell and associated point-like sources within the MUSE field of view.
Continue reading “Revealing the formation mechanism of the shell galaxy NGC474 with MUSE”
The MATLAS deep imaging survey has uncovered a plethora of dwarf galaxies in the low density environment it has mapped. A fraction of them are unusually extended and have a low-surface brightness. Among these so-called ultra-diffuse galaxies, a few seem to host an excess of globular clusters. With the integral-field unit spectrograph MUSE we have observed one of these galaxies – MATLAS J15052031+0148447 (MATLAS-2019) – located towards the nearby group NGC 5846 and measured its systemic velocity, age, and metallicity, and that of its globular clusters candidates.
Continue reading “A spectroscopic study of MATLAS-2019 with MUSE: an ultra-diffuse galaxy with an excess of old globular clusters”
We present interferometric HI observations of six double-disc stellar counterrotator (“2σ”) galaxies from the ATLAS3D sample.
Continue reading “Atomic Hydrogen Clues to the Formation of Counterrotating Stellar Discs (associated paper)”
Observations of neutral hydrogen (HI) and molecular gas show that 50% of all nearby early-type galaxies (ETGs) contain some cold gas. Molecular gas is always found in small gas discs in the central region of the galaxy, while neutral hydrogen is often distributed in a low-column density disc or ring typically extending well beyond the stellar body. Dust is frequently found in ETGs as well. The goal of our study is to understand the link between dust and cold gas in nearby ETGs as a function of HI content.
Here we report the discovery with the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope of an extremely large (̃115 kpc in diameter) H I ring, located around a massive quenched galaxy, AGC 203001, but off-centered, with respect to it. This ring does not have any bright extended optical counterpart unlike several other known ring galaxies. Our deep g, r, and i optical imaging of the H I ring, using the MegaCam instrument on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, shows however several regions with faint optical emission at a surface brightness level of ̃28 mag/arcsec2.
Continue reading “Discovery of a large H I ring around the quiescent galaxy AGC 203001 (associated paper)”
Several detailed observations, such as those carried out at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), have revealed prominent Low Surface Brightness (LSB) fine structures that lead to a change in the apparent morphology of galaxies. Previous photometry surveys have developed observational techniques which make use of the diffuse light detected in the external regions of galaxies. In these studies, the outer perturbations have been identified and classified. These include tidal tails, stellar streams, and shells. These structures serve as tracers for interacting events and merging events and retain some memory of the mass assembly of galaxies. Cosmological numerical simulations are required to estimate their visibility timescale, among other properties, in order to reconstruct the merger history of galaxies. In the present work, we analyze a hydrodynamical cosmological simulation to build up a comprehensive interpretation of the properties of fine structures.
Continue reading “Probing the merger history of red early-type galaxies with their faint stellar substructures”