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Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): Stellar-to-dynamical Mass Relation. II. Peculiar Velocities (2024)
Journal Article
Dogruel, M. B., Taylor, E. N., Cluver, M., Colless, M., de Graaff, A., Sonnenfeld, A., Lucey, J. R., D’Eugenio, F., Howlett, C., & Said, K. (2024). Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): Stellar-to-dynamical Mass Relation. II. Peculiar Velocities. The Astrophysical Journal, 970(2), 149. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad4ce2

Empirical correlations connecting starlight to galaxy dynamics (e.g., the fundamental plane (FP) of elliptical/quiescent (Q) galaxies and the Tully–Fisher relation of spiral/star-forming (SF) galaxies) provide cosmology-independent distance estimatio... Read More about Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): Stellar-to-dynamical Mass Relation. II. Peculiar Velocities.

Abell 1201: detection of an ultramassive black hole in a strong gravitational lens (2023)
Journal Article
Nightingale, J., Smith, R. J., He, Q., O’Riordan, C. M., Kegerreis, J. A., Amvrosiadis, A., …Massey, R. J. (2023). Abell 1201: detection of an ultramassive black hole in a strong gravitational lens. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 521(3), 3298-3322. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad587

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are a key catalyst of galaxy formation and evolution, leading to an observed correlation between SMBH mass MBH and host galaxy velocity dispersion σe. Outside the local Universe, measurements of MBH are usually only p... Read More about Abell 1201: detection of an ultramassive black hole in a strong gravitational lens.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey peculiar velocity catalogue (2022)
Journal Article
Howlett, C., Said, K., Lucey, J. R., Colless, M., Qin, F., Lai, Y., …Davis, T. M. (2022). The Sloan Digital Sky Survey peculiar velocity catalogue. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 515(1), https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac1681

We present a new catalogue of distances and peculiar velocities (PVs) of 34 059 early-type galaxies derived from fundamental plane (FP) measurements using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). This 7016deg2 homogeneous sample comprises the l... Read More about The Sloan Digital Sky Survey peculiar velocity catalogue.

SIBELIUS-DARK: a galaxy catalogue of the local volume from a constrained realization simulation (2022)
Journal Article
McAlpine, S., Helly, J. C., Schaller, M., Sawala, T., Lavaux, G., Jasche, J., …Johansson, P. H. (2022). SIBELIUS-DARK: a galaxy catalogue of the local volume from a constrained realization simulation. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 512(4), 5823-5847. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac295

We present SIBELIUS-DARK, a constrained realization simulation of the local volume to a distance of 200 Mpc from the Milky Way. SIBELIUS-DARK is the first study of the ‘Simulations Beyond The Local Universe’ (SIBELIUS) project, which has the goal of... Read More about SIBELIUS-DARK: a galaxy catalogue of the local volume from a constrained realization simulation.

Infrared Surface Brightness Fluctuation Distances for MASSIVE and Type Ia Supernova Host Galaxies* (2021)
Journal Article
Jensen, J. B., Blakeslee, J. P., Ma, C., Milne, P. A., Brown, P. J., Cantiello, M., …Wood, C. M. (2021). Infrared Surface Brightness Fluctuation Distances for MASSIVE and Type Ia Supernova Host Galaxies*. Astrophysical Journal Supplement, 255(2), Article 21. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4365/ac01e7

We measured high-quality surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) distances for a sample of 63 massive early-type galaxies using the WFC3/IR camera on the Hubble Space Telescope. The median uncertainty on the SBF distance measurements is 0.085 mag, or 3.... Read More about Infrared Surface Brightness Fluctuation Distances for MASSIVE and Type Ia Supernova Host Galaxies*.

A systematic survey for z< 0.04 CLAGNs (2021)
Journal Article
Senarath, M. R., Brown, M. J., Cluver, M. E., Jarrett, T. H., Wolf, C., Ross, N. P., …Hon, W. J. (2021). A systematic survey for z< 0.04 CLAGNs. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 503(2), 2583-2597. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab393

We have conducted a systematic survey for z < 0.04 active Galactic nuclei (AGNs) that may have changed spectral class over the past decade. We use SkyMapper, Pan-STARRS and the Véron-Cetty & Véron catalogue to search the entire sky for these ‘changin... Read More about A systematic survey for z< 0.04 CLAGNs.

Characterizing the target selection pipeline for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Bright Galaxy Survey (2021)
Journal Article
Ruiz-Macias, O., Zarrouk, P., Cole, S., Baugh, C. M., Norberg, P., Lucey, J., …Wilson, M. (2021). Characterizing the target selection pipeline for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Bright Galaxy Survey. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 502(3), 4328-4349. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab292

We present the steps taken to produce a reliable and complete input galaxy catalogue for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Bright Galaxy Survey (BGS) using the photometric Legacy Survey DR8 DECam. We analyse some of the main issues face... Read More about Characterizing the target selection pipeline for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Bright Galaxy Survey.

TDCOSMO: II. Six new time delays in lensed quasars from high-cadence monitoring at the MPIA 2.2 m telescope (2020)
Journal Article
Millon, M., Courbin, F., Bonvin, V., Buckley-Geer, E., Fassnacht, C., Frieman, J., …Rabus, M. (2020). TDCOSMO: II. Six new time delays in lensed quasars from high-cadence monitoring at the MPIA 2.2 m telescope. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 642, Article A193. https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202038698

We present six new time-delay measurements obtained from Rc-band monitoring data acquired at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPIA) 2.2 m telescope at La Silla observatory between October 2016 and February 2020. The lensed quasars HE 0047−1... Read More about TDCOSMO: II. Six new time delays in lensed quasars from high-cadence monitoring at the MPIA 2.2 m telescope.

Joint analysis of 6dFGS and SDSS peculiar velocities for the growth rate of cosmic structure and tests of gravity (2020)
Journal Article
Said, K., Colless, M., Magoulas, C., Lucey, J. R., & Hudson, M. J. (2020). Joint analysis of 6dFGS and SDSS peculiar velocities for the growth rate of cosmic structure and tests of gravity. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 497(1), 1275-1293. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa2032

Measurement of peculiar velocities by combining redshifts and distance indicators is a powerful way to measure the growth rate of a cosmic structure and test theories of gravity at low redshift. Here we constrain the growth rate of the structure by c... Read More about Joint analysis of 6dFGS and SDSS peculiar velocities for the growth rate of cosmic structure and tests of gravity.

MNELLS: The MUSE Nearby Early-Type Galaxy Lens Locator Survey (2020)
Journal Article
Lucey, J. R., Smith, R. J., & Collier, W. P. (2020). MNELLS: The MUSE Nearby Early-Type Galaxy Lens Locator Survey. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 494(1), 271-292. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa602

Low-redshift strong-lensing galaxies can provide robust measurements of the stellar mass-to-light ratios in early-type galaxies (ETGs), and hence constrain variations in the stellar initial mass function (IMF). At present, only a few such systems are... Read More about MNELLS: The MUSE Nearby Early-Type Galaxy Lens Locator Survey.

Subaru FOCAS IFU observations of two z=0.12 strong-lensing elliptical galaxies from SDSS MaNGA (2020)
Journal Article
Smith, R. J., Collier, W. P., Ozaki, S., & Lucey, J. R. (2020). Subaru FOCAS IFU observations of two z=0.12 strong-lensing elliptical galaxies from SDSS MaNGA. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, 493(1), L33-L38. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnrasl/slaa003

We present new observations of two z = 0.12 strong-lensing elliptical galaxies, originally discovered from the SDSS-IV MaNGA survey, using the new FOCAS IFU spectrograph on the Subaru Telescope. For J1436+4943, our observations confirm the identifica... Read More about Subaru FOCAS IFU observations of two z=0.12 strong-lensing elliptical galaxies from SDSS MaNGA.

"Upper-limit lensing": constraining galaxy stellar masses with singly imaged background sources (2018)
Journal Article
Smith, R. J., Lucey, J. R., & Collier, W. P. (2018). "Upper-limit lensing": constraining galaxy stellar masses with singly imaged background sources. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 481(2), 2115-2124. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty2328

Strong gravitational lensing can provide accurate measurements of the stellar mass-to-light ratio Υ in low-redshift (z ≲ 0.05) early-type galaxies, and hence probe for possible variations in the stellar initial mass function (IMF). However, true mult... Read More about "Upper-limit lensing": constraining galaxy stellar masses with singly imaged background sources.

KINETyS II: Constraints on spatial variations of the stellar initial mass function from K-band spectroscopy (2018)
Journal Article
Alton, P., Smith, R., & Lucey, J. (2018). KINETyS II: Constraints on spatial variations of the stellar initial mass function from K-band spectroscopy. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 478(4), 4464-4486. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty1242

We investigate the spatially resolved stellar populations of a sample of seven nearby massive Early-type galaxies (ETGs), using optical and near infrared data, including K-band spectroscopy. This data offers good prospects for mitigating the uncertai... Read More about KINETyS II: Constraints on spatial variations of the stellar initial mass function from K-band spectroscopy.

A new strong-lensing galaxy at z=0.066: Another elliptical galaxy with a lightweight IMF (2018)
Journal Article
Collier, W. P., Smith, R. J., & Lucey, J. R. (2018). A new strong-lensing galaxy at z=0.066: Another elliptical galaxy with a lightweight IMF. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 478(2), 1595-1600. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty1188

We report the discovery of a new low-redshift galaxy-scale gravitational lens, identified from a systematic search of publicly available MUSE observations. The lens galaxy, 2MASXJ04035024-0239275, is a giant elliptical at z = 0.06604 with a velocity... Read More about A new strong-lensing galaxy at z=0.066: Another elliptical galaxy with a lightweight IMF.

Serendipitous discovery of quadruply imaged quasars: two diamonds (2018)
Journal Article
Lucey, J. R., Schechter, P. L., Smith, R. J., & Anguita, T. (2018). Serendipitous discovery of quadruply imaged quasars: two diamonds. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 476(1), 927-932. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty243

Gravitationally lensed quasars are powerful and versatile astrophysical tools, but they are challengingly rare. In particular, only ∼25 well-characterized quadruple systems are known to date. To refine the target catalogue for the forthcoming Taipan... Read More about Serendipitous discovery of quadruply imaged quasars: two diamonds.

The most massive black holes on the Fundamental Plane of black hole accretion (2017)
Journal Article
Mezcua, M., Hlavacek-Larrondo, J., Lucey, J., Hogan, M., Edge, A., & McNamara, B. (2018). The most massive black holes on the Fundamental Plane of black hole accretion. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 474(1), 1342-1360. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx2812

We perform a detailed study of the location of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) on the Fundamental Plane of black hole (BH) accretion, which is an empirical correlation between a BH X-ray and radio luminosity and mass supported by theoretical models... Read More about The most massive black holes on the Fundamental Plane of black hole accretion.

The Taipan Galaxy Survey: Scientific Goals and Observing Strategy (2017)
Journal Article
da Cunha, E., Hopkins, A. M., Colless, M., Taylor, E. N., Blake, C., Howlett, C., …Watson, F. (2017). The Taipan Galaxy Survey: Scientific Goals and Observing Strategy. Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, 34, Article e047. https://doi.org/10.1017/pasa.2017.41

The Taipan galaxy survey (hereafter simply ‘Taipan’) is a multi-object spectroscopic survey starting in 2017 that will cover 2π steradians over the southern sky (δ ≲ 10°, |b| ≳ 10°), and obtain optical spectra for about two million galaxies out to z... Read More about The Taipan Galaxy Survey: Scientific Goals and Observing Strategy.

Improved mass constraints for two nearby strong-lensing elliptical galaxies from Hubble Space Telescope Imaging (2017)
Journal Article
Collier, W. P., Smith, R. J., & Lucey, J. R. (2017). Improved mass constraints for two nearby strong-lensing elliptical galaxies from Hubble Space Telescope Imaging. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 473(1), 1103-1107. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx2297

We analyse newly obtained Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging for two nearby strong lensing elliptical galaxies, SNL-1 (z = 0.03) and SNL-2 (z = 0.05), in order to improve the lensing mass constraints. The imaging reveals previously unseen structure... Read More about Improved mass constraints for two nearby strong-lensing elliptical galaxies from Hubble Space Telescope Imaging.