Professor Richard Massey's Outputs (190)

Efficient Point-spread Function Modeling with ShOpt.jl: A Point-spread Function Benchmarking Study with JWST NIRCam Imaging (2024)
Journal Article
Berman, E. M., McCleary, J. E., Koekemoer, A. M., Franco, M., Drakos, N. E., Liu, D., Nightingale, J. W., Shuntov, M., Scognamiglio, D., Massey, R., Mahler, G., McCracken, H. J., Robertson, B. E., Faisst, A. L., Casey, C. M., & Kartaltepe, J. S. (2024). Efficient Point-spread Function Modeling with ShOpt.jl: A Point-spread Function Benchmarking Study with JWST NIRCam Imaging. Astronomical Journal, 168(4), Article 174. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ad6a0f

With their high angular resolutions of 30–100 mas, large fields of view, and complex optical systems, imagers on next-generation optical/near-infrared space observatories, such as the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the James Webb Space Telescope, p... Read More about Efficient Point-spread Function Modeling with ShOpt.jl: A Point-spread Function Benchmarking Study with JWST NIRCam Imaging.

Unveiling the Distant Universe: Characterizing z ≥ 9 Galaxies in the First Epoch of COSMOS-Web (2024)
Journal Article
Franco, M., Akins, H. B., Casey, C. M., Finkelstein, S. L., Shuntov, M., Chworowsky, K., Faisst, A. L., Fujimoto, S., Ilbert, O., Koekemoer, A. M., Liu, D., Lovell, C. C., Maraston, C., McCracken, H. J., McKinney, J., Robertson, B. E., Bagley, M. B., Champagne, J. B., Cooper, O. R., Ding, X., …Zavala, J. A. (2024). Unveiling the Distant Universe: Characterizing z ≥ 9 Galaxies in the First Epoch of COSMOS-Web. The Astrophysical Journal, 973(1), Article 23. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad5e6a

We report the identification of 15 galaxy candidates at z ≥ 9 using the initial COSMOS-Web JWST observations over 77 arcmin2 through four Near Infrared Camera filters (F115W, F150W, F277W, and F444W) with an overlap with the Mid-Infrared Imager (F770... Read More about Unveiling the Distant Universe: Characterizing z ≥ 9 Galaxies in the First Epoch of COSMOS-Web.

A complex node of the cosmic web associated with the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0600.1-2008 (2024)
Journal Article
Furtak, L. J., Zitrin, A., Richard, J., Eckert, D., Sayers, J., Ebeling, H., Fujimoto, S., Laporte, N., Lagattuta, D., Limousin, M., Mahler, G., Meena, A. K., Andrade-Santos, F., Frye, B. L., Jauzac, M., Koekemoer, A. M., Kohno, K., Espada, D., Lu, H., Massey, R., & Niemiec, A. (2024). A complex node of the cosmic web associated with the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0600.1-2008. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 533(2), 2242-2261. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stae1943

SuperBIT Superpressure Flight Instrument Overview and Performance: Near-diffraction-limited Astronomical Imaging from the Stratosphere (2024)
Journal Article
Gill, A. S., Benton, S. J., Damaren, C. J., Everett, S. W., Fraisse, A. A., Hartley, J. W., Harvey, D., Holder, B., Huff, E. M., Jones, W. C., Lagattuta, D., Leung, J. S.-Y., Jauzac, M., Li, L., Luu, T. V. T., Massey, R., McCleary, J. E., Nagy, J. M., Netterfield, C. B., Paracha, E., …Vitorelli, A. Z. (2024). SuperBIT Superpressure Flight Instrument Overview and Performance: Near-diffraction-limited Astronomical Imaging from the Stratosphere. Astronomical Journal, 168(2), Article 85. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ad5840

SuperBIT was a 0.5 m near-UV to near-infrared wide-field telescope that launched on a NASA superpressure balloon into the stratosphere from New Zealand for a 45-night flight. SuperBIT acquired multiband images of galaxy clusters to study the properti... Read More about SuperBIT Superpressure Flight Instrument Overview and Performance: Near-diffraction-limited Astronomical Imaging from the Stratosphere.

The COSMOS-Web ring: In-depth characterization of an Einstein ring lensing system at z ∼ 2 (2024)
Journal Article
Mercier, W., Shuntov, M., Gavazzi, R., Nightingale, J. W., Arango, R., Ilbert, O., Amvrosiadis, A., Ciesla, L., Casey, C. M., Jin, S., Faisst, A. L., Andika, I. T., Drakos, N. E., Enia, A., Franco, M., Gillman, S., Gozaliasl, G., Hayward, C. C., Huertas-Company, M., Kartaltepe, J. S., …Vijayan, A. P. (2024). The COSMOS-Web ring: In-depth characterization of an Einstein ring lensing system at z ∼ 2. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 687, Article A61. https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202348095

Aims. We provide an in-depth analysis of the COSMOS-Web ring, an Einstein ring at z ≈ 2 that we serendipitously discovered during the data reduction of the COSMOS-Web survey and that could be the most distant lens discovered to date.

Methods. We e... Read More about The COSMOS-Web ring: In-depth characterization of an Einstein ring lensing system at z ∼ 2.

Unveiling lens light complexity with a novel multi-Gaussian expansion approach for strong gravitational lensing (2024)
Journal Article
He, Q., Nightingale, J. W., Amvrosiadis, A., Robertson, A., Cole, S., Frenk, C. S., Massey, R., Li, R., Cao, X., Lange, S. C., & França, J. P. C. (2024). Unveiling lens light complexity with a novel multi-Gaussian expansion approach for strong gravitational lensing. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 532(2), 2441-2462. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stae1577

In a strong gravitational lensing system, the distorted light from a source is analysed to infer the properties of the lens. However, light emitted by the lens itself can contaminate the image of the source, introducing systematic errors in the analy... Read More about Unveiling lens light complexity with a novel multi-Gaussian expansion approach for strong gravitational lensing.

Strong gravitational lensing’s ‘external shear’ is not shear (2024)
Journal Article
Etherington, A., Nightingale, J., Massey, R., Tam, S.-I., Cao, X., Niemiec, A., He, Q., Robertson, A., Li, R., Amvrosiadis, A., Cole, S., Diego, J., Frenk, C., Frye, B., Harvey, D., Jauzac, M., Koekemoer, A., Lagattuta, D., Lange, S., Limousin, M., …Steinhardt, C. (2024). Strong gravitational lensing’s ‘external shear’ is not shear. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 531(3), 3684-3697. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stae1375

The distribution of mass in galaxy-scale strong gravitational lenses is often modelled as an elliptical power-law plus ‘external shear’, which notionally accounts for neighbouring galaxies and cosmic shear along our line of sight. A small amount of e... Read More about Strong gravitational lensing’s ‘external shear’ is not shear.

Euclid: Early Release Observations -- Unveiling the morphology of two Milky Way globular clusters out to their periphery (2024)
Journal Article
Massari, D., Dalessandro, E., Erkal, D., Balbinot, E., Bovy, J., McDonald, I., Ferguson, A., Larsen, S., Lancon, A., Annibali, F., Goldman, B., Kuzma, P., Voggel, K., Saifollahi, T., Cuillandre, J.-C., Schirmer, M., Kluge, M., Altieri, B., Amara, A., Andreon, S., …Scott, D. (in press). Euclid: Early Release Observations -- Unveiling the morphology of two Milky Way globular clusters out to their periphery. Astronomy & Astrophysics, https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202449696

Hydrodynamical simulations of merging galaxy clusters: giant dark matter particle colliders, powered by gravity (2024)
Journal Article
Sirks, E. L., Harvey, D., Massey, R., Oman, K. A., Robertson, A., Frenk, C., Everett, S., Gill, A. S., Lagattuta, D., & McCleary, J. (2024). Hydrodynamical simulations of merging galaxy clusters: giant dark matter particle colliders, powered by gravity. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 530(3), 3160-3170. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stae1012

Terrestrial particle accelerators collide charged particles, then watch the trajectory of outgoing debris – but they cannot manipulate dark matter. Fortunately, dark matter is the main component of galaxy clusters, which are continuously pulled toget... Read More about Hydrodynamical simulations of merging galaxy clusters: giant dark matter particle colliders, powered by gravity.

Euclid: Validation of the MontePython forecasting tools (2024)
Journal Article
Casas, S., Lesgourgues, J., Schöneberg, N., Sabarish, V. M., Rathmann, L., Doerenkamp, M., Archidiacono, M., Bellini, E., Clesse, S., Frusciante, N., Martinelli, M., Pace, F., Sapone, D., Sakr, Z., Blanchard, A., Brinckmann, T., Camera, S., Carbone, C., Ilić, S., Markovic, K., …Veropalumbo, A. (2024). Euclid: Validation of the MontePython forecasting tools. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 682, Article A90. https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202346772

Context. The Euclid mission of the European Space Agency will perform a survey of weak lensing cosmic shear and galaxy clustering in order to constrain cosmological models and fundamental physics.

Aims. We expand and adjust the mock Euclid likelih... Read More about Euclid: Validation of the MontePython forecasting tools.

Weak gravitational lensing measurements of Abell 2744 using JWST and shear measurement algorithm pyRRG-JWST (2024)
Journal Article
Harvey, D. R., & Massey, R. (2024). Weak gravitational lensing measurements of Abell 2744 using JWST and shear measurement algorithm pyRRG-JWST. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 529(2), 802-809. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stae370

We update the publicly available weak lensing shear measurement algorithm pyRRG for the JWST, and apply it to UNCOVER DR1 imaging of galaxy cluster Abell 2744. At short wavelengths (⁠
m), shear measurements are consistent between independent observa... Read More about Weak gravitational lensing measurements of Abell 2744 using JWST and shear measurement algorithm pyRRG-JWST.

Scanning for dark matter subhaloes in Hubble Space Telescope imaging of 54 strong lenses (2023)
Journal Article
Nightingale, J. W., He, Q., Cao, X., Amvrosiadis, A., Etherington, A., Frenk, C. S., Hayes, R. G., Robertson, A., Cole, S., Lange, S., Li, R., & Massey, R. (2024). Scanning for dark matter subhaloes in Hubble Space Telescope imaging of 54 strong lenses. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 527(4), 10480-10506. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad3694

The cold dark matter (DM) model predicts that every galaxy contains thousands of DM subhaloes; almost all other DM models include a physical process that smooths away the subhaloes. The subhaloes are invisible, but could be detected via strong gravit... Read More about Scanning for dark matter subhaloes in Hubble Space Telescope imaging of 54 strong lenses.

Data Downloaded via Parachute from a NASA Super-Pressure Balloon (2023)
Journal Article
Sirks, E. L., Massey, R., Gill, A. S., Anderson, J., Benton, S. J., Brown, A. M., Clark, P., English, J., Everett, S. W., Fraisse, A. A., Franco, H., Hartley, J. W., Harvey, D., Holder, B., Hunter, A., Huff, E. M., Hynous, A., Jauzac, M., Jones, W. C., Joyce, N., …Vassilakis, G. N. (2023). Data Downloaded via Parachute from a NASA Super-Pressure Balloon. Aerospace, 10(11), Article 960. https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace10110960

In April 2023, the superBIT telescope was lifted to the Earth’s stratosphere by a helium-filled super-pressure balloon to acquire astronomical imaging from above (99.5% of) the Earth’s atmosphere. It was launched from New Zealand and then, for 40 day... Read More about Data Downloaded via Parachute from a NASA Super-Pressure Balloon.

A Recent Impact Origin of Saturn’s Rings and Mid-sized Moons (2023)
Journal Article
Teodoro, L. F. A., Kegerreis, J. A., Estrada, P. R., Ćuk, M., Eke, V. R., Cuzzi, J. N., Massey, R. J., & Sandnes, T. D. (2023). A Recent Impact Origin of Saturn’s Rings and Mid-sized Moons. Astrophysical Journal, 955(2), Article 137. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/acf4ed

We simulate the collision of precursor icy moons analogous to Dione and Rhea as a possible origin for Saturn's remarkably young rings. Such an event could have been triggered a few hundred million years ago by resonant instabilities in a previous sat... Read More about A Recent Impact Origin of Saturn’s Rings and Mid-sized Moons.

Lensing in the Blue. II. Estimating the Sensitivity of Stratospheric Balloons to Weak Gravitational Lensing (2023)
Journal Article
McCleary, J. E., Everett, S. W., Shaaban, M. M., Gill, A. S., Vassilakis, G. N., Huff, E. M., Massey, R. J., Benton, S. J., Brown, A. M., Clark, P., Holder, B., Fraisse, A. A., Jauzac, M., Jones, W. C., Lagattuta, D., Leung, J. S.-Y., Li, L., T. Luu, T. V., Nagy, J. M., Netterfield, C. B., …Tam, S. I. (2023). Lensing in the Blue. II. Estimating the Sensitivity of Stratospheric Balloons to Weak Gravitational Lensing. Astronomical Journal, 166(3), https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ace7ca

The Superpressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) is a diffraction-limited, wide-field, 0.5 m, near-infrared to near-ultraviolet observatory designed to exploit the stratosphere's space-like conditions. SuperBIT's 2023 science flight will... Read More about Lensing in the Blue. II. Estimating the Sensitivity of Stratospheric Balloons to Weak Gravitational Lensing.

RXJ0437+00: constraining dark matter with exotic gravitational lenses (2023)
Journal Article
Lagattuta, D. J., Richard, J., Ebeling, H., Basto, Q., Cerny, C., Edge, A., Jauzac, M., Mahler, G., & Massey, R. (2023). RXJ0437+00: constraining dark matter with exotic gravitational lenses. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 522(1), 1091-1107. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad803

We present the first strong-gravitational-lensing analysis of the galaxy cluster RX J0437.1+0043 (RXJ0437; z = 0.285). Newly obtained, deep MUSE observations, Keck/MOSFIRE near-infrared spectroscopy, and Hubble Space Telescope SNAPshot imaging reveal... Read More about RXJ0437+00: constraining dark matter with exotic gravitational lenses.

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., Edge, A. C., Etherington, A., Hayes, R. G., Kelly, A., Lucey, J. R., & 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 PAU Survey and Euclid: Improving broadband photometric redshifts with multi-task learning (2023)
Journal Article
Cabayol, L., Eriksen, M., Carretero, J., Casas, R., Castander, F., Fernández, E., Garcia-Bellido, J., Gaztanaga, E., Hildebrandt, H., Hoekstra, H., Joachimi, B., Miquel, R., Padilla, C., Pocino, A., Sanchez, E., Serrano, S., Sevilla, I., Siudek, M., Tallada-Crespí, P., Aghanim, N., …Tramacere, A. (2023). The PAU Survey and Euclid: Improving broadband photometric redshifts with multi-task learning. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 671, Article A153. https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202245027

Current and future imaging surveys require photometric redshifts (photo-zs) to be estimated for millions of galaxies. Improving the photo-z quality is a major challenge but is needed to advance our understanding of cosmology. In this paper we explore... Read More about The PAU Survey and Euclid: Improving broadband photometric redshifts with multi-task learning.

Beyond the bulge–halo conspiracy? Density profiles of early-type galaxies from extended-source strong lensing (2023)
Journal Article
Etherington, A., Nightingale, J. W., Massey, R., Robertson, A., Cao, X., Amvrosiadis, A., Cole, S., Frenk, C. S., He, Q., Lagattuta, D. J., Lange, S., & Li, R. (2023). Beyond the bulge–halo conspiracy? Density profiles of early-type galaxies from extended-source strong lensing. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 521(4), 6005-6018. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad582

Observations suggest that the dark matter and stars in early-type galaxies ‘conspire’ to produce a surprisingly simple distribution of total mass, ρ(r) ∝ ρ−γ, with γ ≈ 2. We measure the distribution of mass in 48 early-type galaxies that gravitationa... Read More about Beyond the bulge–halo conspiracy? Density profiles of early-type galaxies from extended-source strong lensing.

On the gravitational lensing interpretation of three gravitational wave detections in the mass gap by LIGO and Virgo (2023)
Journal Article
Bianconi, M., Smith, G. P., Nicholl, M., Ryczanowski, D., Richard, J., Jauzac, M., Massey, R., Robertson, A., Sharon, K., & Ridley, E. (2023). On the gravitational lensing interpretation of three gravitational wave detections in the mass gap by LIGO and Virgo. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 521(3), 3421-3430. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad673

We search for gravitational wave (GW) events from LIGO-Virgo’s third run that may have been affected by gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing delays the arrival of GWs, and alters their amplitude – thus biasing the inferred progenitor masses.... Read More about On the gravitational lensing interpretation of three gravitational wave detections in the mass gap by LIGO and Virgo.