2010 July 11:    1.6um bump paper accepted for publication

Our paper entitled “Using the 1.6um Bump to Study Rest-fram NIR Selected Galaxies at Redshift 2” has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. The paper, based on Bobby Sorba’s MSc thesis, which he completed last summer, will be appearing in ApJ later this year (Sorba & Sawicki 2010). 

2010 June 1:    Elected to CASCA Board

I am elected as a member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Astronomical Society (CASCA). CASCA is the society of professional astronomers in Canada and is devoted to the advancement of the knowledge of the universe through research and education.

2010 May 28:    CASCA’s Best Poster prize to Michael

Group member Michael Palmer wins the prize for best poster by a student at this year’s CASCA conference (Michael, on the left, is pictured here with CASCA director James Di Francesco). Michael’s poster was on his BSc honours thesis research into spatially-resolved spectral energy distributions of z~2 galaxies. Michael also just graduated from the Saint Mary’s honours astrophysics program. After a summer of research on interacting galaxy pairs at Saint Mary’s he will be starting grad school at UVic in the fall. Congratulations on all these counts, Michael!

2010 July 13:    Redshift z~5 Lyman-alpha emitter paper accepted for publication

The paper on stellar populations in z~5 galaxies, led by Suraphong Yuma, has been accepted for publication by the Astrophysical Journal. Suraphong is a PhD student at Kyoto University, and a collaborator of mine. This paper compares the stellar populations of z~5 Lyman-alpha emitters to another famous class of galaxies - Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) - at the same redshift.  My contribution to this work has been to provide the code and advice used by Suraphong in his Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) fitting of these distant galaxies.

2010 July 30:     Back from ESO HQ

Back from a very intereting visit to the European Southern Observatory headquarters in Garching on behalf of the panel for the Long Range Plan for Canadian Astronomy. 

2010 September 14:     Andy defends thesis

Congratulations to group member Andrew Marquis on the successful defense of his MSc thesis “The Evolution of Star Formation Rates in High Redshift Galaxies”.  Well done, Andy!

2010 September 22:     Anneya joins the research group

Anneya Golob has just joined our research group. Anneya has recently finished her BSc at Queen’s and has arrived at Saint Mary’s this month to start her graduate studies. Welcome aboard, Anneya.

2010 October 22:     Bobby simulates photo-z’s for Euclid

Group member Bobby Sorba was in Ottawa to present the results of his photometric redshift simulations that he carried out as part of a CSA-commissioned study looking into how Canada could contribute to the proposed Euclid Dark Energy mission.

2010 October 29:     Colloquium at UNB in Fredericton

I visit the Physics Department at the University of New Brunswick to give a colloquium on observational studies of high redshift galaxies.

2010 December 5:     Off to Africa

Off to Burkina Faso for the IAU symposium on galaxy formation and evolution.