sawicki: news 2019

2019 January 28: Gaël joins the team

Dr. Gaël Noirot arrives at Saint Mary’s to start his postdoctoral position. He is joining the CANUCS James Webb Space Telescope Guaranteed Time Observer project. Welcome to SMU, Gaël!

2019 March 24: Ikuru heads home to Japan

Ikuru Iwata’s sabbatical year comes to an end and he heads to Japan where he is taking up his new appointment with NAOJ in Mitaka as deputy director of the TMT-Japan project. It’s been great to have you here at SMU - we benefit a lot from your wisdom and expertise and will miss you very much, Ikuru. All the best at your new role with NAOJ!

2019 April 16: Martin’s thesis models what the future generation of space telescopes will see

CASTOR is a proposed Canadian-led space astronomy mission to image the sky from orbit in UV and blue light. In his honours thesis project Martin Hellmich made realistic simulations of what CASTOR (and WFIRST) will see when they observe the distant Universe sometime in the next decade. Martin’s work was part of a large CSA-sponsored study to evolve the CASTOR concept to the next stage, where it is now ready to go for funding and construction.

The image shows (a small part of) a CASTOR+WFIRST deep field, with blue and green representing CASTOR UV and G filters, and red the WFIRST F184 filter. These simulated images are based on real galaxies in the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field.

Other SMU astronomers involved in various aspects of the CASTOR study were: Dr. Ivana Damjanov, Dr. Luigi Gallo, Dr. Thibaud Moutard, Dr. Ikuru Iwata, and Martin’s supervisor Dr. Marcin Sawicki.

2019 April 25: Liz’s “Dead Monsters” paper in press at MNRAS

Liz Arcila-Osejo’s paper on the massive end of the passive galaxies stellar mass function at cosmic noon is accepted for publication by MNRAS. In it, we have made the best measurement ever of the population of very rare, ultra-massive galaxies that were already quenched and not forming starts at z~1.6. You can check out the preprint on arXiv here.

2019 May 19-22: Thibaud heads to Montreal for CFHT Users’ Meeting

Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Thibaud Moutard gives a talk on the quenching of galaxies in the the CFHT User’s Meeting in Montreal. Click here for the abstract of Thibaud’s talk.

2019 June 6: Start of long-term visit to NRC-Herzberg in Victoria

Today is the start of my visit sabbatical. Part I: Victoria, BC. I will be visiting the NRC Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics institute, where I will be working on CLAUDS, GIRMOS, and JWST GTO prep. Lots of really fun stuff ahead!

2019 August 19: Lingjian Chen, MSc

Today Lingjian successfully defended his MSc thesis, “Number Density Distribution of Satellite Galaxies around Massive Central Galaxies in CLAUDS+HSC at 0.3<z<0.9”. Well done, Lingjian! Next step: PhD!

Photo shows Lingjian (2nd from left) with his thesis committee members.

2019 September 3: CLAUDS overview paper in press!

The overview paper that describes the CLAUDS project is now in press by MNRAS. CLAUDS has used 68 CFHT dark-time nights to image the sky at ultraviolet (~360nm) wavelengths to an unprecedented combination of area and depth. This paper describes the survey and gives a foretaste of the science that this dataset will enable.

You can access the early-release MNRAS paper by clicking here or on arXiv here.

2019 September 19: GIRMOS passes Conceptual Design Review (CoDR)!

GIRMOS passes Conceptual Design Review! The CoDR (photographed in session), which is the capstone of the Conceptual Design Phase, was a peer review of the GIRMOS project by an external committee of experts led by Chuck Steidel. Our Conceptual Design was approved, and so we are now entering the Preliminary Design Phase (PDP). We are looking for help with this work, and I will be recruiting a talented PhD-level astronomer to take a lead in the design and implementation of the GIRMOS data reduction architecture.