David Valls-Gabaud

The remnants of galaxy formation from a panoramic survey of the region around M31.

In hierarchical cosmological models, galaxies grow in mass through the continual accretion of smaller ones. The tidal disruption of these systems is expected to result in loosely bound stars surrounding the galaxy, at distances that reach 10–100 times the radius of the central disk. The number, luminosity and morphology of the relics of this process provide significant clues to galaxy formation history, but obtaining a comprehensive survey of these components is difficult because of their intrinsic faintness and vast extent. Here we report a panoramic survey of the Andromeda galaxy (M31). We detect stars and coherent structures that are almost certainly remnants of dwarf galaxies destroyed by the tidal field of M31. An improved census of their surviving counterparts implies that three-quarters of M31’s satellites brighter than Mv = -6 await discovery. The brightest companion, Triangulum (M33), is surrounded by a stellar structure that provides persuasive evidence for a recent encounter with M31. This panorama of galaxy structure directly confirms the basic tenets of the hierarchical galaxy formation model and reveals the shared history of M31 and M33 in the unceasing build-up of galaxies.

A vast, thin plane of corotating dwarf galaxies orbiting the Andromeda galaxy

Dwarf satellite galaxies are thought to be the remnants of the population of primordial structures that coalesced to form giant galaxies like the Milky Way. It has previously been suspected that dwarf galaxies may not be isotropically distributed around our Galaxy, because several are correlated with streams of H i emission, and may form coplanar groups. These suspicions are supported by recent analyses. It has been claimed that the apparently planar distribution of satellites is not predicted within standard cosmology, and cannot simply represent a memory of past coherent accretion. However, other studies dispute this conclusion. Here we report the existence of a planar subgroup of satellites in the Andromeda galaxy (M 31), comprising about half of the population. The structure is at least 400 kiloparsecs in diameter, but also extremely thin, with a perpendicular scatter of less than 14.1 kiloparsecs. Radial velocity measurements reveal that the satellites in this structure have the same sense of rotation about their host. This shows conclusively that substantial numbers of dwarf satellite galaxies share the same dynamical orbital properties and direction of angular momentum. Intriguingly, the plane we identify is approximately aligned with the pole of the Milky Way’s disk and with the vector between the Milky Way and Andromeda.

The CFHTLS strong lensing legacy survey - I. Survey overview and T0002 release sample

AIMS: We present data from the CFHTLS Strong Lensing Legacy Survey (SL2S). Due to the unsurpassed combined depth, area and image quality of the Canada-France-Hawaii Legacy Survey it is becoming possible to uncover a large, statistically well-defined sample of strong gravitational lenses which spans the dark halo mass spectrum predicted by the concordance model from galaxy to cluster haloes. METHODS: We describe the development of several automated procedures to find strong lenses of various mass regimes in CFHTLS images. RESULTS: The preliminary sample of about 40 strong lensing candidates discovered in the CFHTLS T0002 release, covering an effective field of view of 28 deg

EVIDENCE FOR SCALE-SCALE CORRELATIONS IN THE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND RADIATION

^2

On biases in the predictions of stellar population synthesis models

is presented. These strong lensing systems were discovered using an automated search and consist mainly of gravitational arc systems with splitting angles between 2 and 15 arcsec. This sample shows for the first time that it is possible to uncover a large population of strong lenses from galaxy groups with typical halo masses of about

The Lyman alpha emission of starburst galaxies

10^{13}h^{-1}M_\odot

DISCOVERY OF TIDAL TAILS AROUND THE DISTANT GLOBULAR CLUSTER PALOMAR 14

. We discuss the future evolution of the SL2S project and its main scientific aims for the next 3 years, in particular our observational strategy to extract the hundreds of gravitational rings also present in these fields.

The Anomaly in the Candidate Microlensing Event PA-99-N2

We perform a discrete wavelet analysis of the Cosmic Background Explorer differential microwave radiometer (DMR) 4-yr sky maps and find a significant scale-scale correlation on angular scales from about 11\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{} to 22\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{}, only in the DMR face centered on the north galactic pole. This non-Gaussian signature does not arise either from the known foregrounds or the correlated noise maps, nor is it consistent with upper limits on the residual systematic errors in the DMR maps. Either the scale-scale correlations are caused by an unknown foreground contaminate or systematic errors on angular scales as large as 22\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{}, or the standard inflation plus cold dark matter paradigm is ruled out at the

Super-Eddington accreting massive black holes as long-lived cosmological standards

g99%

THE NON-SEGREGATED POPULATION OF BLUE STRAGGLER STARS IN THE REMOTE GLOBULAR CLUSTER PALOMAR 14

confidence level.