Publications (34)
WALLABY Pilot Survey: the Tully-Fisher relation in the NGC 4808, Vela and NGC 5044 fields
Jeremy Mould, T. H. Jarrett, Hélène Courtois +18
The Tully-Fisher Relation (TFR) is a well-known empirical relationship between the luminosity of a spiral galaxy and its circular velocity, allowing us to estimate redshift indepen…
An Imaging Study of the Globular Cluster Systems of NGC 1407 and NGC 1400
Duncan Forbes, Patricia Sanchez-Blazquez, Anna Phan +3
We present wide-field Keck telescope imaging of the globular cluster (GC) systems around NGC 1407 and NGC 1400 in the Eridanus galaxy cloud. This is complemented by Hubble Space Te…
Southern GEMS Groups I: Dynamical Properties
Sarah Brough, Duncan Forbes, Virginia Kilborn +1
Here we present an investigation of the properties of 16 nearby galaxy groups and their constituent galaxies. The groups are selected from the Group Evolution Multi-wavelength Stud…
Bridging the gap between low and high mass dwarf galaxies
Duncan Forbes, Lee Spitler, Alister Graham +3
While the dark matter content within the most massive giant and smallest dwarf galaxies has been probed -- spanning a range of over one million in mass -- an important observationa…
Is NGC 3108 transforming itself from an early to late type galaxy -- an astronomical hermaphrodite?
George Hau, Richard Bower, Virginia Kilborn +3
A common feature of hierarchical galaxy formation models is the process of "inverse" morphological transformation: a bulge dominated galaxy accretes a gas disk, dramatically reduci…
Globular Clusters in Elliptical Galaxies: Constraints on Mergers
Duncan Forbes
Understanding the formation of globular clusters will help us to constrain the evolutionary history of galaxies. For mergers on-going today, it appears that the number of newly cre…
Filling the gap: a new class of old star cluster?
Duncan Forbes, Vincenzo Pota, Christopher Usher +5
It is not understood whether long-lived star clusters possess a continuous range of sizes and masses (and hence densities), or if rather, they should be considered as distinct type…
What is a Galaxy? Cast your vote here...
Duncan Forbes, Pavel Kroupa
Although originally classified as galaxies, Ultra Compact Dwarfs (UCDs) share many properties in common with globular star clusters. The debate on the origin and nature of UCDs, an…
High-Precision Dark Halo Virial Masses from Globular Cluster Numbers: Implications for Globular Cluster Formation and Galaxy Assembly
Andreas Burkert, Duncan Forbes
We confirm that the number of globular clusters (GCs), N, is an excellent tracer of their host galaxy's halo virial mass M. The simple linear relation M$_{vir} = 5 \…
Group, field and isolated early-type galaxies I. Observations and nuclear data
Glenda Denicolo, Roberto Terlevich, Elena Terlevich +3
This is the first paper of a series on the investigation of stellar population properties and galaxy evolution of an observationally homogeneous sample of early-type galaxies in gr…
Ultra-diffuse and Ultra-compact Galaxies in the Frontier Fields Cluster Abell 2744
Steven Janssens, Roberto Abraham, Jean Brodie +3
We report the discovery of a large population of Ultra-diffuse Galaxies (UDGs) in the massive galaxy cluster Abell 2744 (z=0.308) as observed by the Hubble Frontier Fields program.…
The Fossil Record of Two-phase Galaxy Assembly: Kinematics and Metallicities in the Nearest S0 Galaxy
Jacob A. Arnold, Aaron J. Romanowsky, Jean P. Brodie +5
We present a global analysis of kinematics and metallicity in the nearest S0 galaxy, NGC 3115, along with implications for its assembly history. The data include high-quality wide-…
Galaxy Disruption in a Halo of Dark Matter
Duncan Forbes, Michael Beasley, Kenji Bekki +2
The relics of disrupted satellite galaxies around the Milky Way and Andromeda have been found, but direct evidence of a satellite galaxy in the early stages of being disrupted has…
Star Formation in Southern Seyfert Galaxies
Duncan Forbes, Ray Norris
We have produced radio maps, using the ATCA, of the central regions of six southern Seyfert 2 galaxies (NGC 1365, 4945, 6221, 6810, 7582, and Circinus) with circumnuclear star form…
Ultra diffuse galaxies in the Hydra I cluster from the LEWIS Project: Phase-Space distribution and globular cluster richness
Duncan Forbes, Jonah Gannon, Enrichetta Iodice +18
Although ultra diffuse galaxies (UDGs) are found in large numbers in clusters of galaxies, the role of the cluster environment in shaping their low surface brightness and large siz…
Uniting Old Stellar Systems: From Globular Clusters to Giant Ellipticals
Duncan Forbes, Paul Lasky, Alister Graham +1
Here we examine the relationship between the virial and stellar mass for a range of old stellar systems, from GCs to giant ellipticals, and including such Intermediate Mass Objects…
Eridanus - A Supergroup in the Local Universe?
Sarah Brough, Duncan Forbes, Virginia Kilborn +2
We examine a possible supergroup in the direction of the Eridanus constellation using 6dF Galaxy Survey second data release (6dFGS DR2) positions and velocities together with 2MASS…
The WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey: small-scale clustering of Lyman Break Galaxies at z < 1
Chris Blake, Russell Jurek, Sarah Brough +15
The WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey is a large-scale structure survey of intermediate-redshift UV-selected emission-line galaxies scheduled to cover 1000 sq deg, spanning a broad redshi…
Structural Parameters for Globular Clusters in NGC 5128. II: HST/ACS Imaging and New Clusters
William E. Harris, Gretchen L. H. Harris, Pauline Barmby +2
We report the first results from an imaging program with the ACS camera on HST designed to measure the structural characteristics of a wide range of globular clusters in NGC 5128,…
Evidence for Two Phases of Galaxy Formation from Radial Trends in the Globular Cluster System of NGC 1407
Duncan Forbes, Lee Spitler, Jay Strader +3
Here we present the colours of individual globular clusters (GCs) around the massive elliptical galaxy NGC 1407 out to a projected galactocentric radius of 140 kpc or 17 galaxy eff…
Revisiting the X-ray - Mass scaling relations of Early-type Galaxies with the Mass of their Globular Cluster Systems as a Proxy for the Total Galaxy Mass
Dong-Woo Kim, Nicholas James, Giuseppina Fabbiano +2
Using globular cluster (GC) kinematics and photometry data, we calibrate the scaling relation between the total galaxy mass (M_TOT including dark matter) and total globular cluster…
Dependence of the Fundamental Plane Scatter on Galaxy Age
Duncan Forbes, Trevor Ponman, Richard Brown
The fundamental plane (FP) has an intrinsic scatter that can not be explained purely by observational errors. Using recently available age estimates for nearby early type galaxies,…
A Blue Tilt in the Globular Cluster System of the Milky Way-like Galaxy NGC 5170
Duncan Forbes, Lee Spitler, William Harris +4
Here we present HST/ACS imaging, in the B and I bands, of the edge-on Sb/Sc galaxy NGC 5170. Excluding the central disk region region, we detect a 142 objects with colours and size…
Extended Star Clusters in NGC 1023 from HST/ACS Mosaic Imaging
Duncan Forbes, Andres Almeida, Lee Spitler +1
Faint fuzzies are a relatively new class of star cluster, first found in the nearby S0 galaxy NGC 1023 by Larsen & Brodie using WFPC2 images from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).…
Spatially Resolved Stellar Spectroscopy of the Ultra-diffuse Galaxy Dragonfly 44. III. Evidence for an Unexpected Star-Formation History
Alexa Villaume, Aaron J. Romanowsky, Jean Brodie +6
We use the Keck Cosmic Web Imager integral-field unit spectrograph to: 1) measure the global stellar population parameters for the ultra-diffuse galaxy (UDG) Dragonfly 44 (DF44) to…
The Densest Galaxy
Jay Strader, Anil Seth, Duncan Forbes +8
We report the discovery of a remarkable ultra-compact dwarf galaxy around the massive Virgo elliptical galaxy NGC 4649 (M60), which we term M60-UCD1. With a dynamical mass of 2.0 x…
The formation pathways of compact elliptical galaxies
Simon Deeley, Michael Drinkwater, Sarah Sweet +3
Compact elliptical (cE) galaxies remain an elusively difficult galaxy class to study. Recent observations have suggested that isolated and host-associated cEs have different format…
HI Mapping of Galaxies in Six GEMS Groups
Katie Kern, Virginia Kilborn, Duncan Forbes +1
Here we present Australia Telescope Compact Array HI maps of 16 HI sources in six Group Evolution Multiwavelength Study (GEMS) groups that were previously observed with the Parkes…
Globular Clusters in Early-Type Galaxies with GMOS
Terry Bridges, Mike Beasley, Favio Faifer +6
We present recent results from our long-term Gemini/GMOS study of globular clusters in early-type galaxies. To date, we have obtained photometry and spectroscopy for clusters in NG…
The WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey: Survey Design and First Data Release
Michael J. Drinkwater, Russell J. Jurek, Chris Blake +24
The WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey is a survey of 240,000 emission line galaxies in the distant universe, measured with the AAOmega spectrograph on the 3.9-m Anglo-Australian Telescope…
Radial Kinematics of Isolated Elliptical Galaxies
George Hau, Duncan Forbes
Ellipticals in very low density environments are extremely rare but hold important clues about galaxy formation and evolution. In this paper we continue our study of isolated ellip…
Probing Spectral Line Gradients Beyond One Effective Radius in NGC 3610
Justin Howell, Jean Brodie, Jay Strader +2
The outer region (0.75--1.25 r_e in the B-band) of the merger-remnant elliptical NGC 3610 is studied using extremely high signal to noise Keck spectra, with a supplementary spectru…
HST Imaging of the Globular Clusters in the Fornax Cluster: NGC 1399 and NGC 1404
Duncan Forbes, Carl Grillmair, Gerard Williger +2
The Fornax cluster galaxies NGC 1399 and NGC 1404 are ideal for studying the effects of a cluster environment on globular cluster systems. Here we present new optical imaging of th…
The WiggleZ project: AAOmega and Dark Energy
Karl Glazebrook, Chris Blake, Warrick Couch +16
We describe the `WiggleZ' spectroscopic survey of 280,000 star-forming galaxies selected from a combination of GALEX ultra-violet and SDSS + RCS2 optical imaging. The fundamental g…