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MICADO is the adaptive optics imaging camera for the E-ELT. It has been designed and optimised to be mounted to the LGS-MCAO system MAORY, and will provide diffraction limited imaging over a wide (~1 arcmin) field of view. For initial operations, it can also be used with its own simpler AO module that provides on-axis diffraction limited performance using natural guide stars. We discuss the instrument's key capabilities and expected performance, and show how the science drivers have shaped its design. We outline the technical concept, from the opto-mechanical design to operations and data processing. We describe the AO module, summarise the instrument performance, and indicate some possible future developments.

We investigate the properties of bright (MV, 7 pages, 2 figures; To appear in "Tumbling, twisting, and winding galaxies: Pattern speeds along the Hubble sequence", E. M. Corsini and V. P. Debattista (eds.), Memorie della Societa` Astronomica Italiana

We present Herschel far-infrared (FIR) observations of two sub-mm bright quasars at high redshift: SDSS J1148+5251 (z=6.42) and BR 1202-0725 (z=4.69) obtained with the PACS instrument. Both objects are detected in the PACS photometric bands. The Herschel measurements provide additional data points that constrain the FIR spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of both sources, and they emphasise a broad range of dust temperatures in these objects. For lambda_rest ~< 20mu, the two SEDs are very similar to the average SEDs of quasars at low redshift. In the FIR, however, both quasars show excess emission compared to low-z QSO templates, most likely from cold dust powered by vigorous star formation in the QSO host galaxies. For SDSS J1148+5251 we detect another object at 160mu with a distance of ~10 arcseconds from the QSO. Although no physical connection between the quasar and this object can be shown with the available data, it could potentially confuse low-resolution measurements, thus resulting in an overestimate of the FIR luminosity of the z=6.42 quasar., 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in the A&A special issue on Herschel

We present sensitive near--infrared VLT ISAAC spectroscopic observations of the z=6.08 quasar SDSS J030331.40-001912.9. This QSO is more than a magnitude fainter than other QSOs at z~6 for which NIR spectroscopy has been obtained to date and is therefore presumably more representative of the QSO population at the end of Cosmic Reionization. Combining rest--frame UV continuum luminosity with the width measurements of the Mg II and C IV lines, we derive a black hole mass of 2(+1.0/-0.5) x 10^8 solar masses, the lowest mass observed for z~6 QSOs to date, and derive an Eddington ratio of 1.6(+0.4/-0.6), amongst the highest value derived for QSOs at any redshift. The Spitzer 24 micron non--detection of this QSO does not leave space for a significant hot dust component in its optical/near--infrared SED, in common with one other faint QSO at z=6, but in contrast to more than twenty more z=6 QSOs and all known lower redshift QSOs with sufficiently deep multi-wavelength photometry. We conclude that we have found evidence for differences in the intrinsic properties of at least one z~6 QSO as compared to the lower--redshift population., Accepted by ApJ on July 1, 2009; 5 pages, 2 figures

We present a sensitive 870 micron survey of the Extended Chandra Deep Field South (ECDFS) using LABOCA on the APEX telescope. The LABOCA ECDFS Submillimetre Survey (LESS) covers the full 30' x 30' field size of the ECDFS and has a uniform noise level of 1.2 mJy/beam. LESS is thus the largest contiguous deep submillimetre survey undertaken to date. The noise properties of our map show clear evidence that we are beginning to be affected by confusion noise. We present a catalog of 126 SMGs detected with a significance level above 3.7 sigma. The ECDFS exhibits a deficit of bright SMGs relative to previously studied blank fields but not of normal star-forming galaxies that dominate the extragalactic background light (EBL). This is in line with the underdensities observed for optically defined high redshift source populations in the ECDFS (BzKs, DRGs,optically bright AGN and massive K-band selected galaxies). The differential source counts in the full field are well described by a power law with a slope of alpha=-3.2, comparable to the results from other fields. We show that the shape of the source counts is not uniform across the field. The integrated 870 micron flux densities of our source-count models account for >65% of the estimated EBL from COBE measurements. We have investigated the clustering of SMGs in the ECDFS by means of a two-point correlation function and find evidence for strong clustering on angular scales, 25 pages, 13 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ

We have detected stellar halo streams in the solar neighborhood using data from the 7th public data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), which includes the directed stellar program SEGUE: Sloan Extension For Galactic Understanding and Exploration. In order to derive distances to each star, we used the metallicity-dependent photometric parallax relation from Ivezic et al. (2008) for which we examine and quantify the accuracy. Our final sample consists of 22,321 nearby (d < 2 kpc), metal-poor ([Fe/H] < -0.5) main-sequence stars with 6D estimates of position and space velocity. We characterize the orbits of these stars through suitable kinematic proxies for their "effective" integrals of motion, angular momentum, eccentricity, and orbital polar angle and compare the observed distribution to expectations from a smooth distribution in four [Fe/H] bins. On this basis we identify at least five significant "phase-space overdensities" of stars on very similar orbits in the solar neighborhood to which we can assign unambiguously peaked [Fe/H] distributions. Three of them have been identified previously, including the halo stream discovered by Helmi et al. (1999) at a significance level of 12.0. In addition, we find at least two new genuine halo streams, judged by their kinematics and [Fe/H], at significance levels of 2.9 and 4.8, respectively. For one stream the stars even show coherence in configuration space, matching a spatial overdensity of stars found by Juric et al. (2008) at (R,z) \approx (9.5,0.8) kpc. Our results demonstrate the practical power of our search method to detect substructure in the phase-space distribution of nearby stars without making a-priori assumptions about the detailed form of the gravitational potential., 57 pages, 22 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

We have observationally quantified the effect of gravitational torques on stars in disk galaxies due to the stellar distribution itself and explored whether these torques are efficient at transporting angular momentum within a Hubble Time. We derive instantaneous torque maps for a sample of 24 spiral galaxies, based on stellar mass maps that were derived using the pixel-by-pixel mass-to-light estimator by Zibetti, Rix and Charlot. In conjunction with an estimate of the rotation velocity, the mass maps allow us to determine the torque-induced instantaneous angular momentum flow across different radii, resulting from the overall stellar distributions for each galaxy in the sample. By stacking the sample, which effectively replaces a time average by an ensemble average, we find that the torques due to the stellar disk act to transport angular momentum outward over much of the disk (within 3 disk scale lengths). The strength of the ensemble-averaged gravitational torques within one disk scale length have a timescale of ~ 4 Gyr for angular momentum redistribution. This study is the first to observationally determine the strength of torque-driven angular momentum flow of stars for a sample of spiral galaxies, providing an important empirical constraint on secular evolution. (abridged), Comment: 24 pages, 18 Figures A high resolution version of this paper can be found at http://www.mpia-hd.mpg.de/~foyle/papers/MN-09-1350-MJ.pdf

We present a study of galaxies in the STAGES survey of the Abell 901/902 supercluster at z~0.165, based on HST ACS F606W, COMBO-17, Spitzer 24um, XMM-Newton X-ray, and gravitational lensing maps. We characterize galaxies with strong, externally-triggered morphological distortions and normal, relatively undisturbed galaxies, using visual classification and quantitative CAS parameters. We compare normal and distorted galaxies in terms of their frequency, distribution within the cluster, star formation properties, and relationship to dark matter (DM) or surface mass density, and intra-cluster medium (ICM) density. We report here our preliminary results., To appear in the proceedings of "Formation and Evolution of Galaxy Disks", Rome, October 2007, Eds. J. Funes and E. M. Corsini. 2 pages, 2 figures

In dense clusters, higher densities at early epochs as well as physical processes, such as ram pressure stripping and tidal interactions become important, and can have direct consequences for the evolution of bars and their host disks. To study bars and disks as a function of environment, we are using the STAGES ACS HST survey of the Abell 901/902 supercluster (z~0.165), along with earlier field studies based the SDSS and the Ohio State University Bright Spiral Galaxy Survey (OSUBSGS). We explore the limitations of traditional methods for characterizing the bar fraction, and in particular highlight uncertainties in disk galaxy selection in cluster environments. We present an alternative approach for exploring the proportion of bars, and investigate the properties of bars as a function of host galaxy color, Sersic index, stellar mass, star formation rate (SFR), specific SFR, and morphology., to appear in the ASP conference proceedings of the "Frank N. Bash Symposium 2007: New Horizons in Astronomy", editors: A. Frebel, J. Maund, J. Shen, M. Siegel

We present deep imaging of the star-forming dwarf galaxy IC2574 in the M81 group taken with the Large Binocular Telescope in order to study in detail the recent star-formation history of this galaxy and to constrain the stellar feedback on its HI gas. We identify the star-forming areas in the galaxy by removing a smooth disk component from the optical images. We construct pixel-by-pixel maps of stellar age and stellar mass surface density in these regions by comparing their observed colors with simple stellar populations synthesized with STARBURST99. We find that an older burst occurred about 100 Myr ago within the inner 4 kpc and that a younger burst happened in the last 10 Myr mostly at galactocentric radii between 4 and 8 kpc. We analyze the stellar populations residing in the known HI holes of IC2574. Our results indicate that, even at the remarkable photometric depth of the LBT data, there is no clear one-to-one association between the observed HI holes and the most recent bursts of star formation in IC2574. The stellar populations formed during the younger burst are usually located at the periphery of the HI holes and are seen to be younger than the holes dynamical age. The kinetic energy of the holes expansion is found to be on average 10% of the total stellar energy released by the stellar winds and supernova explosions of the young stellar populations within the holes. With the help of control apertures distributed across the galaxy we estimate that the kinetic energy stored in the HI gas in the form of its local velocity dispersion is about 35% of the total stellar energy., Comment: 16 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

We have tested the application to Sloan Digital Sky Survey data of the software package MATCH, which fits color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) to estimate stellar population parameters and distances. These tests on a set of six globular clusters show that these techniques recover their known properties. New ways of using the CMD-fitting software enable us to deal with an extended distribution of stars along the line-of-sight, to constrain the overall properties of sparsely populated objects, and to detect the presence of stellar overdensities in wide-area surveys. We then also apply MATCH to CMDs for twelve recently discovered Milky Way satellites to derive in a uniform fashion their distances, ages and metallicities. While the majority of them appear consistent with a single stellar population, CVn I, UMa II, and Leo T exhibit (from SDSS data alone) a more complex history with multiple epochs of star formation., 25 pages, 20 figures, subsection added including 4 new figures, some other textual changes, accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal

We explore how well crowded field point-source photometry can be accomplished with SDSS data: We present a photometric pipeline based on DoPhot, and tuned for analyzing crowded-field images from the SDSS. Using Monte Carlo simulations we show that the completeness of source extraction is above 80% to i < 21 (AB) and a stellar surface density of about 200 sq.amin. Hence, a specialized data pipeline can efficiently be used for e.g. nearby resolved galaxies in SDSS images, where the standard SDSS photometric package Photo, when applied in normal survey mode, gives poor results. We apply our pipeline to an area of about 3.55sq.deg. around the dwarf spheroidal galaxy (dSph) Leo I, and construct a high S/N star-count map of Leo I via an optimized filter in color-magnitude space (g,r,i). Although the radial surface-density profile of the dwarf deviates from the best fit empirical King model towards outer radii, we find no evidence for tidal debris out to a stellar surface-density of 4*10^(-3) of the central value. We determine the total luminosity of Leo I, and model its mass using the spherical and isotropic Jeans equation. Assuming that 'mass follows light' we constrain a lower limit of the total mass of the dSph to be (1.7+/-0.2)*10^7 Msol. Contrary, if the mass in Leo I is dominated by a constant density dark-matter (DM) halo, then the mass within the central 12' is (2+/-0.6)*10^8 Msol. This leads to a mass-to-light ratio of >>6 (Ic_sol), and possibly >75 if the DM halo dominates the mass and extends further out than 12'. In summary, our results show that Leo I is a symmetric, relaxed and bound system; this supports the idea that Leo I is a dark-matter dominated system., 13 pages, 11 figures; accepted for publication in AJ

We present HST NICMOS+ACS and Spitzer IRAC+MIPS observations of 41 galaxies at 2, Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ

211th Meeting of the american Astronomical Society with the Historical Astrnonomy Division and the High Energy Astrophysics Division, 7-11 January 2007, Austin, Texas, USA

We present the UDF05 project, a HST Large Program of deep ACS (F606W, F775W, F850LP) and NICMOS (F110W, F160W) imaging of three fields, two of which coincide with the NICP1-4 NICMOS parallel observations of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF). In this first paper we use the ACS data for the NICP12 field, as well as the original HUDF ACS data, to measure the UV Luminosity Function (LF) of z~5 Lyman Break Galaxies (LBGs) down to very faint levels. Specifically, based on a V-i, i-z selection criterion, we identify a sample of 101 and 133 candidate z~5 galaxies down to z_{850}=28.5 and 29.25 magnitudes in the NICP12 and in the HUDF fields, respectively. Using an extensive set of Monte Carlo simulations we derive corrections for observational biases and selection effects, and construct the rest-frame 1400 A LBG LF over the range M_{1400}=[-21.4, -17.1], i.e. down to ~0.04 L* at z~5, and complement it with data from the Subaru Deep Field (SDF) from Yoshida et al. (2006) to extend it to the brighter end (M_{1400}>-22.2). We show that: (i) Different assumptions regarding the SED distribution of the LBG population, dust properties and intergalactic absorption result in a 25% variation in the number density of LBGs at z~5; (ii) Under consistent assumptions for dust properties and intergalactic absorption, the HUDF is about 30% under-dense in z~5 LBGs relative to the NICP12 field, a variation which is well explained by cosmic variance; (iii) The faint-end slope of the LF is independent of the specific assumptions for the input physical parameters, and has a value of alpha ~ -1.6, similar to the faint-end slope of the LF that has been measured for LBGs at z~3 and z~6., 16 pages, 11 figures, small changes to match version accepted for publication in ApJ

211th Meeting of the american Astronomical Society with the Historical Astrnonomy Division and the High Energy Astrophysics Division, 7-11 January 2007, Austin, Texas, USA

211th Meeting of the american Astronomical Society with the Historical Astrnonomy Division and the High Energy Astrophysics Division, 7-11 January 2007, Austin, Texas, USA

Science Perspectives for 3D Spectroscopy, 10-14 October 2005, Garching, Germany

Using the deep multi-wavelength MUSYC, GOODS, and FIRES surveys we construct a stellar mass-limited sample of galaxies at 210^11 Solar masses distributed over four independent fields with a total area of almost 400 sq arcmin. The mean number density of massive galaxies in this redshift range is (2.2+-0.6) x 10^-4 Mpc^-3. We present median values and 25th and 75th percentiles for the distributions of observed R mags, observed J-K colors, and rest-frame UV continuum slopes, M/L(V) ratios, and U-V colors. The galaxies show a large range in all these properties. The ``median galaxy'' is faint in the observer's optical (R=25.9), red in the observed near-IR (J-K=2.48), has a rest-frame UV spectrum which is relatively flat (beta=-0.4), and rest-frame optical colors resembling those of nearby spiral galaxies (U-V=0.62). We determine which galaxies would be selected as Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) or Distant Red Galaxies (DRGs, having J-K>2.3) in this mass-limited sample. By number DRGs make up 69% of the sample and LBGs 20%, with a small amount of overlap. By mass DRGs make up 77% and LBGs 17%. Neither technique provides a representative sample of massive galaxies at 2, Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters

We present deep 3.6 - 8 micron imaging of the Hubble Deep Field South with IRAC on the Spitzer Space Telescope. We study Distant Red Galaxies (DRGs) at z>2 selected by Js - Ks > 2.3 and compare them to a sample of Lyman Break Galaxies (LBGs) at z=2-3. The observed UV-to-8 micron spectral energy distributions are fit with stellar population models to constrain star formation histories and derive stellar masses. We find that 70% of the DRGs are best described by dust-reddened star forming models and 30% are very well fit with old and ``dead'' models. Using only the I - Ks and Ks - 4.5 micron colors we can effectively separate the two groups. The dead systems are among the most massive at z~2.5 (mean stellar mass = 0.8 x 10^11 Msun) and likely formed most of their stellar mass at z>5. To a limit of 0.5 x 10^11 Msun their number density is ~10 x lower than that of local early-type galaxies. Furthermore, we use the IRAC photometry to derive rest-frame near-infrared J, H, and K fluxes. The DRGs and LBGs together show a large variation (a factor of 6) in the rest-frame K-band mass-to-light ratios (M/L_K), implying that even a Spitzer 8 micron-selected sample would be very different from a mass-selected sample. The average M/L_K of the DRGs is about three times higher than that of the LBGs, and DRGs dominate the high-mass end. The M/L_K ratios and ages of the two samples appear to correlate with derived stellar mass, with the most massive galaxies being the oldest and having the highest mass-to-light ratios, similar as found in the low-redshift universe., 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in the ApJ Letters, uses emulateapj

We stack Spitzer 24 micron images for ~7000 galaxies with 0.1, Comment: 12 figures, 2 tables, 14 pages (+5 page Appendix), accepted for publication in ApJ

We summarize some recent results from our observational campaign to study the central regions of spiral galaxies of late Hubble type (Scd - Sm). These disk-dominated, bulgeless galaxies have an apparently uneventful merger history. The evolution of their nuclei thus holds important constraints on the mechanisms that are responsible for bulge formation and nuclear activity in spiral galaxies. We discuss the structural properties, stellar populations, and dynamical masses of the compact, luminous star cluster that is found in the nuclei of most late-type spiral galaxies. Although preliminary, our results strongly indicate that many galaxies of our sample experience repeated periods of nuclear star formation. While the exact mechanism that leads to the required high gas densities in the galaxy nucleus remains unclear, results from our recent CO survey of late-type spirals demonstrate that in most cases, the central kpc contains enough molecular gas to support repetitive nuclear starbursts., 9 pages (incl 6 figures); uses the new asp2004.sty file; invited talk to appear in "Massive Young Clusters", ASP Conf. Ser., Lamers H.J.G.L.M., Nota A., Smith L.J., eds., November 2003, ASP: San Francisco

We present the results from a study of the host galaxies of 15 optically selected AGNs with 0.5, accepted for publication in ApJ, 22 pages, 13 figures; replaced with accepted version; Figures 2, 3 and 10 in low-res, for high-res see http://www.aip.de/~jahnke/paper/gems_lo_accepted.ps.gz