Search

Forthcoming large imaging surveys such as Euclid and the Vera Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time are expected to find more than $10^5$ strong gravitational lens systems, including many rare and exotic populations such as compound lenses, but these $10^5$ systems will be interspersed among much larger catalogues of $\sim10^9$ galaxies. This volume of data is too much for visual inspection by volunteers alone to be feasible and gravitational lenses will only appear in a small fraction of these data which could cause a large amount of false positives. Machine learning is the obvious alternative but the algorithms' internal workings are not obviously interpretable, so their selection functions are opaque and it is not clear whether they would select against important rare populations. We design, build, and train several Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to identify strong gravitational lenses using VIS, Y, J, and H bands of simulated data, with F1 scores between 0.83 and 0.91 on 100,000 test set images. We demonstrate for the first time that such CNNs do not select against compound lenses, obtaining recall scores as high as 76\% for compound arcs and 52\% for double rings. We verify this performance using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) data of all known compound lens systems. Finally, we explore for the first time the interpretability of these CNNs using Deep Dream, Guided Grad-CAM, and by exploring the kernels of the convolutional layers, to illuminate why CNNs succeed in compound lens selection., MNRAS accepted. 16 pages, 17 figures, The code used in this paper is publicly available at github.com/JoshWilde/LensFindery-McLensFinderFace

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has discovered a surprising abundance of bright galaxy candidates in the very early Universe ($< 500$ Myrs after the Big Bang), calling into question current galaxy formation models. Spectroscopy is needed to confirm the primeval nature of these candidates, as well as to understand how the first galaxies form stars and grow. Here we present deep spectroscopic and continuum ALMA observations towards GHZ2/GLASS-z12, one of the brightest and most robust candidates at $z > 10$ identified in the GLASS-JWST Early Release Science Program. We detect a $5.8 σ$ line, offset 0.5" from the JWST position of GHZ2/GLASS-z12 that, associating it with the [OIII] 88 micron transition, implies a spectroscopic redshift of $z = 12.117 \pm 0.001$. We verify the detection using extensive statistical tests. The oxygen line luminosity places GHZ2/GLASS-z12 above the [OIII]-SFR relation for metal-poor galaxies, implying an enhancement of [OIII] emission in this system while the JWST-observed emission is likely a lower-metallicity region. The lack of dust emission seen by these observations is consistent with the blue UV slope observed by JWST, which suggest little dust attenuation in galaxies at this early epoch. Further observations will unambiguously confirm the redshift and shed light on the origins of the wide and offset line and physical properties of this early galaxy. This work illustrates the synergy between JWST and ALMA and paves the way for future spectroscopic surveys of $z > 10$ galaxy candidates., Accepted to MNRAS. Comments welcome

This document forms the policy roadmap for the institutionalisation of citizen science in large research infrastructures, developed within the REINFORCE project. It builds on results and evaluations from the demonstrator projects developed within REINFORCE, as well as on the engagement monitoring and assessment that has been undertaken. It examines policy gaps and provides a series of policy objectives, as well an examination of likely challenges, while also providing a set of recommendations for stakeholders.

The ESCAPE Legacy Booklet presents overall ESCAPE project achievements, lessons learnt and recommendations.

Presentation given at the REINFORCELarge Research Infrastructures Citizen Science event workshop of the 1st and 2nd of September, 2022.

Galaxy clusters provide an excellent probe in various research fields in astrophysics and cosmology. However, the number of galaxy clusters detected so far in the $AKARI$ North Ecliptic Pole (NEP) field is limited. In this work, we provide galaxy cluster candidates in the $AKARI$ NEP field with the minimum requisites based only on coordinates and photometric redshift (photo-$z$) of galaxies. We used galaxies detected in 5 optical bands ($g$, $r$, $i$, $z$, and $Y$) by the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC), assisted with $u$-band from Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) MegaPrime/MegaCam, and IRAC1 and IRAC2 bands from the $Spitzer$ space telescope for photo-$z$ estimation. We calculated the local density around every galaxy using the 10$^{th}$-nearest neighbourhood. Cluster candidates were determined by applying the friends-of-friends algorithm to over-densities. 88 cluster candidates containing 4390 member galaxies below redshift 1.1 in 5.4 deg$^2$ have been detected. The reliability of our method was examined through false detection tests, redshift uncertainty tests, and applications on the COSMOS data, giving false detection rates of 0.01 to 0.05 and recovery rate of 0.9 at high richness. 3 X-ray clusters previously observed by $ROSAT$ and $Chandra$ were recovered. The cluster galaxies show higher stellar mass and lower star formation rate (SFR) compared to the field galaxies in two-sample Z-tests. These cluster candidates are useful for environmental studies of galaxy evolution and future astronomical surveys in the NEP, where $AKARI$ has performed unique 9-band mid-infrared photometry for tens of thousands of galaxies., Comment: 19 pages, 16 figures, has been accepted for publication in MNRAS

We propose a dedicated, ultra-deep spectroscopic survey in the near infrared (NIR), that will target a mass-limited sample of galaxies during two of the most fundamental epochs of cosmic evolution: the formation of the first galaxies (at z $\gtrsim $ ≳ 6; cosmic dawn), and at the peak of galaxy formation activity (at redshift z$\sim $ ∼ 1–3; cosmic noon). By way of NIR observations (λ= 0.8–2μ m), it is possible to study the UV Lyman-α region in the former, and the optical rest-frame in the latter, allowing us to extract fundamental observables such as gas and stellar kinematics, chemical abundances, and ages, providing a unique legacy database covering these two crucial stages of cosmic evolution. The need to work in the NIR at extremely low flux levels makes a ground-based approach unfeasible due to atmospheric emission and absorption. Only with the largest facilities of the future (e.g. ELT) will be possible to observe a reduced set of targets, comprising at most of order thousands of galaxies. Likewise, from space, the small field of view of JWST and its use as a general purpose facility will yield a rather small set of high quality NIR spectra of distant galaxies (in the thousands, at best). Our project (codename ) aims to produce $\sim $ ∼ 1 million high quality spectra, with a high S/N in the continuum, where information about the underlying stellar populations is encoded. The main science drivers are: The connection between the star formation history and the mass assembly history. The role of AGN and supernova feedback in shaping the formation histories of galaxies, with a quantitative estimate of quenching timescales. The formation of the first galaxies. The source of reionization. Evolution of the metallicity-mass relation, including [α/Fe] and individual abundances. Precision cosmology through detailed studies of the “baryon physics” of galaxy formation, probing the power spectrum over scales k$\sim $ ∼ 1 Mpc− 1.

To understand the cosmic accretion history of supermassive black holes, separating the radiation from active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and star-forming galaxies (SFGs) is critical. However, a reliable solution on photometrically recognising AGNs still remains unsolved. In this work, we present a novel AGN recognition method based on Deep Neural Network (Neural Net; NN). The main goals of this work are (i) to test if the AGN recognition problem in the North Ecliptic Pole Wide (NEPW) field could be solved by NN; (ii) to shows that NN exhibits an improvement in the performance compared with the traditional, standard spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting method in our testing samples; and (iii) to publicly release a reliable AGN/SFG catalogue to the astronomical community using the best available NEPW data, and propose a better method that helps future researchers plan an advanced NEPW database. Finally, according to our experimental result, the NN recognition accuracy is around 80.29% - 85.15%, with AGN completeness around 85.42% - 88.53% and SFG completeness around 81.17% - 85.09%., Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures

Copyright © 2021 Oakden, Bridge, Armstrong, Reynolds, Wang, Panzone, Rivera, Kause, Ffoulkes, Krawczyk, Miller and Serjeant. To enhance sustainability, the food system requires significant shifts in the production, processing and supply of food. Ideally, a sustainable food system should operate, not only to protect the biosphere, but also to provide nutritious, high-quality food, and to support social values, an equitable economy, and human and animal health. It should also be governed responsibly within a supportive policy environment. Implementing these shifts is a task of immense scale; but citizen participation/engagement has the potential to help make sustainability a reality through distributed learning, dynamic sensing, and knowledge generation. Technological advancements in sensing and data processing have enabled new forms of citizen participation in research. When food system research is embedded within society it can help us to understand which changes towards sustainability work and which do not. Indeed, citizen engagement in food systems research has the potential to help bring citizens on side, supporting the growth of a food culture of resilience and of sustainable practises (including dietary change). This commentary provides examples of how existing research and alternative food production systems and agroecological practises may provide possible frameworks for citizen participation in food system studies. We highlight potential future food and citizen science approaches. Widening citizen participation and encouraging the involvement of other food system actors, including those in local, national and international governance, is essential to capture the full potential of citizen science in enabling transition to a sustainable food system. For the research community citizen science offers engagement and empowerment of wider communities with science; collecting and analysing data; and creating viable solutions to food system and diet issues. STFC Food Network+ pilot funding (ST/P003079/1); STFC 21st Century challenge funding (ST/T001410/1) Piloting Zooniverse for food, health and sustainability citizen science; HEFCE Catalyst-funded N8 AgriFood Resilience Programme and matched funding from the N8 group of Universities; Research England via the project Food based citizen science in UK as a policy tool; Food Standards Agency to conduct an additional Rapid Evidence Assessment in December 2020; ESCAPE—The European Science Cluster of Astronomy &Particle Physics ESFRI Research Infrastructures; European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 824064.

Muons from extensive air showers appear as rings in images taken with imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes, such as VERITAS. These muon-ring images are used for the calibration of the VERITAS telescopes, however the calibration accuracy can be improved with a more efficient muon-identification algorithm. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are used in many state-of-the-art image-recognition systems and are ideal for muon image identification, once trained on a suitable dataset with labels for muon images. However, by training a CNN on a dataset labelled by existing algorithms, the performance of the CNN would be limited by the suboptimal muon-identification efficiency of the original algorithms. Muon Hunters 2 is a citizen science project that asks users to label grids of VERITAS telescope images, stating which images contain muon rings. Each image is labelled 10 times by independent volunteers, and the votes are aggregated and used to assign a `muon' or `non-muon' label to the corresponding image. An analysis was performed using an expert-labelled dataset in order to determine the optimal vote percentage cut-offs for assigning labels to each image for CNN training. This was optimised so as to identify as many muon images as possible while avoiding false positives. The performance of this model greatly improves on existing muon identification algorithms, identifying approximately 30 times the number of muon images identified by the current algorithm implemented in VEGAS (VERITAS Gamma-ray Analysis Suite), and roughly 2.5 times the number identified by the Hough transform method, along with significantly outperforming a CNN trained on VEGAS-labelled data.

Presentation delivered at the European Open Science Cloud symposium.

arXiv:2103.03584v1, We use the SPace Infrared telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics (SPICA) project as a template to demonstrate how deep spectrophotometric surveys covering large cosmological volumes over extended fields (1–15 deg2) with a mid-IR imaging spectrometer (17–36 µm) in conjunction with deep photometry with a far-IR camera, at wavelengths which are not affected by dust extinction can answer the most crucial questions in current galaxy evolution studies. A SPICA-like mission will be able for the first time to provide an unobscured three-dimensional (3D, i.e. x, y, and redshift z) view of galaxy evolution back to an age of the universe of less than ∼ 2 Gyrs, in the mid-IR rest frame. This survey strategy will produce a full census of the Star Formation Rate (SFR) in the universe, using polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) bands and fine-structure ionic lines, reaching the characteristic knee of the galaxy luminosity function, where the bulk of the population is distributed, at any redshift up to z ∼ 3.5. Deep follow-up pointed spectroscopic observations with grating spectrometers onboard the satellite, across the full IR spectral range (17–210 µm), would simultaneously measure Black Hole Accretion Rate (BHAR), from high-ionisation fine-structure lines, and SFR, from PAH and low- to mid-ionisation lines in thousands of galaxies from solar to low metallicities, down to the knee of their luminosity functions. The analysis of the resulting atlas of IR spectra will reveal the physical processes at play in evolving galaxies across cosmic time, especially its heavily dust-embedded phase during the activity peak at the cosmic noon (z ∼ 1–3), through IR emission lines and features that are insensitive to the dust obscuration., LS and JAFO acknowledge financial support by the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI) under the research contract 2018-31-HH.0. AAH acknowledges support from grants PGC2018-094671-B-I00 (MCIU/AEI/FEDER,UE) and No. MDM-2017-0737 at Unidad de Excelencia María de Maeztu-Centro de Astrobiología (INTACSIC). FJC acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry MCIU under project RTI2018-096686-B-C21 (MCIU/AEI/FEDER/UE), cofunded by FEDER funds and from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación, Unidad de Excelencia María de Maeztu, ref. MDM-2017-0765. HD acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICIU) under the 2014 Ramón y Cajal program RYC-2014-15686 and AYA2017-84061-P, the later one co-financed by FEDER (European Regional Development Funds). AL acknowledges the support from Comunidad de Madrid through the Atracción de Talento grant 2017-T1/TIC-5213. MPS acknowledges support from the Comunidad de Madrid, Spain, through Atracción de Talento Investigador Grant 2018-T1/TIC-11035.

Wide-field sub-millimetre surveys have driven many major advances in galaxy evolution in the past decade, but without extensive follow-up observations the coarse angular resolution of these surveys limits the science exploitation. This has driven the development of various analytical deconvolution methods. In the last half a decade Generative Adversarial Networks have been used to attempt deconvolutions on optical data. Here we present an autoencoder with a novel loss function to overcome this problem in the sub-millimeter wavelength range. This approach is successfully demonstrated on Herschel SPIRE 500$\mu$m COSMOS data, with the super-resolving target being the JCMT SCUBA-2 450$\mu$m observations of the same field. We reproduce the JCMT SCUBA-2 images with high fidelity using this autoencoder. This is quantified through the point source fluxes and positions, the completeness and the purity., Comment: Published by MNRAS in Volume 507 issue 1 October 2021, 12 pages, 7 figures. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab2195

Author(s): Kim, Seong Jin; Oi, Nagisa; Goto, Tomotsugu; Ikeda, Hiroyuki; Ho, Simon C-C; Shim, Hyunjin; Toba, Yoshiki; Hwang, Ho Seong; Hashimoto, Tetsuya; Barrufet, Laia; Malkan, Matthew; Kim, Helen K; Huang, Ting-Chi; Matsuhara, Hideo; Miyaji, Takamitsu; Pearson, Chris; Serjeant, Stephen; Santos, Daryl Joe D; Kim, Eunbin; Pollo, Agnieszka; Jeong, Woong-Seob; Wang, Ting-Wen; Momose, Rieko; Takagi, Toshinobu | Abstract: ABSTRACT The North Ecliptic Pole field is a natural deep-field location for many satellite observations. It has been targeted many times since it was surveyed by the AKARI space telescope with its unique wavelength coverage from the near- to mid-infrared (mid-IR). Many follow-up observations have been carried out, making this field one of the most frequently observed areas with a variety of facilities, accumulating abundant panchromatic data from the X-ray to the radio wavelength range. Recently, a deep optical survey with the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) at the Subaru telescope covered the NEP-Wide (NEPW) field, which enabled us to identify faint sources in the near- and mid-IR bands, and to improve the photometric redshift (photo-z) estimation. In this work, we present newly identified AKARI sources by the HSC survey, along with multiband photometry for 91 861 AKARI sources observed over the NEPW field. We release a new band-merged catalogue combining various photometric data from the GALEX UV to submillimetre (sub-mm) bands (e.g. Herschel/SPIRE, JCMT/SCUBA-2). About ∼20 000 AKARI sources are newly matched to the HSC data, most of which seem to be faint galaxies in the near- to mid-infrared AKARI bands. This catalogue is motivating a variety of current research, and will be increasingly useful as recently launched (eROSITA/ART-XC) and future space missions (such as JWST, Euclid, and SPHEREx) plan to take deep observations in the NEP field.

We present an 850-μm mosaic map and extracted catalogue of submillimetre sources in the extended North Ecliptic Pole (NEP) region over about 2 deg2. The 850-μm map is constructed using newly obtained observations by SCUBA-2 at the East Asian Observatory’s James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, carried out using the observatory’s large programme opportunities. The recent 850-μm survey has extended the submillimetre data coverage by almost a factor of 4 compared to previous surveys, with a depth of σrms = 1.0–2.3 mJy beam−1. The catalogue contains 549 sources selected above a significance level of 4σ, where the false-detection rate is 10 per cent; a higher threshold of 4.5σ is required in order to achieve a false-detection rate below 3 per cent, which results in 342 sources being selected. Despite the large spatial variation of the noise, the deboosted flux density of sources is comparable to results from the SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey (S2CLS), which covered the central 0.6 deg2 of our survey area with better sensitivity. We construct the source counts at 850 μm, finding results in agreement with other 850-μm surveys in cosmological blank fields over S850 = 4–15 mJy. We find a slight excess of bright galaxies (S850 > 15 mJy), which can be considered to be at ɀphot = 2–4. The 850-μm data adds valuable long-wavelength information to mid-infrared-selected sources from the AKARI NEP-deep and NEP-wide surveys, which will be helpful in preparing for future near-infrared to millimetre wavelength observations in the NEP region. Our 850-μm mosaic map and source catalogue will be made publicly available.

Full list of authors: Muxlow, T. W. B.; Thomson, A. P.; Radcliffe, J. F.; Wrigley, N. H.; Beswick, R. J.; Smail, Ian; McHardy, I. M.; Garrington, S. T.; Ivison, R. J.; Jarvis, M. J.; Prandoni, I.; Bondi, M.; Guidetti, D.; Argo, M. K.; Bacon, David; Best, P. N.; Biggs, A. D.; Chapman, S. C.; Coppin, K.; Chen, H.; Garratt, T. K.; Garrett, M. A.; Ibar, E.; Kneib, Jean-Paul; Knudsen, Kirsten K.; Koopmans, L. V. E.; Morabito, L. K.; Murphy, E. J.; Njeri, A.; Pearson, Chris; Pérez-Torres, M. A.; Richards, A. M. S.; Röttgering, H. J. A.; Sargent, M. T.; Serjeant, Stephen; Simpson, C.; Simpson, J. M.; Swinbank, A. M.; Varenius, E.; Venturi, T., We present an overview and description of the e-MERGE Survey (e-MERLIN Galaxy Evolution Survey) Data Release 1 (DR1), a large program of high-resolution 1.5-GHz radio observations of the GOODS-N field comprising similar to 140 h of observations with enhanced-Multi-Element Remotely Linked Interferometer Network (e-MERLIN) and similar to 40 h with the Very Large Array (VLA). We combine the long baselines of e-MERLIN (providing high angular resolution) with the relatively closely packed antennas of the VLA (providing excellent surface brightness sensitivity) to produce a deep 1.5-GHz radio survey with the sensitivity (similar to 1.5 mu Jy beam(-1)), angular resolution (0.2-0.7 arcsec) and field-of-view (similar to 15x15 arcmin(2)) to detect and spatially resolve star-forming galaxies and active galactic nucleus (AGN) at z greater than or similar to 1. The goal of e-MERGE is to provide new constraints on the deep, sub-arcsecond radio sky which will be surveyed by SKA1-mid. In this initial publication, we discuss our data analysis techniques, including steps taken to model in-beam source variability over an similar to 20-yr baseline and the development of newpoint spread function/primary beam models to seamlessly merge e-MERLIN and VLA data in the uv plane. We present early science results, including measurements of the luminosities and/or linear sizes of similar to 500 galaxies selected at 1.5 GHz. In combination with deep Hubble Space Telescope observations, we measure a mean radio-to-optical size ratio of r(e-MERGE)/r(HST) similar to 1.02 +/- 0.03, suggesting that in most high-redshift galaxies, the similar to GHz continuum emission traces the stellar light seen in optical imaging. This is the first in a series of papers that will explore the similar to kpc-scale radio properties of star-forming galaxies and AGN in the GOODS-N field observed by e-MERGE DR1. © 2020 The Author(s)., APT, TWBM, RJB, and MAG acknowledge support from STFC (ST/P000649/1). APT further acknowledges and thanks Robert Dickson, Peter Draper, David Hempston, Anthony Holloway, and Alan Lotts for their extensive support managing the highperformance computing infrastructure, which has been essential for the successful delivery of e-MERGE DR1. JFR acknowledges the financial assistance of the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) towards this research (http://sarao.ac.za).IP acknowledges support from INAF under the PRIN SKA/CTA project 'FORECaST' and the PRIN MAIN STREAM project 'SAuROS'. EI acknowledges partial support from FONDECYT through grant no 1171710. We thank the anonymous reviewer for their detailed and constructive referee report, which has undoubtedly improved the quality of the final manuscript. e-MERLIN is a National Facility operated by the University of Manchester at Jodrell Bank Observatory on behalf of STFC. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. The authors acknowledge the use of the IRIDIS High Performance Computing Facility, and associated support services at the University of Southampton, in the completion of this work. We thank IRIS (www.iris.ac.uk) for provision of highperformance computing facilities. STFC IRIS is investing in the UK's Radio and mm/sub-mm Interferometry Services in order to improve data quality and throughput. The European VLBI Network is a joint facility of independent European, African, Asian, and North American radio astronomy institutes. Scientific results from data presented in this publication are derived from the following EVN project code(s): EG078B. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Commission Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement no. 730562 (RadioNet)., With funding from the Spanish government through the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation SEV-2017-0709.

Professor Sarah Bridle, Principle Investigator for the STFC Food Network+, describes the launch of the Network and its ambitions to apply the skills and facilities of the Science and Technology Facilities Council to tackling the challenges facing food supply.

The preliminary data reduction, analysis and first results from the Herschel survey of the AKARI NEP field are presented. Herschel SPIRE observations of the NEP-Wide region and PACS observations of the NEP-Deep region have yielded galaxy catalogues of 4000 and 900 sources respectively down to flux density levels of approximately 15 mJy at 100-250 microns. Source counts produced from these catalogues reach cosmologically significant depths tracing the evolutionary upturn and turnover in the source counts. The source counts are in agreement with other large area surveys carried out with Herschel bridging the gap between the shallow and deep Herschel surveys.

Submillimetre and millimetre-wave surveys with Herschel and the South Pole Telescope have revolutionised the discovery of strong gravitational lenses. Their follow-ups have been greatly facilitated by the multi-wavelength supplementary data in the survey fields. The forthcoming Euclid optical/near-infrared space telescope will also detect strong gravitational lenses in large numbers, and orbital constraints are likely to require placing its deep survey at the North Ecliptic Pole (the natural deep field for a wide class of ground-based and space-based observatories including AKARI, JWST and SPICA). In this paper I review the current status of the multi-wavelength survey coverage in the NEP, and discuss the prospects for the detection of strong gravitational lenses in forthcoming or proposed facilities such as Euclid, FIRSPEX and SPICA., To appear in Publications of the Korean Astronomical Society. Based on review at The Universe in the Light of AKARI and Synergy with future Large Space Telescopes, Oxford, 2014

The number of small satellites has grown dramatically in the past decade from tens of satellites per year in the mid-2010s to a projection of tens of thousands in orbit by the mid-2020s. This presents both problems and opportunities for observational astronomy. Small satellites offer complementary cost-effective capabilities to both ground-based astronomy and larger space missions. Compared to ground-based astronomy, these advantages are not just in the accessibility of wavelength ranges where the Earth's atmosphere is opaque, but also in stable, high precision photometry, long-term monitoring and improved areal coverage. Astronomy has a long history of new observational parameter spaces leading to major discoveries. Here we discuss the potential for small satellites to explore new parameter spaces in astrophysics, drawing on examples from current and proposed missions, and spanning a wide range of science goals from binary stars, exoplanets and solar system science to the early Universe and fundamental physics., Comment: Nature Astronomy, in press. 2 figures. Smallsats special issue (with separate articles on problems/mitigations for ground-based/space astronomy)

The largest Herschel extragalactic surveys, H-ATLAS and HerMES, have selected a sample of "ultrared" dusty, star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) with rising SPIRE flux densities ($S_{500} > S_{350} > S_{250}$; so-called "500 $��$m-risers") as an efficient way for identifying DSFGs at higher redshift ($z > 4$). In this paper, we present a large Spitzer follow-up program of 300 Herschel ultrared DSFGs. We have obtained high-resolution ALMA, NOEMA, and SMA data for 63 of them, which allow us to securely identify the Spitzer/IRAC counterparts and classify them as gravitationally lensed or unlensed. Within the 63 ultrared sources with high-resolution data, $\sim$65% appear to be unlensed, and $\sim$27% are resolved into multiple components. We focus on analyzing the unlensed sample by directly performing multi-wavelength spectral energy distribution (SED) modeling to derive their physical properties and compare with the more numerous $z \sim 2$ DSFG population. The ultrared sample has a median redshift of 3.3, stellar mass of 3.7 $\times$ 10$^{11}$ $M_{\odot}$, star formation rate (SFR) of 730 $M_{\odot}$yr$^{-1}$, total dust luminosity of 9.0 $\times$ 10$^{12}$ $L_{\odot}$, dust mass of 2.8 $\times$ 10$^9$ $M_{\odot}$, and V-band extinction of 4.0, which are all higher than those of the ALESS DSFGs. Based on the space density, SFR density, and stellar mass density estimates, we conclude that our ultrared sample cannot account for the majority of the star-forming progenitors of the massive, quiescent galaxies found in infrared surveys. Our sample contains the rarer, intrinsically most dusty, luminous and massive galaxies in the early universe that will help us understand the physical drivers of extreme star formation., 33 pages, 10 figures; accepted for publication in ApJS. The catalog tables will be available on ApJS and VizieR; authors' version is available now upon request

In 2017, the Muon Hunter project on the Zooniverse.org citizen science platform successfully gathered more than two million classification labels for nearly 140,000 camera images from VERITAS. The aim was to select and parameterize muon events for use in training convolutional neural networks. The success of this project proved that crowdsourcing labels for IACT image analysis is a viable avenue for further development of advanced machine-learning algorithms. These algorithms could potentially lend themselves to improving class separation between gamma-ray and hadronic event types. Nonetheless, it took two months to gather these labels from volunteers, which could be a bottleneck for future applications of this method. Here we present Muon Hunters 2.0: the follow-on project that demonstrates the development of unsupervised clustering techniques to gather muon labels more efficiently from volunteer classifiers.

The Euclid telescope, due for launch in 2021, will perform an imaging and slitless spectroscopy survey over half the sky, to map baryon wiggles and weak lensing. During the survey Euclid is expected to resolve 100,000 strong gravitational lens systems. This is ideal to find rare lens configurations, provided they can be identified reliably and on a reasonable timescale. For this reason we have developed a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) that can be used to identify images containing lensing systems. CNNs have already been used for image and digit classification as well as being used in astronomy for star-galaxy classification. Here our CNN is trained and tested on Euclid-like and KiDS-like simulations from the Euclid Strong Lensing Group, successfully classifying 77% of lenses, with an area under the ROC curve of up to 0.96. Our CNN also attempts to classify the lenses in COSMOS HST F814W-band images. After convolution to the Euclid resolution, we find we can recover most systems that are identifiable by eye. The Python code is available on Github., 9 pages, 6 figures, MNRAS accepted

Stephen Serjeant and the STFC's Astronomy Advisory Panel summarize community responses to its consultation on research priorities, undertaken in November 2018. Publisher PDF

We have identified 22 quasars in the AKARI far-infrared all-sky Bright Source Catalogue, using a matching radius of < 10", and excluding matches which are close to foreground extended sources or cirrus. We have confirmed a relation between quasar optical luminosity and far-infrared luminosity which was found in an earlier study. In addition, we have found that the 11 sources which are at redshift z > 1 are magnified with respect to the predicted far-infrared luminosity, and consider this may be due to gravitational lensing. If confirmed, this would provide a new way to identify lenses; if not, we may have identified an interesting new population of extreme starbursting quasars.

We present the first results of a new data analysis pipeline for processing extragalactic AKARI/IRC images. The main improvements of the pipeline over the standard analysis are the removal of Earth shine and image distortion correction. We present the differential number counts of the AKARI/IRC S11 filter IRAC validation field. The differential number counts are consistent with S11 AKARI NEP deep and 12 microns WISE NEP number counts, and with a phenomenological backward evolution galaxy model, at brighter fluxes densities. There is a detection of deeper galaxies in the IRAC validation field., Accepted for publication in the Publications of the Korean Astronomical Society. Based on review at The Universe in the Light of AKARI and Synergy with future Large Space Telescopes, Oxford, 2014

The AKARI North Ecliptic Pole Deep Field is a natural location to accomplish deep extragalactic surveys. It is supported by comprehensive ancillary data extending from radio to X-ray wavelengths, which have been used to classify radio sources as radio-loud and radio-quiet objects and to create a catalogue of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). This has been achieved by using a radio-optical classification and colour-colour diagrams rather than the more usual way based on spectroscopy Furthermore, we explore whether this technique can be extended by using a far-Infrared (FIR) colour-colour diagram which has been used to identify 268 high redshift candidates.

We have imaged the AKARI Deep Field with the GMRT radio telescope at 610 MHz, detecting 1224 radio components, which are optically identified with 455 optical galaxies having a mean r' magnitude brighter of 22.5 (to a completeness limit of 25.4 mag), and an average redshift ∼ 0.8.

Strong gravitational lensing is an ideal tool for mapping the distribution of dark matter and for testing the values of cosmological parameters. Forthcoming surveys such as Euclid and the Rubin Observatory LSST should increase the number of known strong lensing systems significantly, with for example over 100,000 such systems predicted in the Euclid wide survey. In this short research note we predict that approximately 17,000 strong gravitational lenses will also be detectible in the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope 2000 square degree survey, using the LensPop gravitational lensing model. We present predicted distributions in source and deflector redshifts, magnitudes, and magnifications. Although this survey is not primarily designed as a strong lensing detection experiment, it will still provide a large complementary catalogue to shallower, wider-area forthcoming lensing discovery projects., RNAAS in press, 4 pages, 1 figure

Large scale imaging surveys will increase the number of galaxy-scale strong lensing candidates by maybe three orders of magnitudes beyond the number known today. Finding these rare objects will require picking them out of at least tens of millions of images and deriving scientific results from them will require quantifying the efficiency and bias of any search method. To achieve these objectives automated methods must be developed. Because gravitational lenses are rare objects reducing false positives will be particularly important. We present a description and results of an open gravitational lens finding challenge. Participants were asked to classify 100,000 candidate objects as to whether they were gravitational lenses or not with the goal of developing better automated methods for finding lenses in large data sets. A variety of methods were used including visual inspection, arc and ring finders, support vector machines (SVM) and convolutional neural networks (CNN). We find that many of the methods will be easily fast enough to analyse the anticipated data flow. In test data, several methods are able to identify upwards of half the lenses after applying some thresholds on the lens characteristics such as lensed image brightness, size or contrast with the lens galaxy without making a single false-positive identification. This is significantly better than direct inspection by humans was able to do. (abridged), 22 pages, 16 figures, 4 tables, accepted version for A&A

In this Working Paper, the authors review the trends, opportunities, and constraints in the application of emerging technologies to climate-related challenges within the agri-food system. The findings are based on a small sample of projects, but indicate promising avenues for further exploration, as well as potential challenges in the application of technologies developed in one sector to challenges experienced in another.

How far can we use multi-wavelength cross-identifications to deconvolve far-infrared images? In this short research note I explore a test case of CLEAN deconvolutions of simulated confused 850 micron SCUBA-2 data, and explore the possible scientific applications of combining this data with ostensibly deeper TolTEC Large Scale Structure (LSS) survey 1.1mm-2mm data. I show that the SCUBA-2 can be reconstructed to the 1.1mm LMT resolution and achieve an 850 micron deconvolved sensitivity of 0.7 mJy RMS, an improvement of at least ~1:5x over naive point source filtered images. The TolTEC/SCUBA-2 combination can constrain cold (, RNAAS volume 3, 133. One figure. Added DOI and enabled hyperlinks to match published version

GravityCam is a new concept of ground-based imaging instrument capable of delivering significantly sharper images from the ground than is normally possible without adaptive optics. Advances in optical and near infrared imaging technologies allow images to be acquired at high speed without significant noise penalty. Aligning these images before they are combined can yield a 2.5 to 3 fold improvement in image resolution. By using arrays of such detectors, survey fields may be as wide as the telescope optics allows. Consequently, GravityCam enables both wide-field high-resolution imaging and high-speed photometry. We describe the instrument and detail its application to provide demographics of planets and satellites down to Lunar mass (or even below) across the Milky Way. GravityCam is also suited to improve the quality of weak shear studies of dark matter distribution in distant clusters of galaxies and multiwavelength follow-ups of background sources that are strongly lensed by galaxy clusters. The photometric data arising from an extensive microlensing survey will also be useful for asteroseismology studies, while GravityCam can be used to monitor fast multiwavelength flaring in accreting compact objects, and promises to generate a unique data set on the population of the Kuiper belt and possibly the Oort cloud., Comment: 23 pages, 15 figures. Revision submitted to Proceedings of the Astronomical Society of Australia, 25 September 2018

JINGLE is a new JCMT legacy survey designed to systematically study the cold interstellar medium of galaxies in the local Universe. As part of the survey we perform 850um continuum measurements with SCUBA-2 for a representative sample of 193 Herschel-selected galaxies with M*>10^9Msun, as well as integrated CO(2-1) line fluxes with RxA3m for a subset of 90 of these galaxies. The sample is selected from fields covered by the Herschel-ATLAS survey that are also targeted by the MaNGA optical integral-field spectroscopic survey. The new JCMT observations combined with the multi-wavelength ancillary data will allow for the robust characterization of the properties of dust in the nearby Universe, and the benchmarking of scaling relations between dust, gas, and global galaxy properties. In this paper we give an overview of the survey objectives and details about the sample selection and JCMT observations, present a consistent 30 band UV-to-FIR photometric catalog with derived properties, and introduce the JINGLE Main Data Release (MDR). Science highlights include the non-linearity of the relation between 850um luminosity and CO line luminosity, and the serendipitous discovery of candidate z>6 galaxies., MNRAS in press, 25 pages

The CORE collaboration thanks CNES, Thales Alenia Space, and Air Liquide Advanced Technologies for advice and technical support during the preparation of the CORE proposal. We also thank the ESA CDF team for the CMB Polarisation CDF study performed in March 2016, the results of which were extensively used to define the mission concept presented in this paper. J.G.N. acknowledges financial support from the Spanish MINECO for a Ramon y Cajal fellowship (RYC-2013-13256) and the I+D 2015 project AYA2015-65887-P (MINECO/FEDER). CJM is supported by an FCT Research Professorship, contract reference IF/00064/2012, funded by FCT/MCTES (Portugal) and POPH/FSE. F.J.C., R.F.-C., E.M.-G. and P.V. acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministerio de Econom´ıa y Competitividad project ESP2015-70646-C2-1-R (cofinanced with EU FEDER funds), ConsoliderIngenio 2010 project CSD2010-00064 and from the CSIC “Proyecto Intramural Especial” project 201550E091. FA is supported by the National Taiwan University (NTU) under Project No. 103R4000 and by the NTU Leung Center for Cosmology and Particle Astrophysics (LeCosPA) under Project No. FI121. BFR acknowledges support from the National Science Centre, Poland, under grant 2014/13/B/ST9/00845., Macìas-Pérez, J.F., Delabrouille, J., De Bernardis, P., Bouchet, F.R., Achúcarro, A., Ade, P.A.R., Allison, R., Arroja, F., Artal, E., Ashdown, M., Baccigalupi, C., Ballardini, M., Banday, A.J., Banerji, R., Barbosa, D., Bartlett, J., Bartolo, N., Basak, S., Baselmans, J.J.A., Basu, K., Battistelli, E.S., Battye, R., Baumann, D., Benoít, A., Bersanelli, M., Bideaud, A., Biesiada, M., Bilicki, M., Bonaldi, A., Bonato, M., Borrill, J., Boulanger, F., Brinckmann, T., Brown, M.L., Bucher, M., Burigana, C., Buzzelli, A., Cabass, G., Cai, Z.-Y., Calvo, M., Caputo, A., Carvalho, C.-S., Casas, F.J., Castellano, G., Catalano, A., Challinor, A., Charles, I., Chluba, J., Clements, D.L., Clesse, S., Colafrancesco, S., Colantoni, I., Contreras, D., Coppolecchia, A., Crook, M., D'Alessandro, G., D'Amico, G., Silva, A.D., De Avillez, M., De Gasperis, G., Petris, M.D., De Zotti, G., Danese, L., Désert, F.-X., Desjacques, V., Valentino, E.D., Dickinson, C., Diego, J.M., Doyle, S., Durrer, R., Dvorkin, C., Eriksen, H.K., Errard, J., Feeney, S., Fernández-Cobos, R., Finelli, F., Forastieri, F., Franceschet, C., Fuskeland, U., Galli, S., Génova-Santos, R.T., Gerbino, M., Giusarma, E., Gomez, A., González-Nuevo, J., Grandis, S., Greenslade, J., Goupy, J., Hagstotz, S., Hanany, S., Handley, W., Henrot-Versillé, S., Hernández-Monteagudo, C., Hervias-Caimapo, C., Hills, M., Hindmarsh, M., Hivon, E., Hoang, D.T., Hooper, D.C., Hu, B., Keihänen, E., Keskitalo, R., Kiiveri, K., Kisner, T., Kitching, T., Kunz, M., Kurki-Suonio, H., Lagache, G., Lamagna, L., Lapi, A., Lasenby, A., Lattanzi, M., Brun, A.M.C.L., Lesgourgues, J., Liguori, M., Lindholm, V., Lizarraga, J., Luzzi, G., Macìas-Pérez, J.F., Maffei, B., Mandolesi, N., Martin, S., Martinez-Gonzalez, E., Martins, C.J.A.P., Masi, S., Massardi, M., Matarrese, S., Mazzotta, P., McCarthy, D., Melchiorri, A., Melin, J.-B., Mennella, A., Mohr, J., Molinari, D., Monfardini, A., Montier, L., Natoli, P., Negrello, M., Notari, A., Noviello, F., Oppizzi, F., O'Sullivan, C., Pagano, L., Paiella, A., Pajer, E., Paoletti, D., Paradiso, S., Partridge, R.B., Patanchon, G., Patil, S.P., Perdereau, O., Piacentini, F., Piat, M., Pisano, G., Polastri, L., Polenta, G., Pollo, A., Ponthieu, N., Poulin, V., Prêle, D., Quartin, M., Ravenni, A., Remazeilles, M., Renzi, A., Ringeval, C., Roest, D., Roman, M., Roukema, B.F., Rubiño-Martin, J.-A., Salvati, L., Scott, D., Serjeant, S., Signorelli, G., Starobinsky, A.A., Sunyaev, R., Tan, C.Y., Tartari, A., Tasinato, G., Toffolatti, L., Tomasi, M., Torrado, J., Tramonte, D., Trappe, N., Triqueneaux, S., Tristram, M., Trombetti, T., Tucci, M., Tucker, C., Urrestilla, J., Väliviita, J., De Weygaert, R.V., Tent, B.V., Vennin, V., Verde, L., Vermeulen, G., Vielva, P., Vittorio, N., Voisin, F., Wallis, C., Wandelt, B., Wehus, I.K., Weller, J., Young, K., Zannoni, M.

We present a study of the molecular gas properties in a sample of 98 HI - flux selected spiral galaxies within $\sim25$ Mpc, using the CO $J=3-2$ line observed with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. We use the technique of survival analysis to incorporate galaxies with CO upper limits into our results. Comparing the group and Virgo samples, we find a larger mean H$_{2}$ mass in the Virgo galaxies, despite their lower mean HI mass. This leads to a significantly higher H$_{2}$ to HI ratio for Virgo galaxies. Combining our data with complementary H$\alpha$ star formation rate measurements, Virgo galaxies have longer molecular gas depletion times compared to group galaxies, due to their higher H$_{2}$ masses and lower star formation rates. We suggest that the longer depletion times may be a result of heating processes in the cluster environment or differences in the turbulent pressure. From the full sample, we find that the molecular gas depletion time has a positive correlation with the stellar mass, indicative of differences in the star formation process between low and high mass galaxies, and a negative correlation between the molecular gas depletion time and the specific star formation rate., Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS, 25 pages, 14 figures

We present new VLA 22-GHz and e-MERLIN 5-GHz observations of CLASS B1030+074, a two-image strong gravitational lens system whose background source is a compact flat-spectrum radio quasar. In such systems we expect a third image of the background source to form close to the centre of the lensing galaxy. The existence and brightness of such images is important for investigation of the central mass distributions of lensing galaxies, but only one secure detection has been made so far in a galaxy-scale lens system. The noise levels achieved in our new B1030+074 images reach 3 microJy/beam and represent an improvement in central image constraints of nearly an order of magnitude over previous work, with correspondingly better resulting limits on the shape of the central mass profile of the lensing galaxy. Simple models with an isothermal outer power law slope now require either the influence of a central supermassive black hole, or an inner power law slope very close to isothermal, in order to suppress the central image below our detection limit. Using the central mass profiles inferred from light distributions in Virgo galaxies, moved to z=0.5, and matching to the observed Einstein radius, we now find that 45% of such mass profiles should give observable central images, 10% should give central images with a flux density still below our limit, and the remaining systems have extreme demagnification produced by the central SMBH. Further observations of similar objects will therefore allow proper statistical constraints to be placed on the central properties of elliptical galaxies at high redshift., Comment: Accepted by Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 16 pages, 8 figures

Debris discs are evidence of the ongoing destructive collisions between planetesimals, and their presence around stars also suggests that planets exist in these systems. In this paper, we present submillimetre images of the thermal emission from debris discs that formed the SCUBA-2 Observations of Nearby Stars (SONS) survey, one of seven legacy surveys undertaken on the James Clerk Maxwell telescope between 2012 and 2015. The overall results of the survey are presented in the form of 850 microns (and 450 microns, where possible) images and fluxes for the observed fields. Excess thermal emission, over that expected from the stellar photosphere, is detected around 49 stars out of the 100 observed fields. The discs are characterised in terms of their flux density, size (radial distribution of the dust) and derived dust properties from their spectral energy distributions. The results show discs over a range of sizes, typically 1-10 times the diameter of the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt in our Solar System. The mass of a disc, for particles up to a few millimetres in size, is uniquely obtainable with submillimetre observations and this quantity is presented as a function of the host stars' age, showing a tentative decline in mass with age. Having doubled the number of imaged discs at submillimetre wavelengths from ground-based, single dish telescope observations, one of the key legacy products from the SONS survey is to provide a comprehensive target list to observe at high angular resolution using submillimetre/millimetre interferometers (e.g., ALMA, SMA)., 61 pages, 51 figures

The SCUBA-2 Ambitious Sky Survey (SASSy) is composed of shallow 850-$\umu$m imaging using the Sub-millimetre Common-User Bolometer Array 2 (SCUBA-2) on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. Here we describe the extraction of a catalogue of beam-sized sources from a roughly $120\,{\rm deg}^2$ region of the Galactic plane mapped uniformly (to an rms level of about 40\,mJy), covering longitude 120\degr\,$

There exists strong evidence supporting the co-evolution of central supermassive black holes and their host galaxies; however it is still under debate how such a relation comes about and whether it is relevant for all or only a subset of galaxies. An important mechanism connecting AGN to their host galaxies is AGN feedback, potentially heating up or even expelling gas from galaxies. AGN feedback may hence be responsible for the eventual quenching of star formation and halting of galaxy growth. A rich multi-wavelength dataset ranging from the X-ray regime (Chandra), to far-IR (Herschel), and radio (WSRT) is available for the North Ecliptic Pole field, most notably surveyed by the AKARI infrared space telescope, covering a total area on the sky of 5.4 sq. degrees. We investigate the star formation properties and possible signatures of radio feedback mechanisms in the host galaxies of 237 radio sources below redshift z