Surface brightness fluctuations are one of the most powerful techniques to measure the distance and constrain the unresolved stellar content of extragalactic systems. This article gives a historical background, reviews the basic concepts, presents a broad sample of investigations and discusses possible selection effects, biases, and limitations of the method.

This is a design study into using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder full-sky low redshift neutral hydrogen survey, WALLABY, to measure the galaxy power spectrum. With 66 × 10⁵ redshifts, WALLABY, when combined with Planck CMB data, will constrain the Dark Energy equation of state to 20%.

The complementary technique of neutron activation and subsequent accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) measurement was for the first time applied to studying ¹⁴C production from ¹³C(n,γ) and ¹⁴N(n,p). New data for these neutron poisons obtained for neutron energies between 25 and 178 keV are slightly lower than previous results and evaluations suggest.

This project uses the 2MASS all-sky image database to study the structure of galaxies over a range of luminosities, sizes and morphological types. This first paper in this series will outline the techniques, reliability and data products to our surface photometry program.

In this article, we investigate the behavior of orbits in an axially symmetric galactic-type potential. Our numerical calculations suggest that in this potential, there are two kinds of orbits: (i) escaping and (ii) trapped, which do not escape at all. Among the chaotic orbits, there are orbits that escape fast and also orbits that remain trapped for vast time intervals.

A coronal jet ejection from a sunspot light bridge is presented. It is confirmed that the jet has its root near the light bridge. This suggests that the jet may be a result of reconnection between the main sunspot and the light bridge.

We monitored the Ca ii lines of HD 179949 at the McDonald Observatory to observe planet induced emission (PIE) as an effect of star–planet interaction. Detailed statistical analysis revealed fluctuations in the Ca ii K core consistent with previous studies. We also confirmed the reality and temporal evolution of the phase shift of the maximum of star–planet interaction.

We analysed GSC 02038-00293's light curve and modelled its light variation at out-of-eclipse phases using the phoebe and spotmodel programs. The analyses indicated that there are two migrating active longitudes for the active component. The amplitude at out-of-eclipse phases varies in a sinusoidal way with a period of 8.9 yr, while the mean brightness is dramatically decreasing.

Expanding upon Pimbblet's 2011 analysis of career h-indices for members of the Astronomical Society of Australia, we provide additional citation metrics which are geared to quantifying the current performance of all professional astronomers in Australia.

We estimate the intensity of possible supernova-produced radionuclides ²⁶Al, ⁵³Mn, ⁶⁰Fe, and the pure r-process element ²⁴⁴Pu in two marine sediment cores from the Indian Ocean. Detecting these radionuclides with accelerator mass spectrometry allows us to link the signal to a supernova event in the solar vicinity ~2 Myr ago.

Existing telescopes rely on human expertise to reduce raw data and then analyse the images for non-pointlike objects; however, the next generation of radio telescopes will make this infeasible. We explore the Circle Hough Transform as a detection method on a sample of different extended circular or arc-like astronomical objects.

Many neutron stars and runaway stars apparently come from the same regions on the sky. This suggests that they share the same birth places. To identify these birth places, we attempt to find NS-runaway pairs that could be possible former companions that were disrupted in a supernova. If nearby and recent, the remains are still visible in emission of radioisotopes.

We present colour transformations for the conversion of WISE magnitudes to the BVI_c, gri, and JHK_s photometric systems for red clump stars. The selected samples were used to obtain metallicity-dependent and free-of-metallicity transformations. These transformations can be used in the studies of the Galactic structure.

The photometric properties of Type Ia supernovae in the near-infrared from observations made over the last 30 years are reviewed. The data reveal considerable homogeneity, but also some fascinating differences. For all but the fastest declining objects, Type Ia supernovae are essentially perfect standard candles in the near-infrared.

No evidence was found in nanodiamond stardust for the former presence of extinct ²⁶Al or ⁴⁴Ti. Observed overabundances of r-process-only ¹⁹⁸Pt are in line with previously found excesses of heavy Xe and Te isotopes. As an alternative to dedicated scenarios, we have explored the r-process as a possible explanation.

The large size of the ASKAP Hi surveys DINGO and WALLABY necessitates automated 3D source finding. Here we present a comparison of the performance of five different methods of automated source finding. These source finders are duchamp, gamma-finder, a cnhi finder, a 2d–1d wavelet reconstruction finder and a sigma clipping method (s+c finder).

This work presents a method for determining the accuracy of a source finder algorithm for spectral line radio astronomy data and the Source Finder Accuracy Evaluator, a program that implements this method.

We discuss a method to determine the reliability of source finders within the context of upcoming Hi surveys. Assuming that the noise is symmetric and that real sources have positive total flux, we use sources with negative flux to assign to each positive detection a probability of being real.

The identity of the progenitors of type-Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) is a major puzzle. SN Ia rates are providing new clues, through the delay-time distribution (DTD) of these events. Recent measurements and analyses point to a ~t^–1 DTD, suggesting that at least some SNe Ia result from double white dwarf mergers.

This paper discusses the results of basic source finding tests with the duchamp source finder on different source models. We find duchamp to be a powerful source finder, capable of reliably detecting sources down to low signal-to-noise ratios. duchamp's measurements of basic source parameters, however, are affected by systematic errors.

In this paper, we implement a 2D–1D wavelet decomposition to obtain an efficient way of denoising data cubes from spectroscopic imaging surveys. We conduct different simulations to evaluate the usefulness of the algorithm as part of a source finding pipeline.

The Characterised Noise Hi source finder uses a novel approach to find sources in Hi spectral line datacubes using matched filtering. The concept, initial implementation and testing are presented here.

We discuss optimal source detection with multiwavelength imaging data using a color-neutral approach representing a more general version of the so-called ‘chi-squared’ technique. We discuss its performance with four-band data from the WISE mission and suggest applications to the multifrequency data cubes of the ASKAP surveys.

We have compared duchamp and manual identification methods for identifying masers in the Galactic plane survey HOPS. We find noise in the data is the limiting factor determining efficiency of both methods. duchamp may be useful for very large datasets, but the manual method is quicker for smaller datasets.

The EMU survey with ASKAP aims to utilise an automated source identification and measurement approach that is demonstrably optimal. A key stage in source extraction methods is the background estimation and the choice of a threshold high enough to reject false sources, yet not so high that the catalogues are significantly incomplete. In this analysis, we present results from testing the SExtractor, Selavy (Duchamp), and sfind source extraction tools on simulated radio continuum data.

We have developed a method for simultaneously finding and fitting HI absorption lines in radio data by using multi-nested sampling, a Bayesian Monte Carlo algorithm. The method is tested on a simulated ASKAP data cube, and is shown to be produce reliable detections in low signal-to-noise data.

Large-scale imaging surveys have been instrumental in finding the least luminous galaxies, uncovering inconsistencies between the CDM paradigm and galaxy properties, and reopening the debate about the building block scenario for the Milky Way. Progress in the field is discussed and attention drawn to future initiatives aimed at better understanding the phenomenon of 'ultra-faint dwarf galaxy'.

Detection thresholds in polarized intensity and polarization bias correction are investigated for surveys where the polarization information is obtained from RM synthesis. The false detection rate of sources in polarized intensity is investigated for images with non-Gaussian noise in Stokes Q and U.