Search

We present early science results from Deep Investigation of Neutral Gas Origins (DINGO), an HI survey using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). Using ASKAP sub-arrays available during its commissioning phase, DINGO early science data were taken over $\sim$ 60 deg$^{2}$ of the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) 23 h region with 35.5 hr integration time. We make direct detections of six known and one new sources at $z < 0.01$. Using HI spectral stacking, we investigate the HI gas content of galaxies at $0.04 < z< 0.09$ for different galaxy colours. The results show that galaxy morphology based on optical colour is strongly linked to HI gas properties. To examine environmental impacts on the HI gas content of galaxies, three sub-samples are made based on the GAMA group catalogue. The average HI mass of group central galaxies is larger than those of satellite and isolated galaxies, but with a lower HI gas fraction. We derive a variety of HI scaling relations for physical properties of our sample, including stellar mass, stellar mass surface density, $NUV-r$ colour, specific star formation rate, and halo mass. We find that the derived HI scaling relations are comparable to other published results, with consistent trends also observed to $\sim$0.5 dex lower limits in stellar mass and stellar surface density. The cosmic HI densities derived from our data are consistent with other published values at similar redshifts. DINGO early science highlights the power of HI spectral stacking techniques with ASKAP., 27 pages, 25 figures, 10 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS

Full list of authors: Wong, O.; Stevens, A. R. H.; For, B. -Q.; Westmeier, T.; Dixon, M.; Oh, S. -H.; Józsa, G. I. G.; Reynolds, T. N.; Lee-Waddell, K.; Román, J.; Verdes-Montenegro, L.; Courtois, H. M.; Pomarède, D.; Murugeshan, C.; Whiting, M.; Bekki, K.; Bigiel, F.; Bosma, A.; Catinella, B.; Dénes, H.; Elagali, A.; Holwerda, B. W.; Kamphuis, P.; Kilborn, V. A.; Kleiner, D.; Koribalski, B. S.; Lelli, F.; Madrid, J. P.; McQuinn, K. B. W.; Popping, A.; Rhee, J.; Roychowdhury, S.; Scott, T. C.; Sengupta, C.; Spekkens, K.; Staveley-Smith, L.; Wakker, B. P., We present the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) WALLABY pre-pilot observations of two 'dark' H i sources (with H i masses of a few times 108 {M}_\odot and no known stellar counterpart) that reside within 363 kpc of NGC 1395, the most massive early-type galaxy in the Eridanus group of galaxies. We investigate whether these 'dark' H i sources have resulted from past tidal interactions or whether they are an extreme class of low surface brightness galaxies. Our results suggest that both scenarios are possible, and not mutually exclusive. The two 'dark' H i sources are compact, reside in relative isolation, and are more than 159 kpc away from their nearest H i-rich galaxy neighbour. Regardless of origin, the H i sizes and masses of both 'dark' H i sources are consistent with the H i size-mass relationship that is found in nearby low-mass galaxies, supporting the possibility that these H i sources are an extreme class of low surface brightness galaxies. We identified three analogues of candidate primordial 'dark' H i galaxies within the TNG100 cosmological, hydrodynamic simulation. All three model analogues are dark matter dominated, have assembled most of their mass 12-13 Gyr ago, and have not experienced much evolution until cluster infall 1-2 Gyr ago. Our WALLABY pre-pilot science results suggest that the upcoming large-area H i surveys will have a significant impact on our understanding of low surface brightness galaxies and the physical processes that shape them. © 2021 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society., Parts of this research was supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) through project number CE170100013. SHO acknowledges support from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (Ministry of Science and ICT: MSIT) (No. NRF-2020R1A2C1008706). LVM and JR acknowledges financial support from the grants AYA2015-65973-C3-1-R and RTI2018-096228-B-C31 (MINECO/FEDER, UE), as well as from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the ‘Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa’ award to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). JR acknowledges support from the State Research Agency (AEI-MCINN) of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the grant ‘The structure and evolution of galaxies and their central regions’ with reference PID2019-105602GB-I00/10.13039/501100011033. FB acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 - Research and Innovation Framework Programme (grant agreement No.726384/Empire). AB acknowledges support from the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), France. PK is partially supported by the BMBF project 05A17PC2 for D-MeerKAT. This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) through the research grants UIDB/04434/2020 and UIDP/04434/2020. TCS acknowledges support from FCT through national funds in the form of a work contract with the reference DL 57/2016/CP1364/CT0009. The Australian SKA Pathfinder is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility which is managed by CSIRO. Operation of ASKAP is funded by the Australian Government with support from the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. ASKAP uses the resources of the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre. Establishment of ASKAP, the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, and the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre are initiatives of the Australian Government, with support from the Government of Western Australia and the Science and Industry Endowment Fund.

We describe the performance of the Boolardy Engineering Test Array (BETA), the prototype for the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope ASKAP. BETA is the first aperture synthesis radio telescope to use phased array feed technology, giving it the ability to electronically form up to nine dual-polarization beams. We report the methods developed for forming and measuring the beams, and the adaptations that have been made to the traditional calibration and imaging procedures in order to allow BETA to function as a multi-beam aperture synthesis telescope. We describe the commissioning of the instrument and present details of BETA's performance: sensitivity, beam characteristics, polarimetric properties and image quality. We summarise the astronomical science that it has produced and draw lessons from operating BETA that will be relevant to the commissioning and operation of the final ASKAP telescope., Accepted for publication in PASA

We use the 21 cm emission line data from the DINGO-VLA project to study the atomic hydrogen gas H\,{\textsc i} of the Universe at redshifts $z, Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, submitted to MNRAS

We present the first interferometric blind HI survey of the Fornax galaxy cluster, which covers an area of 15 deg2 out to the cluster virial radius. The survey has a spatial and velocity resolution of 67″ × 95″(∼6 × 9 kpc at the Fornax cluster distance of 20 Mpc) and 6.6 km s−1 and a 3σ sensitivity of NHI ∼ 2 × 1019 cm−2 and MHI ∼ 2 × 107 M⊙, respectively. We detect 16 galaxies out of roughly 200 spectroscopically confirmed Fornax cluster members. The detections cover about three orders of magnitude in HI mass, from 8 × 106 to 1.5 × 1010 M⊙. They avoid the central, virialised region of the cluster both on the sky and in projected phase-space, showing that they are recent arrivals and that, in Fornax, HI is lost within a crossing time, ∼2 Gyr. Half of these galaxies exhibit a disturbed HI morphology, including several cases of asymmetries, tails, offsets between HI and optical centres, and a case of a truncated HI disc. This suggests that these recent arrivals have been interacting with other galaxies, the large-scale potential or the intergalactic medium, within or on their way to Fornax. As a whole, our Fornax HI detections are HI-poorer and form stars at a lower rate than non-cluster galaxies in the same M⋆ range. This is particularly evident at M⋆ ≲ 109 M⊙, indicating that low mass galaxies are more strongly affected throughout their infall towards the cluster. The MHI/M⋆ ratio of Fornax galaxies is comparable to that in the Virgo cluster. At fixed M⋆, our HI detections follow the non-cluster relation between MHI and the star formation rate, and we argue that this implies that thus far they have lost their HI on a timescale ≳1−2 Gyr. Deeper inside the cluster HI removal is likely to proceed faster, as confirmed by a population of HI-undetected but H2-detected star-forming galaxies. Overall, based on ALMA data, we find a large scatter in H2-to-HI mass ratio, with several galaxies showing an unusually high ratio that is probably caused by faster HI removal. Finally, we identify an HI-rich subgroup of possible interacting galaxies dominated by NGC 1365, where pre-processing is likely to have taken place.

In this paper we introduce a method for stacking data cubelets extracted from interferometric surveys of galaxies in the redshifted 21-cm H\,\textsc{i} line. Unlike the traditional spectral stacking technique, which stacks one-dimensional spectra extracted from data cubes, we examine a method based on image domain stacks which makes deconvolution possible. To test the validity of this assumption, we mock a sample of 3622 equatorial galaxies extracted from the GAMA survey, recently imaged as part of a DINGO-VLA project. We first examine the accuracy of the method using a noise-free simulation and note that the stacked image and flux estimation are dramatically improved compared to traditional stacking. The extracted H\,\textsc{i} mass from the deconvolved image agrees with the average input mass to within 3\%. However, with traditional spectral stacking, the derived H\,\textsc{i} is incorrect by greater than a factor of 2. For a more realistic case of a stack with finite S/N, we also produced 20 different noise realisations to closely mimic the properties of the DINGO-VLA interferometric survey. We recovered the predicted average H\,\textsc{i} mass to within $\sim$4\%. Compared with traditional spectral stacking, this technique extends the range of science applications where stacking can be used, and is especially useful for characterizing the emission from extended sources with interferometers., 11 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

We present observations of the Eridanus supergroup obtained with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) as part of the pre-pilot survey for the Widefield ASKAP L-band Legacy All-sky Blind surveY (WALLABY). The total number of detected H i sources is 55, of which 12 are background galaxies not associated with the Eridanus supergroup. Two massive H i clouds are identified and large H i debris fields are seen in the NGC 1359 interacting galaxy pair, and the face-on spiral galaxy NGC 1385. We describe the data products from the source finding algorithm and present the basic parameters. The presence of distorted H i morphology in all detected galaxies suggests ongoing tidal interactions within the subgroups. The Eridanus group has a large fraction of H i-deficient galaxies as compared to previously studied galaxy groups. These H i-deficient galaxies are not found at the centre of the group. We find that galaxies in the Eridanus supergroup do not follow the general trend of the atomic gas fraction versus stellar mass scaling relation, which indicates that the scaling relation changes with environmental density. In general, the majority of these galaxies are actively forming stars. © 2021 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society., This research was supported by the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D), through project number CE170100013. PK is partially supported by the BMBF project 05A17PC2 for D-MeerKAT. LV-M acknowledges financial support from the grants AYA2015-65973-C3-1-RandRTI2018-096228-B-C31 (MINECO/FEDER, UE), as well as from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the ‘Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa’ award to the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709). The Australian SKA Pathfinder is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility that is funded by the Australian Government with support from the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy and Industry Endowment Fund. ASKAP uses the resources of the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre with funding provided by the Australian Government under the National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme (project JA3). This research has made use of images of the Legacy Surveys. The Legacy Surveys consist of three individual and complementary projects: the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS; Proposal ID #2014B-0404; PIs: David Schlegel and Arjun Dey), the Beijing–Arizona Sky Survey (BASS; NOAO Prop. ID #2015A-0801; PIs: Zhou Xu and Xiaohui Fan), and the Mayall z-band Legacy Survey (MzLS; Prop. ID #2016A-0453; PI: Arjun Dey). DECaLS, BASS, and MzLS together include data obtained, respectively, at the Blanco telescope, Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, NSF’s NOIRLab; the Bok telescope, Steward Observatory, University of Arizona; and the Mayall telescope, Kitt Peak National Observatory, NOIRLab.

We present neutral hydrogen (HI) and ionized hydrogen (H${\alpha}$) observations of ten galaxies out to a redshift of 0.1. The HI observations are from the first epoch (178 hours) of the COSMOS HI Large Extragalactic Survey (CHILES). Our sample is HI biased and consists of ten late-type galaxies with HI masses that range from $1.8\times10^{7}$ M$_{\odot}$ to $1.1\times10^{10}$ M$_{\odot}$. We find that although the majority of galaxies show irregularities in the morphology and kinematics, they generally follow the scaling relations found in larger samples. We find that the HI and H${\alpha}$ velocities reach the flat part of the rotation curve. We identify the large-scale structure in the nearby CHILES volume using DisPerSE with the spectroscopic catalog from SDSS. We explore the gaseous properties of the galaxies as a function of location in the cosmic web. We also compare the angular momentum vector (spin) of the galaxies to the orientation of the nearest cosmic web filament. Our results show that galaxy spins tend to be aligned with cosmic web filaments and show a hint of a transition mass associated with the spin angle alignment., Comment: 24 pages, 25 figures, 6 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS

Authors: Koribalski, Bärbel S.; Staveley-Smith, L.; Westmeier, T.; Serra, P.; Spekkens, K.; Wong, O. I.; Lee-Waddell, K.; Lagos, C. D. P.; Obreschkow, D.; Ryan-Weber, E. V.; Zwaan, M.; Kilborn, V.; Bekiaris, G.; Bekki, K.; Bigiel, F.; Boselli, A.; Bosma, A.; Catinella, B.; Chauhan, G.; Cluver, M. E. Colless, M.; Courtois, H. M.; Crain, R. A.; de Blok, W. J. G.; Dénes, H.; Duffy, A. R.; Elagali, A.; Fluke, C. J.; For, B. -Q.; Heald, G.; Henning, P. A.; Hess, K. M.; Holwerda, B. W.; Howlett, C.; Jarrett, T.; Jones, D. H.; Jones, M. G.; Józsa, G. I. G.; Jurek, R.; Jütte, E.; Kamphuis, P.; Karachentsev, I.; Kerp, J.; Kleiner, D.; Kraan-Korteweg, R. C.; López-Sánchez, Á. R.; Madrid, J.; Meyer, M.; Mould, J.; Murugeshan, C.; Norris, R. P.; Oh, S. -H.; Oosterloo, T. A.; Popping, A.; Putman, M.; Reynolds, T. N.; Rhee, J.; Robotham, A. S. G.; Ryder, S.; Schröder, A. C.; Shao, Li; Stevens, A. R. H.; Taylor, E. N.; van der Hulst, J. M.; Verdes-Montenegro, L.; Wakker, B. P.; Wang, J.; Whiting, M.; Winkel, B.; Wolf, C., The Widefield ASKAP L-band Legacy All-sky Blind surveY (wallaby) is a next-generation survey of neutral hydrogen (H i) in the Local Universe. It uses the widefield, high-resolution capability of the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), a radio interferometer consisting of 36 × 12 -m dishes equipped with Phased-Array Feeds (PAFs), located in an extremely radio-quiet zone in Western Australia. wallaby aims to survey three-quarters of the sky (− 90 < δ< + 30 ) to a redshift of z≲ 0.26 , and generate spectral line image cubes at ∼30 arcsec resolution and ∼1.6 mJy beam per 4 km s channel sensitivity. ASKAP’s instantaneous field of view at 1.4 GHz, delivered by the PAF’s 36 beams, is about 30 sq deg. At an integrated signal-to-noise ratio of five, wallaby is expected to detect around half a million galaxies with a mean redshift of z∼ 0.05 (∼200 Mpc). The scientific goals of wallaby include: (a) a census of gas-rich galaxies in the vicinity of the Local Group; (b) a study of the H i properties of galaxies, groups and clusters, in particular the influence of the environment on galaxy evolution; and (c) the refinement of cosmological parameters using the spatial and redshift distribution of low-bias gas-rich galaxies. For context we provide an overview of recent and planned large-scale H i surveys. Combined with existing and new multi-wavelength sky surveys, wallaby will enable an exciting new generation of panchromatic studies of the Local Universe. — First results from the wallaby pilot survey are revealed, with initial data products publicly available in the CSIRO ASKAP Science Data Archive (CASDA). © 2020, Springer Nature B.V., The Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF) which is managed by CSIRO. Operation of ASKAP is funded by the Australian Government with support from the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). ASKAP uses the resources of the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre. Establishment of ASKAP, the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO) and the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre are initiatives of the Australian Government, with support from the Government of Western Australia and the Science and Industry Endowment Fund. We acknowledge the Wajarri Yamatji as the traditional owners of the Observatory site. FB and DK acknowledge funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme; grant agreement No 726384 (FB) and No 679627 (DK). MEC is a recipient of an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (project number FT170100273) funded by the Australian Government. RKK acknowledges the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Innovation. RKK and GIGJ acknowledge the South African National Research Foundation for their support. MGJ and LVM acknowledge support from the grants AYA2015-65973-C3-1-R (MINECO/FEDER, UE) and RTI2018-096228-B-C31 (MICIU/FEDER, EU), as well as from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award for the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-20170709). MGJ is supported by a Juan de la Cierva formacion fellowship (FJCI-2016-29685). PK is partially supported by the BMBF project 05A17PC2 for D-MeerKAT. DO is a recipient of an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT190100083) funded by the Australian Government. KS acknowledges support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). JMvdH acknowledges support from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement nr. 291531. Parts of this research were supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D), through project number CE170100013.

We present new HI observations from the Australia Telescope Compact Array and deep optical imaging from OmegaCam on the VLT Survey Telescope of NGC 1427A, an arrow-shaped dwarf irregular galaxy located in the Fornax cluster. The data reveal a star-less HI tail that contains ~10% of the atomic gas of NGC 1427A as well as extended stellar emission that shed new light on the recent history of this galaxy. Rather than being the result of ram pressure induced star-formation, as previously suggested in the literature, the disturbed optical appearance of NGC 1427A has tidal origins. The galaxy itself likely consists of two individual objects in an advanced stage of merging. The HI tail may be made of gas expelled to large radii during the same tidal interaction. It is possible that some of this gas is subject to ram pressure, which would be considered a secondary effect and imply a northwest trajectory of NGC 1427A within the Fornax cluster., 8 pages, 4 figures

We present the results of a deep survey of the nearby Sculptor group and the associated Sculptor filament taken with the Parkes 64-m radio telescope in the 21-cm emission line of neutral hydrogen. We detect 31 HI sources in the Sculptor group/filament, eight of which are new HI detections. We derive a slope of the HI mass function along the Sculptor filament of $\alpha = -1.10^{+0.20}_{-0.11}$, which is significantly flatter than the global mass function and consistent with the flat slopes previously found in other low-density group environments. Some physical process, such as star formation, photoionisation or ram-pressure stripping, must therefore be responsible for removing neutral gas predominantly from low-mass galaxies. All of our HI detections have a confirmed or tentative optical counterpart and are likely associated with luminous rather than 'dark' galaxies. Despite a column density sensitivity of about $4 \times 10^{17}~\mathrm{cm}^{-2}$, we do not find any traces of extragalactic gas or tidal streams, suggesting that the Sculptor filament is, at the current time, a relatively quiescent environment that has not seen any recent major interactions or mergers., Comment: 20 pages, 11 figures, 4 tables; accepted for publication in MNRAS

We present an H i study of the galaxy group LGG 351 using Widefield ASKAP L-band Legacy All-sky Blind Survey (WALLABY) early science data observed with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). LGG 351 resides behind the M 83 group at a velocity range (cz) of ∼3500–4800 km s−1 within the rich Hydra-Centaurus overdensity region. We detect 40 sources with the discovery of a tidally interacting galaxy pair and two new H i sources that are not presented in previous optical catalogues. 23 out of 40 sources have new redshifts derived from the new H i data. This study is the largest WALLABY sub-sample to date and also allows us to further validate the performance of ASKAP and the data reduction pipeline askapsoft. Extended H i emission is seen in six galaxies indicating interaction within the group, although no H i debris is found. We also detect H i in a known ultra-faint dwarf galaxy (dw 1328−29), which demonstrates that it is not a satellite of the M 83 group as previously thought. In conjunction with multiwavelength data, we find that our galaxies follow the atomic gas fraction and baryonic Tully–Fisher scaling relations derived from the GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey. In addition, majority of our galaxies fall within the star formation main sequence indicating inefficiency of gas removal processes in this loose galaxy group.

We present a pilot search for variable and transient sources at 1.4 GHz with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). The search was performed in a 30 deg$^{2}$ area centred on the NGC 7232 galaxy group over 8 epochs and observed with a near-daily cadence. The search yielded nine potential variable sources, rejecting the null hypothesis that the flux densities of these sources do not change with 99.9% confidence. These nine sources displayed flux density variations with modulation indices m $\geq 0.1$ above our flux density limit of 1.5 mJy. They are identified to be compact AGN/quasars or galaxies hosting an AGN, whose variability is consistent with refractive interstellar scintillation. We also detect a highly variable source with modulation index m $ > 0.5$ over a time interval of a decade between the Sydney University Molonglo Sky Survey (SUMSS) and our latest ASKAP observations. We find the source to be consistent with the properties of long-term variability of a quasar. No transients were detected on timescales of days and we place an upper limit $��< 0.01$ deg$^{2}$ with 95% confidence for non-detections on near-daily timescales. The future VAST-Wide survey with 36-ASKAP dishes will probe the transient phase space with a similar cadence to our pilot survey, but better sensitivity, and will detect and monitor rarer brighter events., 13 pages, 10 figures. Accepted in MNRAS

We present a study of 16 HI-detected galaxies found in 178 hours of observations from Epoch 1 of the COSMOS HI Large Extragalactic Survey (CHILES). We focus on two redshift ranges between 0.108, 23 pages, 12 figures, 1 interactive 3D figure, accepted to MNRAS

We present a Wide-field ASKAP L-Band Legacy All-sky Blind surveY (WALLABY) study of the nearby ($v_{\rm sys}$ = 915 km s$^{-1}$) spiral galaxy IC 5201 using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). IC 5201 is a blue, barred spiral galaxy that follows the known scaling relations between stellar mass, SFR, HI mass and diameter. We create a four-beam mosaicked HI image cube, from 175 hours of observations made with a 12-antenna sub-array. The RMS noise level of the cube is 1.7 mJy beam$^{-1}$ per channel, equivalent to a column density of $N_{\rm HI}$ = 1.4 $\times$ 10$^{20}$ cm$^{-2}$ over 25 km s$^{-1}$. We report 9 extragalactic HI detections $-$ 5 new HI detections including the first velocity measurements for 2 galaxies. These sources are IC 5201, 3 dwarf satellite galaxies, 2 galaxies and a tidal feature belonging to the NGC 7232/3 triplet and 2 potential infalling galaxies to the triplet. There is evidence of a previous tidal interaction between IC 5201 and the irregular satellite AM 2220$-$460. A close fly-by is likely responsible for the asymmetric optical morphology of IC 5201 and warping its disc, resulting in the irregular morphology of AM 2220$-$460. We quantify the HI kinematics of IC 5201, presenting its rotation curve as well as showing that the warp starts at 14 kpc along the major axis, increasing as a function of radius with a maximum difference in position angle of 20$^\circ$. There is no evidence of stripped HI, triggered or quenched star formation in the system as measured using DECam optical and $GALEX$ UV photometry., Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures, accepted in MNRAS

This paper reports on the atomic hydrogen gas (HI) observations of the spiral galaxy NGC 1566 using the newly commissioned Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope. We measure an integrated HI flux density of $180.2$ Jy km s$^{-1}$ emanating from this galaxy, which translates to an HI mass of $1.94\times10^{10}$M$_\circ$ at an assumed distance of $21.3$ Mpc. Our observations show that NGC 1566 has an asymmetric and mildly warped HI disc. The HI-to-stellar mass fraction of NGC 1566 is $0.29$, which is high in comparison with galaxies that have the same stellar mass ($10^{10.8}$M$_\circ$). We also derive the rotation curve of this galaxy to a radius of $50$ kpc and fit different mass models to it. The NFW, Burkert and pseudo-isothermal dark matter halo profiles fit the observed rotation curve reasonably well and recover dark matter fractions of $0.62$, $0.58$ and $0.66$, respectively. Down to the column density sensitivity of our observations ($N_{HI} = 3.7\times10^{19}$ cm$^{-2}$), we detect no HI clouds connected to, or in the nearby vicinity of, the HI disc of NGC 1566 nor nearby interacting systems. We conclude that, based on a simple analytic model, ram pressure interactions with the IGM can affect the HI disc of NGC 1566 and is possibly the reason for the asymmetries seen in the HI morphology of NGC 1566., Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS

Feedback from massive stars plays a critical role in the evolution of the Universe by driving powerful outflows from galaxies that enrich the intergalactic medium and regulate star formation. An important source of outflows may be the most numerous galaxies in the Universe: dwarf galaxies. With small gravitational potential wells, these galaxies easily lose their star-forming material in the presence of intense stellar feedback. Here, we show that the nearby dwarf galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), has atomic hydrogen outflows extending at least 2 kiloparsecs (kpc) from the star-forming bar of the galaxy. The outflows are cold, $T, Published in Nature Astronomy, 29 October 2018, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41550-018-0608-8

We present Widefield ASKAP L-band Legacy All-sky Blind Survey (WALLABY) early science results from the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) observations of the NGC 7162 galaxy group. We use archival HIPASS and Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) observations of this group to validate the new ASKAP data and the data reduction pipeline ASKAPsoft. We detect six galaxies in the neutral hydrogen (HI) 21-cm line, expanding the NGC 7162 group membership from four to seven galaxies. Two of the new detections are also the first HI detections of the dwarf galaxies, AM 2159-434 and GALEXASC J220338.65-431128.7, for which we have measured velocities of $cz=2558$ and $cz=2727$ km s$^{-1}$, respectively. We confirm that there is extended HI emission around NGC 7162 possibly due to past interactions in the group as indicated by the $40^{\circ}$ offset between the kinematic and morphological major axes for NGC 7162A, and its HI richness. Taking advantage of the increased resolution (factor of $\sim1.5$) of the ASKAP data over archival ATCA observations, we fit a tilted ring model and use envelope tracing to determine the galaxies' rotation curves. Using these we estimate the dynamical masses and find, as expected, high dark matter fractions of $f_{\mathrm{DM}}\sim0.81-0.95$ for all group members. The ASKAP data are publicly available., 20 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

The cosmic evolution of galaxies' neutral atomic gas content is a major science driver for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), as well as for its South African (MeerKAT) and Australian (ASKAP) precursors. Among the HI large survey programs (LSPs) planned for ASKAP and MeerKAT, the deepest and narrowest tier of the "wedding cake" will be defined by the combined L-band+UHF-band Looking At the Distant Universe with the MeerKAT Array (LADUMA) survey, which will probe HI in emission within a single "cosmic vuvuzela" that extends to z = 1.4, when the universe was only a third of its present age. Through a combination of individual and stacked detections (the latter relying on extensive multi-wavelength studies of the survey's target field), LADUMA will study the redshift evolution of the baryonic Tully--Fisher relation and the cosmic HI density, the variation of the HI mass function with redshift and environment, and the connection between HI content and galaxies' stellar properties (mass, age, etc.). The survey will also build a sample of OH megamaser detections that can be used to trace the cosmic merger history. This proceedings contribution provides a brief introduction to the survey, its scientific aims, and its technical implementation, deferring a more complete discussion for a future article after the implications of a recent review of MeerKAT LSP project plans are fully worked out.

We present Very Long Baseline Interferometry observations of a faint and low-luminosity ($L_{\rm 1.4 GHz} < 10^{27}~\mbox{W Hz}^{-1}$) Gigahertz-Peaked Spectrum (GPS) and Compact Steep Spectrum (CSS) sample. We select eight sources from deep radio observations that have radio spectra characteristic of a GPS or CSS source and an angular size of $\theta \lesssim 2$ arcsec, and detect six of them with the Australian Long Baseline Array. We determine their linear sizes, and model their radio spectra using Synchrotron Self Absorption (SSA) and Free Free Absorption (FFA) models. We derive statistical model ages, based on a fitted scaling relation, and spectral ages, based on the radio spectrum, which are generally consistent with the hypothesis that GPS and CSS sources are young and evolving. We resolve the morphology of one CSS source with a radio luminosity of $10^{25}~\mbox{W Hz}^{-1}$, and find what appear to be two hotspots spanning 1.7 kpc. We find that our sources follow the turnover-linear size relation, and that both homogenous SSA and an inhomogeneous FFA model can account for the spectra with observable turnovers. All but one of the FFA models do not require a spectral break to account for the radio spectrum, while all but one of the alternative SSA and power law models do require a spectral break to account for the radio spectrum. We conclude that our low-luminosity sample is similar to brighter samples in terms of their spectral shape, turnover frequencies, linear sizes, and ages, but cannot test for a difference in morphology., Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

The processes taking place in the outermost reaches of spiral disks (the 'proto-disk') are intimately connected to the build-up of mass and angular momentum in galaxies. The thinness of spiral disks suggests that the activity is mostly quiescent and presumably this region is fed by cool flows coming into the halo from the intergalactic medium. While there is abundant evidence for the presence of a circumgalactic medium (CGM) around disk galaxies as traced by quasar absorption lines, it has been very difficult to connect this material to the outer gas disk. This has been a very difficult transition region to explore because baryon tracers are hard to observe. In particular, HI disks have been argued to truncate at a critical column density N(H) $\approx 3\times 10^{19}$ cm$^{-2}$ at 30 kpc for an L* galaxy where the gas is vulnerable to the external ionizing background. But new deep observations of nearby L* spirals (e.g. Milky Way, NGC 2997) suggest that HI disks may extend much further than recognised to date, up to 60 kpc at N(H) $\approx 10^{18}$ cm$^{-2}$. Motivated by these observations, here we show that a clumpy outer disk of dense clouds or cloudlets is potentially detectable to much larger radii and lower HI column densities than previously discussed. This extended proto-disk component is likely to explain some of the MgII forest seen in quasar spectra as judged from absorption-line column densities and kinematics. We fully anticipate that the armada of new radio facilities and planned HI surveys coming online will detect this extreme outer disk (scree) material. We also propose a variant on the successful 'Dragonfly' technique to go after the very weak H$\alpha$ signals expected in the proto-disk region., Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables; Astrophysical Journal, in press (2017)

In this work, we study argon abundances in the interstellar medium of high-redshift galaxies (23.5 are required to probe the final stages of this process of cosmic reionisation., Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, 7 tables, MNRAS accepted

We report here a study of nitrogen and $\alpha$-capture element (O, S, and Si) abundances in 18 Damped Ly$\alpha$ Absorbers (DLAs) and sub-DLAs drawn from the ESO-UVES Advanced Data Products (EUADP) database. We report 9 new measurements, 5 upper and 4 lower limits of nitrogen that when compiled with available nitrogen measurements from the literature makes a sample of 108 systems. The extended sample presented here confirms the [N/$\alpha$] bimodal behaviour suggested in previous studies. Three-quarter of the systems show $\langle$[N/$\alpha$]$\rangle=-0.85$ ($\pm$0.20 dex) and one-quarter ratios are clustered at $\langle$[N/$\alpha$]$\rangle= -1.41$ ($\pm$0.14 dex). The high [N/$\alpha$] plateau is consistent with the HII regions of dwarf irregular and blue compact dwarf galaxies although extended to lower metallicities and could be interpreted as the result of a primary nitrogen production by intermediate mass stars. The low [N/$\alpha$] values are the lowest ever observed in any astrophysical site. In spite of this fact, even lower values could be measured with the present instrumentation, but we do not find them below [N/$\alpha$] $\approx$ $-1.7$. This suggests the presence of a floor in [N/$\alpha$] abundances, which along with the lockstep increase of N and Si may indicate a primary nitrogen production from fast rotating, massive stars in relatively young or unevolved systems., Comment: 16 pages, 14 figures, 12 tables, MNRAS accepted

We present the results of our investigations into options for the computing platform for the imaging pipeline in the CHILES project, an ultra-deep HI pathfinder for the era of the Square Kilometre Array. CHILES pushes the current computing infrastructure to its limits and understanding how to deliver the images from this project is clarifying the Science Data Processing requirements for the SKA. We have tested three platforms: a moderately sized cluster, a massive High Performance Computing (HPC) system, and the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing platform. We are able to complete the imaging pipeline processing on both the HPC platform and also on the cloud computing platform, which paves the way for meeting big data challenges in the era of SKA in the field of Radio Astronomy.

Our current understanding of galaxy evolution still has many uncertainties associated with the details of accretion, processing, and removal of gas across cosmic time. The next generation of radio telescopes will image the neutral hydrogen (HI) in galaxies over large volumes at high redshifts, which will provide key insights into these processes. We are conducting the COSMOS HI Large Extragalactic Survey (CHILES) with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, which is the first survey to simultaneously observe HI from z=0 to z~0.5. Here, we report the highest redshift HI 21-cm detection in emission to date of the luminous infrared galaxy (LIRG) COSMOS J100054.83+023126.2 at z=0.376 with the first 178 hours of CHILES data. The total HI mass is $(2.9\pm1.0)\times10^{10}~M_\odot$, and the spatial distribution is asymmetric and extends beyond the galaxy. While optically the galaxy looks undisturbed, the HI distribution suggests an interaction with candidate a candidate companion. In addition, we present follow-up Large Millimeter Telescope CO observations that show it is rich in molecular hydrogen, with a range of possible masses of $(1.8-9.9)\times10^{10}~M_\odot$. This is the first study of the HI and CO in emission for a single galaxy beyond z~0.2., 7 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in ApJL

The Circum-Galactic Medium (CGM) can be probed through the analysis of absorbing systems in the line-of-sight to bright background quasars. We present measurements of the metallicity of a new sample of 15 sub-damped Lyman-$\alpha$ absorbers (sub-DLAs, defined as absorbers with 19.0 < log N(H I) < 20.3) with redshift 0.584 < $\rm z_{abs}$ < 3.104 from the ESO Ultra-Violet Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) Advanced Data Products Quasar Sample (EUADP). We combine these results with other measurements from the literature to produce a compilation of metallicity measurements for 92 sub-DLAs as well as a sample of 362 DLAs. We apply a multi-element analysis to quantify the amount of dust in these two classes of systems. We find that either the element depletion patterns in these systems differ from the Galactic depletion patterns or they have a different nucleosynthetic history than our own Galaxy. We propose a new method to derive the velocity width of absorption profiles, using the modeled Voigt profile features. The correlation between the velocity width delta_V90 of the absorption profile and the metallicity is found to be tighter for DLAs than for sub-DLAs. We report hints of a bimodal distribution in the [Fe/H] metallicity of low redshift (z < 1.25) sub-DLAs, which is unseen at higher redshifts. This feature can be interpreted as a signature from the metal-poor, accreting gas and the metal-rich, outflowing gas, both being traced by sub-DLAs at low redshifts., Comment: 64 pages, 31 figures, 27 tables. Submitted to MNRAS

We use observations from the Boolardy Engineering Test Array (BETA) of the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope to search for transient radio sources in the field around the intermittent pulsar PSR J1107-5907. The pulsar is thought to switch between an "off" state in which no emission is detectable, a weak state and a strong state. We ran three independent transient detection pipelines on two-minute snapshot images from a 13 hour BETA observation in order to 1) study the emission from the pulsar, 2) search for other transient emission from elsewhere in the image and 3) to compare the results from the different transient detection pipelines. The pulsar was easily detected as a transient source and, over the course of the observations, it switched into the strong state three times giving a typical timescale between the strong emission states of 3.7 hours. After the first switch it remained in the strong state for almost 40 minutes. The other strong states lasted less than 4 minutes. The second state change was confirmed using observations with the Parkes radio telescope. No other transient events were found and we place constraints on the surface density of such events on these timescales. The high sensitivity Parkes observations enabled us to detect individual bright pulses during the weak state and to study the strong state over a wide observing band. We conclude by showing that future transient surveys with ASKAP will have the potential to probe the intermittent pulsar population., Comment: Accepted by MNRAS

The Boolardy Engineering Test Array is a 6 x 12 m dish interferometer and the prototype of the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), equipped with the first generation of ASKAP's phased array feed (PAF) receivers. These facilitate rapid wide-area imaging via the deployment of simultaneous multiple beams within a 30 square degree field of view. By cycling the array through 12 interleaved pointing positions and using 9 digitally formed beams we effectively mimic a traditional 1 hour x 108 pointing survey, covering 150 square degrees over 711 - 1015 MHz in 12 hours of observing time. Three such observations were executed over the course of a week. We verify the full bandwidth continuum imaging performance and stability of the system via self-consistency checks and comparisons to existing radio data. The combined three epoch image has arcminute resolution and a 1-sigma thermal noise level of 375 micro-Jy per beam, although the effective noise is a factor 3 higher due to residual sidelobe confusion. From this we derive a catalogue of 3,722 discrete radio components, using the 35 percent fractional bandwidth to measure in-band spectral indices for 1,037 of them. A search for transient events reveals one significantly variable source within the survey area. The survey covers approximately two-thirds of the Spitzer South Pole Telescope Deep Field. This pilot project demonstrates the viability and potential of using PAFs to rapidly and accurately survey the sky at radio wavelengths., 20 pages, 13 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

We present for the first time predictions for UV line emission of intergalactic and circumgalactic gas from Adaptive Mesh Resolution (AMR) Large Scale Structure (LSS) simulations at redshifts 0.3

This paper presents and discusses the results of basic source finding tests in three dimensions (using spectroscopic data cubes) with Duchamp, the standard source finder for the Australian SKA Pathfinder. For this purpose, we generated different sets of unresolved and extended HI model sources. These models were then fed into Duchamp, using a range of different parameters and methods provided by the software. The main aim of the tests was to study the performance of Duchamp on sources with different parameters and morphologies and assess the accuracy of Duchamp's source parametrisation. Overall, we find Duchamp to be a powerful source finder capable of reliably detecting sources down to low signal-to-noise ratios and accurately measuring their position and velocity. In the presence of noise in the data, Duchamp's measurements of basic source parameters, such as spectral line width and integrated flux, are affected by systematic errors. These errors are a consequence of the effect of noise on the specific algorithms used by Duchamp for measuring source parameters in combination with the fact that the software only takes into account pixels above a given flux threshold and hence misses part of the flux. In scientific applications of Duchamp these systematic errors would have to be corrected for. Alternatively, Duchamp could be used as a source finder only, and source parametrisation could be done in a second step using more sophisticated parametrisation algorithms., 21 pages, 21 figures, 6 tables, accepted for publication in PASA

We report on the results of observations in the CO(1-0) transition of a complete sample of Southern, intermediate redshift (z = 0.2 - 0.5) Ultra-Luminous Infra-Red Galaxies using the Mopra 22m telescope. The eleven ULIRGs with L_FIR > 10^12.5 L_Sun south of Dec = -12 deg were observed with integration times that varied between 5 and 24 hours. Four marginal detections were obtained for individual targets in the sample. The "stacked" spectrum of the entire sample yields a high significance, 10{\sigma} detection of the CO(1-0) transition at an average redshift of z = 0.38. The tightest correlation of L_FIR and L_CO for published low redshift ULIRG samples (z < 0.2) is obtained after normalisation of both these measures to a fixed dust temperature. With this normalisation the relationship is linear. The distribution of dust-to-molecular hydrogen gas mass displays a systematic increase in dust-to-gas mass with galaxy luminosity for low redshift samples but this ratio declines dramatically for intermediate redshift ULIRGs down to values comparable to that of the Small Magellanic Cloud. The upper envelope to the distribution of ULIRG molecular mass as function of look-back time demonstrates a dramatic rise by almost an order of magnitude from the current epoch out to 5 Gyr. This increase in maximum ULIRG gas mass with look-back time is even more rapid than that of the star formation rate density.

Inadequacies in the knowledge of the primary beam response of current interferometric arrays often form a limitation to the image fidelity. We hope to overcome these limitations by constructing a frequency-resolved, full-polarization empirical model for the primary beam of the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT). Holographic observations, sampling angular scales between about 5 arcmin and 11 degrees, were obtained of a bright compact source (3C147). These permitted measurement of voltage response patterns for seven of the fourteen telescopes in the array and allowed calculation of the mean cross-correlated power beam. Good sampling of the main-lobe, near-in, and far-side-lobes out to a radius of more than 5 degrees was obtained. A robust empirical beam model was detemined in all polarization products and at frequencies between 1322 and 1457 MHz with 1 MHz resolution. Substantial departures from axi-symmetry are apparent in the main-lobe as well as systematic differences between the polarization properties. Surprisingly, many beam properties are modulated at the 5 to 10% level with changing frequency. These include: (1) the main beam area, (2) the side-lobe to main-lobe power ratio, and (3) the effective telescope aperture. These semi-sinusoidsal modulations have a basic period of about 17 MHz, consistent with the natural 'standing wave' period of a 8.75 m focal distance. The deduced frequency modulations of the beam pattern were verified in an independent long duration observation using compact continuum sources at very large off-axis distances. Application of our frequency-resolved beam model should enable higher dynamic range and improved image fidelity for interferometric observations in complex fields. (abridged), Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures, Accepted for publication in A&A, figures compressed to low resolution; high-resolution version available at: http://www.astro.rug.nl/~popping/wsrtbeam.pdf

We present HI imaging of the galaxy group IC 1459 carried out with six antennas of the Australian SKA Pathfinder equipped with phased-array feeds. We detect and resolve HI in eleven galaxies down to a column density of $\sim10^{20}$ cm$^{-2}$ inside a ~6 deg$^2$ field and with a resolution of ~1 arcmin on the sky and ~8 km/s in velocity. We present HI images, velocity fields and integrated spectra of all detections, and highlight the discovery of three HI clouds -- two in the proximity of the galaxy IC 5270 and one close to NGC 7418. Each cloud has an HI mass of $10^9$ M$_\odot$ and accounts for ~15% of the HI associated with its host galaxy. Available images at ultraviolet, optical and infrared wavelengths do not reveal any clear stellar counterpart of any of the clouds, suggesting that they are not gas-rich dwarf neighbours of IC 5270 and NGC 7418. Using Parkes data we find evidence of additional extended, low-column-density HI emission around IC 5270, indicating that the clouds are the tip of the iceberg of a larger system of gas surrounding this galaxy. This result adds to the body of evidence on the presence of intra-group gas within the IC 1459 group. Altogether, the HI found outside galaxies in this group amounts to several times $10^9$ M$_\odot$, at least 10% of the HI contained inside galaxies. This suggests a substantial flow of gas in and out of galaxies during the several billion years of the group's evolution., MNRAS accepted

The interaction of galaxies with their environment, the Intergalactic Medium (IGM), is an important aspect of galaxy formation. One of the most fundamental, but unanswered questions in the evolution of galaxies is how gas circulates in and around galaxies and how it enters the galaxies to support star formation. We have several lines of evidence that the observed evolution of star formation requires gas accretion from the IGM at all times and on all cosmic scales. This gas remains largely unaccounted for and the outstanding questions are where this gas resides and what the physical mechanisms of accretion are. The gas is expected to be embedded in an extended cosmic web made of sheets and filaments. Such large-scale filaments of gas are expected by cosmological numerical simulations, which have made significant progress in recent years. Such simulations do not only model the large scale structure of the cosmic web, but also investigate the neutral gas component. To truly make significant progress in understanding the distribution of neutral hydrogen in the IGM, column densities of NHI=10^18 cm-2 and below have to be probed over large areas on the sky at sub-arcminute resolution. These are the densities of the faintest structures known today around nearby galaxies, though mostly found with single dish telescopes which do not have the resolution to resolve these structures and investigate any kinematics. Existing interferometers lack the collecting power or short baselines to achieve brightness sensitivities typically below NHI=10^19 cm-2. Reaching lower column densities with current facilities is feasible, however requires prohibitively long observing times. The SKA will for the first time break these barriers, enabling interferometric observations an order of magnitude deeper than current interferometers and with an order of magnitude better linear resolution than single-dish telescopes., 21 pages, 6 figures, to be published in: "Advancing Astrophysics with the Square Kilometre Array", Proceedings of Science, PoS(AASKA14)132

We report the discovery of a new 21-cm HI absorption system using commissioning data from the Boolardy Engineering Test Array of the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). Using the 711.5 - 1015.5 MHz band of ASKAP we were able to conduct a blind search for the 21-cm line in a continuous redshift range between $z = 0.4$ and 1.0, which has, until now, remained largely unexplored. The absorption line is detected at $z = 0.44$ towards the GHz-peaked spectrum radio source PKS B1740$-$517 and demonstrates ASKAP's excellent capability for performing a future wide-field survey for HI absorption at these redshifts. Optical spectroscopy and imaging using the Gemini-South telescope indicates that the HI gas is intrinsic to the host galaxy of the radio source. The narrow OIII emission lines show clear double-peaked structure, indicating either large-scale outflow or rotation of the ionized gas. Archival data from the \emph{XMM-Newton} satellite exhibit an absorbed X-ray spectrum that is consistent with a high column density obscuring medium around the active galactic nucleus. The HI absorption profile is complex, with four distinct components ranging in width from 5 to 300 km s$^{-1}$ and fractional depths from 0.2 to 20 per cent. In addition to systemic HI gas, in a circumnuclear disc or ring structure aligned with the radio jet, we find evidence for a possible broad outflow of neutral gas moving at a radial velocity of $v \sim 300$ km s$^{-1}$. We infer that the expanding young radio source ($t_{\rm age} \approx 2500$ yr) is cocooned within a dense medium and may be driving circumnuclear neutral gas in an outflow of $\sim$ 1 $\mathrm{M}_{\odot}$ yr$^{-1}$., Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

We introduce SoFiA, a flexible software application for the detection and parameterization of sources in 3D spectral-line datasets. SoFiA combines for the first time in a single piece of software a set of new source-finding and parameterization algorithms developed on the way to future HI surveys with ASKAP (WALLABY, DINGO) and APERTIF. It is designed to enable the general use of these new algorithms by the community on a broad range of datasets. The key advantages of SoFiA are the ability to: search for line emission on multiple scales to detect 3D sources in a complete and reliable way, taking into account noise level variations and the presence of artefacts in a data cube; estimate the reliability of individual detections; look for signal in arbitrarily large data cubes using a catalogue of 3D coordinates as a prior; provide a wide range of source parameters and output products which facilitate further analysis by the user. We highlight the modularity of SoFiA, which makes it a flexible package allowing users to select and apply only the algorithms useful for their data and science questions. This modularity makes it also possible to easily expand SoFiA in order to include additional methods as they become available. The full SoFiA distribution, including a dedicated graphical user interface, is publicly available for download., MNRAS, accepted. SoFiA is registered at the Astrophysics Source Code Library with ID ascl:1412.001. Download SoFiA at https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA

We discuss the construction of the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) 10h region (G10) using publicly available data in the Cosmic Evolution Survey region (COSMOS) in order to extend the GAMA survey to z~1 in a single ~1 deg^2 field. In order to obtain the maximum number of high precision spectroscopic redshifts we re-reduce all archival zCOSMOS-bright data and use the GAMA automatic cross-correlation redshift fitting code autoz. We use all available redshift information (autoz, zCOSMOS-bright 10k, PRIMUS, VVDS, SDSS and photometric redshifts) to calculate robust best-fit redshifts for all galaxies and visually inspect all 1D and 2D spectra to obtain 16,583 robust redshifts in the full COSMOS region. We then define the G10 region to be the central ~1deg^2 of COSMOS, which has relatively high spectroscopic completeness, and encompasses the CHILES VLA region. We define a combined r < 23.0mag & i < 22.0mag G10 sample (selected to have the highest bijective overlap) with which to perform future analysis, containing 9,861 sources with reliable high precision VLT-VIMOS spectra. All tables, spectra and imaging are available at: http://ict.icrar.org/cutout/G10 ., 16 pages, 15 figures, Accepted to MNRAS

High-resolution 21 cm H I deep fields provide spatially and kinematically resolved images of neutral hydrogen at different redshifts, which are key to understanding galaxy evolution across cosmic time and testing predictions of cosmological simulations. Here we present results from a pilot for an H I deep field done with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). We take advantage of the newly expanded capabilities of the telescope to probe the redshift interval 0

Quasar foreground damped absorbers, associated with HI-rich galaxies allow to estimate the neutral gas mass over cosmic time, which is a possible indicator of gas consumption as star formation proceeds. The DLAs and sub-DLAs are believed to contain a large fraction of neutral gas mass in the Universe. In Paper I of the series, we present the results of a search for DLAs and sub-DLAs in the ESO-UVES Advanced Data Products dataset of 250 quasars. Here we use an unbiased sub-sample of sub-DLAs from this dataset. We build a subset of 122 quasars ranging from 1.5, Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures, 7 tables

The large size of the ASKAP HI surveys DINGO and WALLABY necessitates automated 3D source finding. A performance difference of a few percent corresponds to a significant number of galaxies being detected or undetected. As such, the performance of the automated source finding is of paramount importance to both of these surveys. We have analysed the performance of various source finders to determine which will allow us to meet our survey goals during the DINGO and WALLABY design studies. Here we present a comparison of the performance of five different methods of automated source finding. These source finders are Duchamp, the Gamma-finder, CNHI, a 2D-1D Wavelet Reconstruction and S+C finder, a sigma clipping method. Each source finder was applied on the same three-dimensional data cubes containing (a) point sources with a Gaussian velocity profile and (b) spatially extended model-galaxies with inclinations and rotation profiles. We focus on the completeness and reliability of each algorithm when comparing the performance of the different source finders., 25 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in PASA

We measure the stellar specific angular momentum jstar=Jstar/Mstar in four nearby (z~0.1) disk galaxies that have stellar masses Mstar near the break M* of the galaxy mass function, but look like typical star-forming disks at z~2 in terms of their low stability (Q~1), clumpiness, high ionized gas dispersion (40-50 km/s), high molecular gas fraction (20-30%) and rapid star formation (~20 Msun/yr). Combining high-resolution (Keck-OSIRIS) and large-radius (Gemini-GMOS) spectroscopic maps, only available at low z, we discover that these targets have about three times less stellar angular momentum than typical local spiral galaxies of equal stellar mass and bulge fraction. Theoretical considerations show that this deficiency in angular momentum is the main cause of their low stability, while the high gas fraction plays a complementary role. Interestingly, the low jstar values of our targets are similar to those expected in the M*-population at higher z from the approximate theoretical scaling jstar~(1+z)^(-1/2) at fixed Mstar. This suggests that a change in angular momentum, driven by cosmic expansion, is the main cause for the remarkable difference between clumpy M*-disks at high z (which likely evolve into early-type galaxies) and mass-matched local spirals., 4 Figures (including one interactive 3D figure), 1 Table

The extended environment of galaxies contains a wealth of information about the formation and life cycle of galaxies which are regulated by accretion and feedback processes. Observations of neutral hydrogen are routinely used to image the high brightness disks of galaxies and to study their kinematics. Deeper observations will give more insight into the distribution of diffuse gas in the extended halo of the galaxies and the IGM, where numerical simulations predict a cosmic web of extended structures and gaseous filaments. To observe the extended environment of galaxies, column density sensitivities have to be achieved that probe the regime of Lyman limit systems. HI observations are typically limited to a brightness sensitivity of NHI~10^19 cm-2, but this must be improved upon by ~2 orders of magnitude. In this paper we present the interferometric data of the Westerbork Virgo HI Filament Survey (WVFS) - the total power product of this survey has been published in an earlier paper. By observing at extreme hour angles, a filled aperture is simulated of 300x25 meters in size, that has the typical collecting power and sensitivity of a single dish telescope, but the well defined bandpass characteristics of an interferometer. With the very good surface brightness sensitivity of the data, we hope to make new HI detections of diffuse systems with moderate angular resolution. The survey maps 135 degrees in Right Ascension between 8 and 17 hours and 11 degrees in Declination between -1 and 10 degrees, including the galaxy filament connecting the Local Group with the Virgo Cluster. Only positive declinations could be completely processed and analysed due to projection effects. A typical flux sensitivity of 6 mJy beam-1 over 16 km s-1 is achieved, that corresponds to a brightness sensitivity of NHI~10^18 cm-2. In total, 199 objects have been detected, of which 17 are new HI detections. (Abridged), 19 pages plus appendix, 19 figures, appendix will only appear in online format. Accepted for publication in A&A

Observations of neutral hydrogen can provide a wealth of information about the kinematics of galaxies. To learn more about the large scale structures and accretion processes, the extended environment of galaxies have to be observed. Numerical simulations predict a cosmic web of extended structures and gaseous filaments. To observe the direct vicinity of galaxies, column densities have to be achieved that probe the regime of Lyman limit systems. Typically HI observations are limited to a brightness sensitivity of NHI ~ 10^19 cm-2 but this has to be improved by ~2 orders of magnitude. With the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) we map the galaxy filament connecting the Virgo Cluster with the Local Group. About 1500 square degrees on the sky is surveyed, with Nyquist sampled pointings. By using the WSRT antennas as single dish telescopes instead of the more conventional interferometer we are very sensitive to extended emission. The survey consists of a total of 22,000 pointings and each pointing has been observed for 2 minutes with 14 antennas. We reach a flux sensitivity of 16 mJy beam-1 over 16 km s-1, corresponding to a brightness sensitivity of NHI ~ 3.5 \times 10^16 cm-2 for sources that fill the beam. At a typical distance of 10 Mpc probed by this survey, the beam extent corresponds to about 145 kpc in linear scale. Although the processed data cubes are affected by confusion due to the very large beam size, we can identify most of the galaxies that have been observed in HIPASS. Furthermore we made 20 new candidate detections of neutral hydrogen. Several of the candidate detections can be linked to an optical counterpart. The majority of the features however do not show any signs of stellar emission. Their origin is investigated further with accompanying HI surveys which will be published in follow up papers., Comment: 20 pages plus appendix, 9 figures, accepted for publication in A&A

Numerical simulations predict that galaxies and clusters in the Local Volume are connected by extended diffuse filaments of gas. Although most of this gas is ionised, the peaks of this Cosmic Web should be detectable in H I 21-cm emission at very low column densities. Exploring the circumand inter galactic medium is very important to understand accretion and feedback processes, which determine the evolution of galaxies. We have used a hydrodynamic simulation from which the neutral component is extracted and compared with observations. In a search for low surface brightness H I, three independent H I surveys have been conducted, using the WSRT both in total-power and cross-correlation mode and using re-processed HIPASS data. All three surveys have a very good brightness sensitivity at a different spatial resolution, which allows to distinguish very diffuse sources. We find a number of new H I detections without an obvious optical counterpart. These detections appear very diffuse and extended and are potentially traces of the Cosmic Web. Detecting diffuse neutral hydrogen with existing facilities is very hard and time consuming and the limits of current telescopes are being explored. The next generation of radio telescopes will be able to observe features as presented here more frequently and with more detail.

Observations of intergalactic neutral hydrogen can provide a wealth of information about structure and galaxy formation, potentially tracing accretion and feedback processes on Mpc scales. Below a column density of NHI ~ 10^19 cm-2, the "edge" or typical observational limit for HI emission from galaxies, simulations predict a cosmic web of extended emission and filamentary structures. We study the distribution of neutral hydrogen and its 21cm emission properties in a cosmological hydrodynamic simulation, to gain more insights into the distribution of HI below NHI ~ 10^19 cm-2. Such Lyman Limit systems are expected to trace out the cosmic web, and are relatively unexplored. Beginning with a 32 h^-1 Mpc simulation, we extract the neutral hydrogen component by determining the neutral fraction, including a post-processed correction for self-shielding based on the thermal pressure. We take into account molecular hydrogen, assuming an average density ratio Omega_H2 / Omega_HI = 0.3 at z = 0. The statistical properties of the HI emission are compared with observations, to assess the reliability of the simulation. The simulated HI distribution robustly describes the full column density range between NHI ~ 10^14 and NHI ~ 10^21 cm-2 and agrees very well with available measurements from observations. Furthermore there is good correspondence in the statistics when looking at the two-point correlation function and the HI mass function. The reconstructed maps are used to simulate observations of existing and future telescopes by adding noise and taking account of the sensitivity of the telescopes. The general agreement in statistical properties of HI suggests that neutral hydrogen as modeled in this hydrodynamic simulation is a fair representation of that in the Universe. (abridged), 20 pages, 17 figures, Accepted for publication in A&A, figures compressed to low resolution; high-resolution version available at: http://www.astro.rug.nl/~popping/simulated_HI_sky.pdf

In the last few years the realization has emerged that the universal baryons are almost equally distributed by mass in three components: (1) galactic concentrations, (2) a warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM) and (3) a diffuse intergalactic medium. These three components are predicted by hydrodynamical simulations and are probed by QSO absorption lines. To observe the WHIM in neutral hydrogen, observations are needed which are deeper than log(N$_{HI}$)=18. The WHIM should appear as a Cosmic Web, underlying the galaxies with higher column densities. We have used the WSRT, to simulate a filled aperture by observing at very high hour angles, to reach very high column density sensitivity. To achieve even higher image fidelity, an accurate model of the WSRT primary beam was developed. This will be used in the joint deconvolution of the observations. To get a good overview of the distribution and kinematics of the Cosmic Web, a deep survey of 1500 square degrees of sky was undertaken, containing the galaxy filament extending between the Local Group and the Virgo Cluster. The auto-correlation data has been reduced and has an RMS of $\Delta N_{HI} = 4.2\times10^{16}$ cm$^{-2}$ over 20 kms$^{-1}$. Several sources have been tentatively detected, which were previously unknown, as well as an indication for diffuse intergalactic filaments., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures

One of the key science drivers for the development of the SKA is to observe the neutral hydrogen, HI, in galaxies as a means to probe galaxy evolution across a range of environments over cosmic time. Over the past decade, much progress has been made in theoretical simulations and observations of HI in galaxies. However, recent HI surveys on both single dish radio telescopes and interferometers, while providing detailed information on global HI properties, the dark matter distribution in galaxies, as well as insight into the relationship between star formation and the interstellar medium, have been limited to the local universe. Ongoing and upcoming HI surveys on SKA pathfinder instruments will extend these measurements beyond the local universe to intermediate redshifts with long observing programmes. We present here an overview of the HI science which will be possible with the increased capabilities of the SKA and which will build upon the expected increase in knowledge of HI in and around galaxies obtained with the SKA pathfinder surveys. With the SKA1 the greatest improvement over our current measurements is the capability to image galaxies at reasonable linear resolution and good column density sensitivity to much higher redshifts (0.2 < z < 1.7). So one will not only be able to increase the number of detections to study the evolution of the HI mass function, but also have the sensitivity and resolution to study inflows and outflows to and from galaxies and the kinematics of the gas within and around galaxies as a function of environment and cosmic time out to previously unexplored depths. The increased sensitivity of SKA2 will allow us to image Milky Way-size galaxies out to redshifts of z=1 and will provide the data required for a comprehensive picture of the HI content of galaxies back to z~2 when the cosmic star formation rate density was at its peak.

Angular momentum is one of the most fundamental physical quantities governing galactic evolution. Differences in the colours, morphologies, star formation rates and gas fractions amongst galaxies of equal stellar/baryon mass M are potentially widely explained by variations in their specific stellar/baryon angular momentum j. The enormous potential of angular momentum science is only just being realised, thanks to the emergence of the first simulations of galaxies with converged spins, paralleled by a dramatic increase in kinematic observations. Such observations are still challenged by the fact that most of the stellar/baryon angular momentum resides at large radii. In fact, the radius that maximally contributes to the angular momentum of an exponential disk (3Re-4Re) is twice as large as the radius that maximally contributes to the disk mass; thus converged measurements of angular momentum require either extremely deep IFS data or, alternatively, kinematic measurements of neutral atomic hydrogen (HI), which naturally resides at the large disk radii that dominate the angular momentum. The SKA has a unique opportunity to become the world-leading facility for angular momentum studies due to its ability to measure the resolved and/or global HI kinematics in very large and well-characterised galaxy samples. These measurements will allow, for example, (1) a very robust determination of the two-dimensional distribution of galaxies in the (M,j)-plane, (2) the largest, systematic measurement of the relationship between M, j, and tertiary galaxy properties, and (3) the most accurate measurement of the large-scale distribution and environmental dependence of angular momentum vectors, both in terms of norm and orientation. All these measurements will represent exquisite tools to build a next generation of galaxy evolution models., Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables