Browsing by Author "Van der Heyden, Kurt"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Formation of young massive star clusters: a high-resolution multi-wavelength study of intensely star-formation galaxies
    (2015) Randriamanakoto, Rojovola Zara-Nomena; Väisänen, Petri; Van der Heyden, Kurt
    Super star clusters (SSCs) represent the youngest and most massive form of known gravitationally bound star clusters in the Universe. They are born abundantly in environments that trigger strong and violent star formation (SF) such as in galaxy mergers and interacting systems. SSCs are thus used as fundamental tools to understand the context of massive SF and galaxy evolution in general. This thesis investigates properties of these young, massive and dense star clusters in a sample of 42 nearby starbursts and luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) ...
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Heuristic optimisation and parameter estimation methods for modern cosmological surveys
    (2006) Elson, E C; Bassett, Bruce; Van der Heyden, Kurt; Vilakazi, Zeblon
    Includes bibliographical references.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Lenticular galaxies - the one in the middle
    (2016) Malinga, Simon; Barway, Sudhanshu; Sheth, Kartik; Van der Heyden, Kurt
    The lenticular (S0) galaxies introduced by Hubble (1936) as a morphological transition class between elliptical and early-type spiral galaxies, which have the most massive bulges among disk galaxies, may have formed in several different ways as suggested by theoretical and numerical simulation studies. A sample of lenticular galaxies from the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G) using the Spitzer Space Telescope along with Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) was used for this project to study molecular gas properties as well morphologies associated with dust where molecular gas is present. A variety of image processing techniques are employed to study the details of galaxies to uncover the presence of molecular gas in S0 galaxies. We obtained colour maps using 3:6 and 4:5 micron images and SDSS r and i band images to find these galaxies have sufficient amount of dust and molecular gas along with variety of dust morphologies. In this thesis, we have shown, for the first time that the mass of molecular gas obtained by Carbon Monoxide (CO) is correlated to colour excess measured from (r - 3:6) and (i - 4:5) colour maps. It would be important to study this relation using advance facilities such as ALMA and MeerKAT to explore properties of molecular gas in nearby early-type galaxies in detail.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Morphological classification and dynamics of X-ray galaxy clusters
    (2014) Parekh, Viral; Van der Heyden, Kurt
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Open Access
    SKA and Meerkat: major milestones in radio astronomy
    (2012) Van der Heyden, Kurt
    Presented by: Dr Kurt van der Heyden, Department of Astronomy, University of Cape Town. This audio lecture will be of interest to astronomy enthusiasts and the general public who wish to learn more about radio astronomy and the topical issue of SKA and Meerkat.