LRGs vs. ELGs

Hot off the press... (and therefore still very prelim)

With the help of Angulo et al. (2007) I think we *finally* have a delta_w estimation for (what would have been/still could be) an LRG ATLAS BAO Survey versus a WiggleZ Emission Line Galaxy (ELG) Survey.
Basically, given the parameters which should appear in due course in Ross et al. (2007a), (as well as looking at Parkinson et al. (2007) and the method of Angulo 07), I/we think the LRG delta _w would be 8.4% vs. an ELG value of 11.5% (essentially for equal telescope time).

However, this is all fairly academic since only one project at the mo has got the green-light ...

Why I'm proud to be Scottish...

The only link to NPRs Research this has, is both are primarily connected to statistics and alcohol. Ahem.

All good things...

After 7 plus years, my time in Durham is drawing to a close, especially as pasteurs new beckon...

However, to this end, there will be many send offs. This starts tonight with "The End of an Era" as Dr. Scales, Dr. Butterley and myself have a couple of beers with old friends.

The week of "celebration" looks set to continue on Friday with a potential school outing to Wet n Wild.
The boys in Room 311 are so looking forward to this event, they've even set up a wiki. Superb!

Meanwhile, the AAOmega Pilot/Clustering paper is now looking v. nice with good comments from Cannon (AAO), Wake (Durham) and of course El Shankso (Durham).

w(theta)'s

Well, it's back to that old favourite of the Supervisor - w(theta)'s!! Now, normally, I wouldn't be too bothered about the whole thing, but I have to keep reminding myself that Tom was publishing papers on w(theta) (Shanks, 1980) in the month I was getting born!! so, the current issue is why does my AAOmega LRG w(theta) of the riz-selected galaxies have a lower amplitude than the equivalent 2SLAQ sample. Possible explanations include not quite getting ride of the unclustered stars in the projected function, or a more remote possibility, some real evolution, as can be seen by this recent paper.

late time ISW

Excitement in the office late on this afternoon. Shanks (Durham) got very motivated about the connection between the ISW effect, SZ effect and (the lack of) lambda. Some choice Scottish words were muttered but the bottom line is Sawangwit and Bielby will (possibly) have a trio of really nice papers by then end of the month.

If nothing else, will make Enrique Gaztanaga's seminar on Wednesday definitely worth attending.

mulling things over...

Dear Loyal readers,

All too often I have to apologise for lack of recent posts. This time is no exception.

The little bit of research news I do have is that with my recent work on Spitzer data, Alexander (Durham) and I have a very good chat about the connections between SMGs (a la Swinbank, Coppin and Geach - aka Athos, Porthos, and Aramis) and their connection to local ULIRGs - and consequently their BH fueling and growth rates. The link to quasars and BH growth phases is still v. much up for grabs and I would love to give you the punchline here but this is Dave's work and is due out shortly.

Also giving a shout out to a fellow quasi-collaborator, Angulo (2007) is shaping up v. nicely. Basically, this work takes the AMAZING Millenium Simulation, sprinkles in a little bit of the ol' semi-analytic model and basically tells you what error you're likely to get on a BAO survey, given certain things i.e. halo mass, (linear) object bias, the z-space distortions and so on. Again, watch this space!