Seminar: I work on stellar masses so you don’t have to...

Dr Edward Taylor 

USyd / UMelb

Download the pdf poster.

In this absurdly ambitious talk, I will make a series of outrageous claims. In a photometric redshift survey, stellar mass is better constrained than absolute magnitude. Bigger samples and better data will do nothing to reduce the uncertainties in virtually all high-redshift evolutionary results. That said, by probing the 0 ‹ z ‹ 0.3 regime, GAMA has the potential to reduce or even eliminate the single largest source of uncertainty in evolutionary studies from all pencil beam surveys; past, present, and future.

When estimating stellar masses, it makes good sense to ignore NIR data. This is because the restframe NIR encodes virtually no information directly pertaining to M*/L. For a stellar mass estimate based on optical data alone, the well known dust-metallicity-age degeneracies actually work to make the mass estimates more, not less, robust. In fact, it seems highly unlikely that you can do any better than using a single opticalcolour to estimate stellar masses. My main motivation for making these claims is to make radio astronomers aware of the intricacies of the black art of stellar mass estimation in advance of ASKAP survey science.

Given the technical focus of the talk, I will do everything in my power to hold your attention without compromising the material. In this way, I will hope to distract the audience from the fact that my presentation will be virtually science free.