Supervisor: prof. dr hab. Katarzyna Małek

Application deadline: 2025-05-11

Start Date: 2025-10

Location: Pasteura 7, 02-093 Warsaw

Description:

The upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will be the benchmark for the next decade, providing unprecedented depth and quality optical data on millions of galaxies, including low and high surface brightness galaxies, LSBs and HSBs, respectively. It will become a laboratory for all possible tests of LSBs and their morphological and physical properties. Our team is an active member of the LSST collaboration with access to early data releases that will be available at the beginning of the 2026 year. We also have experts in the field of LSBs, galaxy morphology, as well as SED fitting. Therefore, this PhD project offers a unique opportunity for the student to gain expertise in all these aspects.

The proposed subject will focus on the galaxies on the transition face of surface brightness luminosity (around μe,r=23 mag arcsec-2). There is no clear division between LSBs and HSBs, and the limiting value of μe,r=23 mag arcsec-2 varies from publication to publication. Checking the properties of galaxies between 24<μe,r<22 mag arcsec-2 can give an essential insight into the transition of the dust and gas properties in this surface brightness range. At the end of the PhD project, part of the LSST data will be available and ready to use to perform all final checks. However, the preliminary data is already available (for example, NEP, SDSS, or PAU survey – which is a pseudo spectroscopic survey having 40 narrow-band filters spanning the wavelength range from 450nm to 850nm, and with five broad-band filters, namely the u, g, r, i, z set used in the SDSS project).

Funding: NCN OPUS - DUSTiny

For the official announcement CLICK HERE

 

Supervisor: prof. dr hab. Agnieszka Pollo

Co-supervisor: dr Anna Durkalec

Application deadline: 2025-05-11

Start Date: 2025-10

Location: Pasteura 7, 02-093 Warsaw

Description:

We are looking for a PhD student in Astrophysics, with a focus on observational cosmology and galaxy evolution. A successful candidate will join a team of scientists led by prof. Agnieszka Pollo studying low surface brightness galaxies (LSBGs) as a part of the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) collaboration with access to early data releases.

The project offers some flexibility depending on the candidate’s previous experience and scientific interests, but is expected to focus mainly on the topic related to calrifying the role of the LSBGs in the formation and the evolution of galaxies and large scale structure. In particular, the candidate is expected to be involved in the analysis of different types of observations of low surface brightness galaxies. However, the covered topics are broad and will include studies of galaxy clustering and environment, galaxy evolution, and/or identification and classification methods using machine learning.

The successful candidate will join an international team of scientists with expertise in LSBGs, galaxy morphology, SED fitting, machine learning, and galaxy clustering and will have a unique opportunity to acquire proficiency in all these aspects. The PhD candidate will be expected to participate international conferences and workshops, as well as short international research exchanges.

Funding: NCN MAESTRO - Barely Visible

For the official announcement CLICK HERE