Aims. According to coevolutionary scenarios, nuclear activity and star formation play relevant roles in the early stages of galaxy formation. We aim at identifying them in high redshift galaxies by exploiting high-resolution and sensitivity X-ray and millimetre-wavelength data to confirm the presence or absence of star formation and nuclear activity and their relative role in shaping their SEDs and contributing to their energy budget. Methods. In the current paper we present the data, model and analysis in the X-ray and mm bands for two strongly lensed galaxies, SDP.9 (HATLAS J090740.0-004200) and SDP.11 (HATLAS J091043.1-000322) that we selected in the Herschel-ATLAS catalogues as having an excess emission in the mid-IR regime at redshift > ∼ 1.5, suggesting the presence of a nuclear activity in the early stages of galaxy formation. We observed both of them with Chandra ACIS-S in the X-ray regime and analyzed the high resolution mm data available in the ALMA Science Archive for SDP9, and, by combining the information available in mm, optical and X-ray bands we reconstructed the source morphology.Results. Both the targets were detected in the X-ray, strongly indicating the presence of highly obscured nuclear activity. ALMA observations for SDP9 for continuum and CO(6-5) spectral line with high resolution (0.02arcsec corresponding to ∼ 65 pc at galaxy distance) allowed us to estimate the lensed galaxy redshift to a better accuracy than pre-ALMA estimates (1.5753±0.0003) and to model the emission of the optical, millimetric, and X-ray band emission for this galaxy. We demonstrated that the X-ray emission is generated in the nuclear environment and it strongly support the presence of nuclear activity in this object. On the basis of the X-ray data, we attempted an estimate of the BH properties in these galaxies. Conclusions. By taking advantage of the lensing magnification we identified weak nuclear activity associated with high-z galaxies with large star formation rates, useful to extend the investigation of the relationship between star formation and nuclear activity to two intrinsically less luminous, high-z star forming galaxies than was possible so far. Given our results only for two objects, they solely cannot constrain the evolutionary models, but provide us with interesting hints and set an observational path towards addressing the role of star formation and nuclear activity in forming galaxies.

Proxima Centauri, our closest stellar neighbour, is a low-mass M5 dwarf orbiting in a triple system. An Earth-mass planet with an 11 day period has been discovered around this star. The star's mass has been estimated only indirectly using a mass-luminosity relation, meaning that large uncertainties affect our knowledge of its properties. To refine the mass estimate, an independent method has been proposed: gravitational microlensing. By taking advantage of the close passage of Proxima Cen in front of two background stars, it is possible to measure the astrometric shift caused by the microlensing effect due to these close encounters and estimate the gravitational mass of the lens (Proxima Cen). Microlensing events occurred in 2014 and 2016 with impact parameters, the closest approach of Proxima Cen to the background star, of 1. 6 ± 0. 1 and 0. 5 ± 0. 1, respectively. Accurate measurements of the positions of the background stars during the last two years have been obtained with HST/WFC3, and with VLT/SPHERE from the ground. The SPHERE campaign started on March 2015, and continued for more than two years, covering 9 epochs. The parameters of Proxima Centauri's motion on the sky, along with the pixel scale, true North, and centering of the instrument detector were readjusted for each epoch using the background stars visible in the IRDIS field of view. The experiment has been successful and the astrometric shift caused by the microlensing effect has been measured for the second event in 2016. We used this measurement to derive a mass of 0.150 +0.062 −0.051 (an error of ∼ 40%) M for Proxima Centauri acting as a lens. This is the first and the only currently possible measurement of the gravitational mass of Proxima Centauri.

The star formation rate density (SFRD) history of the universe is well constrained up to redshift z ∼ 2. At earlier cosmic epochs, the picture has been largely inferred from UV-selected galaxies (e.g., Lyman-break galaxies; LBGs). However, the inferred star formation rates of LBGs strongly depend on the assumed dust extinction correction, which is not well constrained at high z, while observations in the radio domain are not affected by this issue. In this work we measure the SFRD from a 1.4 GHz selected sample of ∼600 galaxies in the GOODS-N field up to redshift ∼3.5. We take into account the contribution of active galactic nuclei from the infrared-radio correlation. We measure the radio luminosity function, fitted with a modified Schechter function, and derive the SFRD. The cosmic SFRD shows an increase up to z ∼ 2 and then an almost flat plateau up to z ∼ 3.5. Our SFRD is in agreement with those from other far-IR/radio surveys and a factor 2 higher than those from LBG samples. We also estimate that galaxies lacking a counterpart in the HST/WFC3 H-band (H-dark) make up ∼25% of the ϕ-integrated SFRD relative to the full sample at z ∼ 3.2, and up to 58% relative to LBG samples.

Strong gravitational lensing, which can make a background source galaxy appears multiple times due to its light rays being deflected by the mass of one or more foreground lens galaxies, provides astronomers with a powerful tool to study dark matter, cosmology and the most distant Universe. PyAutoLens is an open-source Python 3.6+ package for strong gravitational lensing, with core features including fully automated strong lens modeling of galaxies and galaxy clusters, support for direct imaging and interferometer datasets and comprehensive tools for simulating samples of strong lenses. The API allows users to perform ray-tracing by using analytic light and mass profiles to build strong lens systems. Accompanying PyAutoLens is the autolens workspace, which includes example scripts, lens datasets and the HowToLens lectures in Jupyter notebook format which introduce non-experts to strong lensing using PyAutoLens. Readers can try PyAutoLens right now by going to the introduction Jupyter notebook on Binder or checkout the readthedocs for a complete overview of PyAutoLens's features.

We analyse the spatially resolved relation between stellar mass (M ) and star formation rate (SFR) in disk galaxies (i.e. the Main Sequence, MS). The studied sample includes eight nearby face-on grand-design spirals, e.g. the descendant of high-redshift, rotationally-supported star-forming galaxies. We exploit photometric information over 23 bands, from the UV to the far-IR, from the publicly available DustPedia database to build spatially resolved maps of stellar mass and star formation rates on sub-galactic scales of 0.5-1.5 kpc, by performing a spectral energy distribution fitting procedure that accounts for both the observed and the obscured star formation processes, over a wide range of internal galaxy environments (bulges, spiral arms, outskirts). With more than 30 thousands physical cells, we have derived a definition of the local spatially resolved MS per unit area for disks, log(Σ SF R )=0.82log(Σ * )-8.69. This is consistent with the bulk of recent results based on optical IFU, using the Hα line emission as a SFR tracer. Our work extends the analysis at lower sensitivities in both M and SFR surface densities, up to a factor ∼ 10. The self consistency of the MS relation over different spatial scales, from sub-galactic to galactic, as well as with a rescaled correlation obtained for high redshift galaxies, clearly proves its universality.

We present the detection of CO(5-4) with S/N> 7 − 13 and a lower CO transition with S/N> 3 (CO(4-3) for 4 galaxies, and CO(3-2) for one) with ALMA in band 3 and 4 in five main sequence star-forming galaxies with stellar masses 3 − 6 × 10 10 M/M at 3 < z < 3.5. We find a good correlation between the total far-infrared luminosity L F IR and the luminosity of the CO(5-4) transition L CO(5−4) , where L CO(5−4) increases with SFR, indicating that CO(5-4) is a good tracer of the obscured SFR in these galaxies. The two galaxies that lie closer to the star-forming main sequence have CO SLED slopes that are comparable to other star-forming populations, such as local SMGs and BzK star-forming galaxies; the three objects with higher specific star formation rates (sSFR) have far steeper CO SLEDs, which possibly indicates a more concentrated episode of star formation. By exploiting the CO SLED slopes to extrapolate the luminosity of the CO(1-0) transition, and using a classical conversion factor for main sequence galaxies of α CO = 3.8 M (K km s −1 pc −2 ) −1 , we find that these galaxies are very gas rich, with molecular gas fractions between 60 and 80%, and quite long depletion times, between 0.2 and 1 Gyr. Finally, we obtain dynamical masses that are comparable with the sum of stellar and gas mass (at least for four out of five galaxies), allowing us to put a first constraint on the α CO parameter for main sequence galaxies at an unprecedented redshift.

Context. Galaxy mergers are thought to be one of the main mechanisms of the mass assembly of galaxies in the Universe, but there is still little direct observational evidence of how frequent they are at z ≳ 4. Recently, many works have suggested a possible increase in the fraction of major mergers in the early Universe, reviving the debate on which processes (e.g., cold accretion, star formation, mergers) most contribute to the mass build-up of galaxies through cosmic time. Aims. To estimate the importance of major mergers in this context, we make use of the new data collected by the ALMA Large Program to INvestigate [CII] at Early times (ALPINE) survey, which attempted to observe the [CII] 158 μm emission line from a sample of 75 main-sequence star-forming galaxies at 4.4 <  z <  5.9. Methods. We used, for the first time, the morpho-kinematic information provided by the [CII] emission, along with archival multiwavelength data to obtain the fraction of major mergers (fMM) at z ∼ 5. By combining the results from ALPINE with those at lower redshifts from the literature, we also studied the evolution of the merger fraction through cosmic time. We then used different redshift-evolving merger timescales (TMM) to convert this fraction into the merger rate per galaxy (RMM) and in the volume-averaged merger rate (ΓMM). Results. We find a merger fraction of fMM ∼ 0.44 (0.34) at z ∼ 4.5 (5.5) from ALPINE. By combining our results with those at lower redshifts, we computed the cosmic evolution of the merger fraction which is described by a rapid increase from the local Universe to higher redshifts, a peak at z ∼ 3, and a slow decrease toward earlier epochs. Depending on the timescale prescription used, this fraction translates into a merger rate ranging between ∼0.1 and ∼4.0 Gyr−1 at z ∼ 5, which in turn corresponds to an average number of major mergers per galaxy between 1 and 8 in ∼12.5 yr (from z = 6 to the local Universe). When convolved with the galaxy number density at different epochs, the merger rate density becomes approximately constant over time at 1 <  z <  4, including values from 10−4 to 10−3 Gyr−1 Mpc−3, depending on the assumed TMM. We finally compare the specific star formation and star-formation rate density with the analogous quantities from major mergers, finding a good agreement at z >  4 if we assume a merger timescale that quickly decreases with increasing redshift. Conclusions. Our new constraints on the merger fraction from the ALPINE survey at z ∼ 5 reveal the presence of a significant merging activity in the early Universe. Whether this population of mergers can provide a relevant contribution to the galaxy mass assembly at these redshifts and through the cosmic epochs is strongly dependent on the assumption of the merger timescale. However, our results show that an evolving TMM ∝ (1 + z)−2 agrees well with state-of-the-art cosmological simulations, suggesting a considerable role of mergers in the build-up of galaxies at early times.

We perform lens modelling and source reconstruction of Submillimeter Array (SMA) data for a sample of 12 strongly lensed galaxies selected at 500µm in the Herschel Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey (H-ATLAS). A previous analysis of the same dataset used a single Sérsic profile to model the light distribution of each background galaxy. Here we model the source brightness distribution with an adaptive pixel scale scheme, extended to work in the Fourier visibility space of interferometry. We also present new SMA observations for seven other candidate lensed galaxies from the H-ATLAS sample. Our derived lens model parameters are in general consistent with previous findings. However, our estimated magnification factors, ranging from 3 to 10, are lower. The discrepancies are observed in particular where the reconstructed source hints at the presence of multiple knots of emission. We define an effective radius of the reconstructed sources based on the area in the source plane where emission is detected above 5σ. We also fit the reconstructed source surface brightness with an elliptical Gaussian model. We derive a median value r eff ∼ 1.77 kpc and a median Gaussian full width at half maximum ∼ 1.47 kpc. After correction for magnification, our sources have intrinsic star formation rates SFR ∼ 900 − 3500 M yr −1 , resulting in a median star formation rate surface density Σ SFR ∼ 132 M yr −1 kpc −2 (or ∼ 218 M yr −1 kpc −2 for the Gaussian fit). This is consistent with what observed for other star forming galaxies at similar redshifts, and is significantly below the Eddington limit for a radiation pressure regulated starburst.