We have so far made excellent progress towards achieving the project objectives, and are fully on track to complete them by the end of the project. The scientific and technical progress is supported by our team of DCs, recruited on time during the first year of the project, and the training, supervision, and development practices which we have implemented as described in the DoA. In particular:
Objective 1: Here we have focused on the development of new algorithms to detect faint dwarf galaxies from new state-of-the-art imaging data sets. The relevant work is mostly carried out in WP2 by DC01 and DC02, with aspects related to the detection of faint structures in images in WP3 through the work done by DC02 on max-trees and by DC04 on extending the Locally Aligned Ant Technique (LAAT). LAAT forms part of the 1DREAM toolbox to find manifold structures in data sets, which DC08 in WP4 uses to detect faint features in imaging. Already in the first phase of the project, all involved DC’s have made significant progress, and several of them have advanced enough to prepare manuscripts which will be published during 2026.
Objective 2: This objective covers two aspects, the first related directly to the properties of dwarf galaxies, and the second more generally analysing complex datasets. The first aspect of covered mostly by DC02 in WP2, and that part of the work has already led to a completed manuscript which will be submitted for publication in early 2026, on the evolution of intrinsic 3D shapes of star-forming galaxies. This work can be considered a proof of concept, which will in the second part of the project be applied to very large sets of imaged galaxies from the Euclid and LSST data sets. The second aspect is mostly developed within WP4, where DC09 and DC10 use advanced computational and analysis approaches to extract physical properties of galaxies and their components from multi-dimensional data sets, in our case integral field spectroscopy and radio interferometric imaging of spiral and dwarf galaxies.
Objective 3: This aspect of our overall scientific work focuses on the comparison of our own Milky Way galaxy and its dwarf companions with the similar galaxies studied primarily under Objective 1. Our WP3 is mostly centred on the study of our Milky Way, combining work in computer science (DC04) with the analysis of astronomical data, including those from Gaia (DC05 and DC06), and with numerical simulations of Milky Way analogues (DC07). The DCs have progressed well individually, but they have also worked very closely together. Through secondments and collaborative work, we expect this unique combination of computer science with observational and numerical astrophysics to lead to ground-breaking results in the second half of our project, and to reaching our Objective 3.
Overall, progress is excellent, and we are well on track to reach the main objectives set for the scientific work within the project.
