{"paper":{"title":"Late-stage galaxy mergers in COSMOS to z~1","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"astro-ph.GA","authors_text":"A. M. Koekemoer, C. N. Lackner, C. T. Liu, D. Sanders, F. Civano, J. D. Silverman, J. S. Kartaltepe, K. Jahnke, K. Sheth, M. Salvato, N. Lee, N. Scoville, O. Ilbert, O. Le Fevre, P. Capak, P. Kampczyk, S. Toft","submitted_at":"2014-06-09T20:00:10Z","abstract_excerpt":"The role of major mergers in galaxy and black hole formation is not well constrained. To help address this, we develop an automated method to identify late-stage galaxy mergers before coalescence of the galactic cores. The resulting sample of mergers is distinct from those obtained using pair-finding and morphological indicators. Our method relies on median-filtering of high-resolution images in order to distinguish two concentrated galaxy nuclei at small separations. Using mock images, we derive statistical contamination and incompleteness corrections for the fraction of late-stage mergers. W"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"1406.2327","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}