07-24-2018, 06:25 PM
"Young Galaxy’s Halo Offers Clues to its Growth and Evolution"
A study using a new instrument at the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea has just been published. Astronomers using an integral field unit (IFU) on the Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) studied a young galaxy about 10 billion light-years away to try and understand how gas surrounding the galaxy in a halo effects star formation. Halo gas moving away from the galaxy removes material that can form stars, whereas gas moving into the galaxy provides the birth material and may also trigger star formation.
An IFU is a great piece of technology, something I've used myself in the past. It lets you take spectral images, i.e., you get images of an object at several wavelengths and at the same time get spectra from every bit of that image allowing you to combine imaging and spectroscopy in one shot. In this case, the astronomers concentrated on Lyman Alpha emission from hydrogen surrounding the galaxy. This will go a long way in understanding how early galaxies formed and developed into galaxies such as our own.
http://www.keckobservatory.org/gas_halo/
A study using a new instrument at the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea has just been published. Astronomers using an integral field unit (IFU) on the Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) studied a young galaxy about 10 billion light-years away to try and understand how gas surrounding the galaxy in a halo effects star formation. Halo gas moving away from the galaxy removes material that can form stars, whereas gas moving into the galaxy provides the birth material and may also trigger star formation.
An IFU is a great piece of technology, something I've used myself in the past. It lets you take spectral images, i.e., you get images of an object at several wavelengths and at the same time get spectra from every bit of that image allowing you to combine imaging and spectroscopy in one shot. In this case, the astronomers concentrated on Lyman Alpha emission from hydrogen surrounding the galaxy. This will go a long way in understanding how early galaxies formed and developed into galaxies such as our own.
http://www.keckobservatory.org/gas_halo/