galaxies – A Darker View

W. M. Keck Observatory press release…

A group of astronomers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the U.S. Mainland, Canada, and Europe recently used the twin telescopes of the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, to conduct a census of the brightest, but until now unseen, galaxies in the distant Universe, bringing astronomers one step closer to understanding how galaxies form and evolve.

Looking Back — A 3D projection of almost 300 galaxies in the census in the same part of the sky.

These galaxies glow so brightly at infrared wavelengths that they would outshine our own Milky Way by hundreds, maybe thousands, of times. They are forming stars so quickly that between 100 and 500 new stars are born in each galaxy every year, and have been coined “starbursts” by astronomers.

While it’s not clear what gives these galaxies their intense luminosity, it could be the result of a collision between two spiral-type galaxies, similar to the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies. Or they could be in a particularly gas-rich region of space, where galaxies form stars quickly due to constant bombardment from gas and dust.

Continue reading “Astronomers Go Infrared to Map Brightest Galaxies in Universe”

W. M. Keck Observatory press release…

When astronomers add up all the gas and dust contained in ordinary galaxies like our own Milky Way, they stumble on a puzzle: There is not nearly enough matter for stars to be born at the rates that are observed. Part of the solution might be a recycling of matter on gigantic scales – veritable galactic fountains of matter flowing out and then back into galaxies over multi-billion-year timescales.

Now, a team of astronomers led by Kate Rubin of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany has used the W. M. Keck Observatory to find evidence of just such fountains in distant spiral galaxies.

In the Milky Way, it’s estimated that every year about one solar mass (an amount of matter equal to that of our Sun) worth of dust and gas is turned into stars. Yet a survey of the available raw materials shows that our galaxy could not keep up this rate of star formation for longer than a couple of billion years. Star ages and comparisons with other spiral galaxies show that one solar mass per year is a typical star formation rate. So the puzzle appears to be universal.

Continue reading “Recycling Galaxies Caught in the Act”