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22-11-2010
A grant to study the role of neutral hydrogen in the life of early-type galaxies
| Submitter: | Raffaella Morganti |
| Description: | Paolo Serra, one of the postDocs at ASTRON, has recently received a prestigious VENI grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). This type of grant is aimed at promoting innovative and exciting research projects of young talents who have recently taken their PhD, and to allow them to continue to develop their ideas With this grant (of 210,000 euro), Paolo will investigate the evolution of the neutral hydrogen gas properties of early-type galaxies during the past 4 billion years, and how these are linked to the formation and evolution of this type of object. Of the almost one thousand VENI applications (covering all disciplines), only 16% were honoured. Paolo's project is one of the four selected for astronomy. Studies of the structure and stellar content of early-type galaxies strongly suggest that gas must have played an important role in their formation and evolution. Observations of the neutral hydrogen in early-type galaxies in the nearby Universe confirm this idea. However, little is known about the way neutral hydrogen influences the assembly of early-type galaxies at earlier cosmic times. The project proposed by Paolo is the first, direct observational study of this process. This project will exploit new telescopes, in particular the Dutch WSRT/Apertif, which will revolutionise radio astronomy by enabling, for the first time, the observation of neutral hydrogen in large samples of galaxies at large look-back times. |
| Copyright: | ASTRON |
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