Daily Image
01-12-2014
HuDaGa: Hunt for the Darkest Galaxies
| Submitter: | Raffaella Morganti |
| Description: | Tom Oosterloo, one of the senior astronomers at ASTRON and professor at the Kapteyn Institute Groningen, has been awarded a prestigious TOP grant from NWO. The grant will allow Tom to expand his work on dwarf galaxies, for which he is one of the leading experts. The project aims at searching for the smallest and dimmest galaxies in the nearby Universe, and to understand their properties in terms of models for galaxy formation. With this grant, Tom will be able to do this search by exploiting the new and unique capabilities of Apertif, the upgraded Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope. The importance of these extremely small galaxies Tom will search for is that they carry unique information about the young Universe, when the very first stars and galaxies have formed. They also represent buildings blocks for larger galaxies: they play, therefore, a key role in the Universe. These small galaxies are delicate systems. Because of their small mass and, consequently, weak gravity, they are very sensitive to external conditions: small changes in these conditions may result in large changes in the properties of the resulting galaxies. Until a few years ago, theoretical models tended to predict far too many dwarf galaxies. The predictions have now improved, assuming that the young galaxies actually manage to loose their gas. This seems to be the case for the dwarf galaxies located close to the Milky Way. But there are major exceptions! The presence of a number of very gas-rich dwarf galaxies (some discovered and studied by Tom) provides still a headache for astronomers modelling galaxy formation! A proper census of how many of these dwarf galaxies exist outside the Local Universe requires observations with a large field of view, good sensitivity and good spatial resolution. In other words: Apertif!! One lesson learned from Tom's proposal: even a terrible acronym can give you a grant! Congratulations Tom and good luck with the HuDaGa project! |
| Copyright: | Astron |
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