by Elisabeth Newton | Nov 23, 2011 | Daily Paper Summaries
Lensing occurs when the mass of a foreground object distorts and magnifies the light from a background galaxy or quasar, sometimes even creating multiple images. It probably isn’t a stretch to say that the neatest thing about lensing is that you can typically see two to four images of the same galaxy. But something else that’s cool is that these distant background objects are magnified, making it possible to study them in detail when otherwise they might not be seen at all: in this way, gravitational lenses act as natural cosmic telescopes.
by Allison Strom | Nov 18, 2011 | Daily Paper Summaries
Modica et al. and the GOALS team use multiwavelength observations to investigate star formation and nuclear activity in a nearby luminous infrared galaxy.
by Elisabeth Newton | Nov 9, 2011 | Daily Paper Summaries
The Milky Way’s stellar halo – a roughly spherical distribution of stars surrounding our spiral galaxy – is a valuable tool for probing the early evolution of our galaxy. The stellar halo contains some of the oldest stars in our galaxy, whose properties reflect that of the environment in which they formed. This paper focuses on using cosmological simulations of galaxy formation to match the observed structure and kinematics (how the stars move) of stars in Milky Way’s halo.
by Ryan Foltz | Nov 1, 2011 | Daily Paper Summaries
The authors probe the population of early-type galaxies in the furthest galaxy clusters to date.
by Nathan Sanders | Oct 31, 2011 | Daily Paper Summaries
Some galaxies get all the metals, but the dSphs surrounding the Milky Way seem to have lost
by Nathan Goldbaum | Oct 26, 2011 | Daily Paper Summaries
For today’s astrobite, we will be discussing some of the highest-resolution simulations of isolated galaxies performed to date. Not only are these simulations high resolution, but they also include prescriptions to model several physical effects that previous galaxy evolution simulations have mostly ignored.
