Now, a telescope to see distant galaxies!
Melbourne, Oct 21: Astronomers can soon have a much clearer picture of distant galaxies, thanks to a cutting edge technology developed by scientists in Australia.
A team at University of Sydney, led by Brendon Brewer, has developed a computer programme to solve the gravitational lensing or “natural telescope” — one of the major problems of modern astronomy.
“Now, I’ve developed a ‘de-lensing’ programme that still allows the gravitational lens to be used as a natural telescope but without the distortion,” Brewer said.
And, so far the programme has enabled astronomers to sharply focus on the most distant galaxies.
“We’ve recently used the technique to map star-forming regions in an early universe galaxy which also shows clouds of carbon monoxide gas. We’ve also produced some of the sharpest images ever of a lensed galaxy — something that’s a first,” he said.
Astronomers know that for star formation molecular hydrogen is needed, but it is very difficult to see.
First observed by radio telescopes carbon monoxide gas exists under the same conditions as molecular hydrogen and, as it’s easier to detect, can be used as a tracer or proxy to determine the star formation regions.
Using Brewer’s programme, astronomers claim to have located where the molecular hydrogen is and how the different parts are moving in a distant galaxy that also hosts a quasar in its core.
“What Brendon has achieved is significant. This is quite an advance on what is already out there. We were very conscious of designing this programme in the best possible way so as to extract as much information about distant, early universe galaxies as possible,” said co-researcher Geraint Lewis.
Bureau Report
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