galaxy evolution tagged posts

What makes Black Holes Grow and New Stars Form? Machine Learning helps Solve the Mystery

Intergalactic scene
A pair of disc galaxies in the late stages of a merger. Credit: NASA.

It takes more than a galaxy merger to make a black hole grow and new stars form: machine learning shows cold gas is needed too to initiate rapid growth — new research finds.

When they are active, supermassive black holes play a crucial role in the way galaxies evolve. Until now, growth was thought to be triggered by the violent collision of two galaxies followed by their merger, however new research led by the University of Bath suggests galaxy mergers alone are not enough to fuel a black hole — a reservoir of cold gas at the centre the host galaxy is needed too.

The new study, published this week in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society is believed to be the first to use machine learnin...

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New Treasure Trove of Globular Clusters holds Clues about Galaxy Evolution

Centaurus A is an elliptical galaxy located about 13 million light-years from Earth. This color composite image reveals the lobes and jets emanating from the active galaxy’s central black hole.ESO/WFI (Optical); MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A.Weiss et al. (Submillimetre); NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al. (X-ray)

Using observations of Centaurus A, a nearby elliptical galaxy, obtained with the Gaia space telescope and ground-based instruments under the PISCeS survey, a team of astronomers presents an unprecedented number of globular cluster candidates in the outer regions of the galaxy. The findings provide astronomers with an even more detailed picture of galactic architecture and history of collisions and mergers.

A survey completed using a combination of ground and space-based telescopes yielded a ...

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Astronomers Team up to Create New Method to Understand Galaxy Evolution

S12, a post-starburst galaxy located nearly 500 million light-years away, is on the right. It looks like a jellyfish with a host of stars streaming out of the galaxy on one side.

A husband-and-wife team of astronomers established the star formation history of a post-starburst galaxy using its cluster population. A husband-and-wife team of astronomers at The University of Toledo joined forces for the first time in their scientific careers during the pandemic to develop a new method to look back in time and change the way we understand the history of galaxies.

Until now forging parallel but separate careers while juggling home life and carpooling to cross country meets, Dr. Rupali Chandar, professor of astronomy, and Dr. J.D...

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The Secrets of 3000 Galaxies laid Bare

A/Prof Julia Bryant from the University of Sydney inside the SAMI instrument at the top end of the Anglo Australian Telescope
CreditScott Croom/University of Sydney

Shedding light on the evolution of the Universe. The complex mechanics determining how galaxies spin, grow, cluster and die have been revealed following the release of all the data gathered during a massive seven-year Australian-led astronomy research project.

The scientists observed 13 galaxies at a time, building to a total of 3068, using a custom-built instrument called the Sydney-AAO Multi-Object Integral-Field Spectrograph (SAMI), connected to the 4-metre Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) at Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales. The telescope is operated by the Australian National University.

Overseen by ...

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