Astronomers find unexpected, dust-obscured star formation in distant galaxy
https://phys.org/news/2017-03-astronomers-unexpected-dust-obscured-star-formation.html
Pushing the limits of the largest single-aperture millimeter telescope in the world, and coupling it with gravitational lensing,
University of Massachusetts Amherst astronomer Alexandra Pope and colleagues report that they have detected a surprising rate of
star formation, four times higher than previously detected, in a dust-obscured galaxy behind a Frontier Fields cluster.
As Pope explains, "This very distant, relatively typical galaxy is known to us, and we knew it was forming stars, but we had no idea
what its real star-formation rate was because there is so much dust surrounding it. Previous observations couldn't reach past that.
Finding out that 75 percent of its star formation was obscured by dust is remarkable and intriguing. These observations clearly show
that we have more to learn."
She adds, "Historians want to know how civilizations were built up, and we astronomers want to know where and how the elements in the
universe were formed and where everything is made of, came from." The study is accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.
The new tool that has made such revelations possible is the 50-meter Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) which has been observing as
a 32-meter telescope located on an extinct volcano in central Mexico in "early science mode" since 2013. Operated jointly by UMass
Amherst and Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE), it offers astonishing new power to peer into
dusty galaxies, the astrophysicist says.
