McIntosh plays key role on teams investigating lives of galaxies

Astronomer Daniel McIntosh is working with two international teams that are shedding new light on the chaotic and often violent lives of galaxies. He will join both teams as they present their results at the 211th meeting of the American Astronomical Society being held Jan. 7-11 in Austin, Texas.

McIntosh is part of a group led by Sharda Joghee of the University of Texas at Austin that showed galaxy collisions and star formation slowing down as the universe reaches middle age. He is also a key member of a second team led by researchers from the University of Nottingham and the University of British Columbia that are investigating how galaxies living in crowded neighborhoods have their lives disturbed by dark matter.

The research teams are responsible for two of the largest-area surveys performed by the Hubble Telescope to date, each capturing snapshots of thousands of galaxies in unprecedented detail. Results from the Hubble surveys allowed the researchers to see farther into the universe (and farther back in time) as well as bring evidence of galaxy formation, such as long tails, warps and ripples, into sharp focus.

“The exquisite resolution of the Hubble data allowed us to identify strongly interacting and merging galaxies at much earlier cosmological times than conventional ground-based telescopes,” said McIntosh, a senior postdoctoral researcher in the Astronomy Department who was instrumental in identifying and cataloging the galaxies used by both teams found in the Hubble images.

January 7, 2008.

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