Looks aren’t everything - the coevolution of galaxy structure & environment. Galaxies have immense diversity in their visual appearance. Interestingly, their looks are strongly correlated with where t

Description

Looks aren’t everything - the coevolution of galaxy structure & environment. Galaxies have immense diversity in their visual appearance. Interestingly, their looks are strongly correlated with where they live - galaxies in over-dense environments appear very different to those in isolated regions. This suggests that a galaxy's local environment impacts its appearance. Hidden in these looks is a wealth of information about how the galaxy formed and evolved - with different visual structures having different evolutionary paths. Extracting this information is problematic and requires high resolution (space-telescope) imaging, sophisticated software and robust environmental measurements. In this project we will use state-of-the-art data and software to determine how galaxy environments shape their visual appearance.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 5101 - Astronomical Sciences. Lead: A/Prof Luke Davies