Project Advisor
Patrick Ogle: pogle 'at' stsci.edu
Project duration
1-yr rotation project and potential thesis project
Project motivation
Super spiral galaxies are the most massive actively-star-forming galaxies in the universe, ten times the size and luminosity of the Milky Way. They occupy extremely massive dark matter halos, and display unprecedented rotation speeds of up to 600 km/s. By their mere existence, these extreme galaxies put existing theories of galaxy formation and evolution to the test. In particular, the mass of super spiral galaxies is not limited by the activity of their central supermassive black holes. Instead, they approach the theoretical limit for galaxy mass set by the dynamics of hierarchical collapse in a universe dominated by cold dark matter. Our team is conducting a wide range of multi-wavelength observations to characterize the dark matter halos, gas content, and star forming potential of super spirals.
The student would have the opportunity to participate in ongoing observational projects, including X-ray observations from XMM-Newton, molecular gas observations from IRAM and GBT, deep emission line imaging, and optical spectroscopy with the Southern African Large Telescope to establish rotation curves and dark matter density profiles. A 1-yr project would ideally culminate in the publication of a first-author paper by the student, and could potentially form the basis for a thesis project.
