SIfA astronomers are leading major international projects to better understand how galaxies form and evolve. Galaxies are complex ecosystems of stars, gas, dark matter and central super-massive black holes that often play a key role in their evolution. SIfA is using new technology to build 3-dimensional pictures of galaxies with both radio and optical telescopes. The SAMI and Hector Galaxy Surveys use instruments developed at Sydney to measure spatially resolved optical spectroscopy of thousands of galaxies and examine their rich diversity. The ASKAP radio telescope allows us to break new ground in studying neutral hydrogen in distant galaxies.
The solar astrophysics group works in areas related to solar activity, which is dynamic behaviour in the Sun’s outer atmosphere (the Real money casinos Australia solar corona) caused by the evolution of intense local magnetic fields. The most dramatic examples of solar activity are solar flares, which involve the explosive release of magnetic energy on time scales of minutes. Flares and related coronal mass ejections directly affect the Earth because they can produce dangerous local space weather conditions.
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- SIfA astronomers are leading major international projects to better understand how galaxies form and evolve.
- Radio astronomy is undergoing a revolution in the discovery and study of transients.
- Julius Hyginus, a freedman of Augustus Caesar and chief librarian of the Palatine Library in Rome.
- Another prominent aspect of photonics is devices that provide fine control of light and its different properties as astronomy requires the careful detection of photons in order to elaborate and validate complex astrophysical models.
Astroparticle physics is where the world of the microscopic, that of fundamental particles and fields, meets the large-scale universe. Our astronomers and physicists are exploring this complex interface by examining the impact of particle physics on the evolution of the universe, pushing the boundaries of our theoretical understanding of how dark matter interacts with normal atoms. At SIfA, astronomers undertake detailed computer simulations of the growth and evolution of comic structure, following the collapse of gas and dark matter from the smooth universe after the Big Bang to the wealth of galaxies we see around us today. These simulations present a huge data-challenge and supercomputer techniques are needed to unpick the details and reveal the structure.
Galaxies and their evolution
Astralis-USyd are developing new in house technologies in optical fibres, photonics, interferometry and robotic positioning. The recently commissioned Hector instrument for the Anglo-Australian Telescope features our new optical fibre imaging bundles (Hexabundles) and a new robotic positioning system. Ongoing projects include the Heimdallr fringe-tracking and Advanced Photonic Nuller (APN) instruments for ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and collaborations with the SUBARU telescope in Hawaii. Another prominent aspect of photonics is devices that provide fine control of light and its different properties as astronomy requires the careful detection of photons in order to elaborate and validate complex astrophysical models. SAIL also has strong collaborations with other Australian universities and facilities.
The question of how the universe has evolved over cosmic time is one of the most fundamental in astronomy. We know that it has been moulded by gravity, written within Einstein’s general theory of relativity, but the complex physics of gas, stars and magnetic fields means that making predictions from our theories is not straightforward. Hydrogen is the raw material from which new stars can form within galaxies. Linking our radio measurements to optical studies and theoretical simulations will provide new tests of current galaxy evolution models.
