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This internship has many different aspects to it, but all with overarching theme of outreach, in order to spread the word about the amazing Astrophysics work that is being carried out at Lancaster University. A lot of this work includes working with data collected by the Subaru Telescope (Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA) and the Isaac Newton Telescopes (La Palma, Canary Islands). COSMOS, or The Cosmic Evolution Survey, used these telescopes to observe a 2 square degree patch of sky. COSMOS hoped to investigate the formation and evolution of galaxies at high redshifts. Researchers here at Lancaster University have used this data to make many interesting discoveries, and now it’s time for the interns to have a go!
The most exciting part of this internship is the 3D visualisation of this COSMOS field data, which will “fly-through” the images of the galaxies and zoom deeper into the field to see more distant galaxies, including the famous CR7 and potentially even more distant galaxies yet to be discovered. In addition to this, demonstrations of how to use the real COSMOS data to make your own “discovery” will be described, so that even school children can carry out exciting astrophysical discoveries.
The first of our La Palma videos is out now! Watch this if you want to learn about the different La Palma telescopes.
Check out the XGAL-DIY tab at the top to find out lots about how very distant, high redshift galaxies are found, and even find some for yourself!
Here is the first video in the series, discussing the background theory necessary to understand the task.
XGAL: Time travelling through the Universe 