Massive Distant Galaxies are Way Too Small and and Why I Love l'Observatoire du mont Mégantic
Roberto Abraham
University of Toronto
This disjointed talk has two parts. In the first, I will describe a
puzzling open question in galaxy formation that has emerged from
recent observations made by Gemini and HST. In the second part of the
talk I describe how the the OMM is being used to test an instrument
which will be used to look for the first galaxies, which formed at
redshifts z > 7.
Part 1: I will recap the main results from the Gemini Deep Deep Survey
(GDDS), a survey of galaxies in the redshift range 1 < z < 2. In a
series of papers published over the last four years, the GDDS survey
has shown that massive and old galaxies are surprisingly common in the
distant Universe. The oldest and most massive galaxies in the GDDS
resemble nearby elliptical galaxies in most ways, but with a
surprising difference: they are much more compact and dense than
nearby galaxies of similar mass. I'll describe some ideas for how such
objects might have formed, dismiss them all, and conclude that we're
clearly missing something pretty fundamental about how galaxy
formation works.
Part 2: I will describe the plans for the Gemini Genesis Survey, a
next-generation survey which will search for the first galaxies which
formed in the Universe. This survey will be conducted using the
FLAMINGOS-2 Tandem Tunable Filter (F2T2), an engineering prototype for
the James Webb Space Telescope's Tunable Filter Imager. F2T2 is
currently being tested on the OMM 1.6m telescope.
Date: | Thursday, 13 November 2008 |
Time: | 12:15 |
Where: | Université de Montréal |
| Pavillon Roger-Gaudry, Local D-460 |
Contact: | René Doyon |
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