Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE160100191
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$175,000.00
Summary
PRAXIS: beating the infrared night sky with multicore fibre Bragg gratings. PRAXIS: beating the infrared night sky with multicore fibre Bragg gratings:
The PRAXIS project aims to deliver a new era in ground-based infrared observations. The infrared night sky is a hundred times brighter than the optical night sky, which has severely limited the sensitivity at these wavelengths. But 99 per cent of the infrared sky arises from hundreds of extremely bright, narrow emission lines due to hydroxyl in ....PRAXIS: beating the infrared night sky with multicore fibre Bragg gratings. PRAXIS: beating the infrared night sky with multicore fibre Bragg gratings:
The PRAXIS project aims to deliver a new era in ground-based infrared observations. The infrared night sky is a hundred times brighter than the optical night sky, which has severely limited the sensitivity at these wavelengths. But 99 per cent of the infrared sky arises from hundreds of extremely bright, narrow emission lines due to hydroxyl in the Earth's atmosphere. PRAXIS, at the Anglo-Australian Telescope, is designed to cancel these lines using new multicore fibre Bragg gratings developed in Australia. The new fibres would render the night sky very dark and allow Australian astronomers to obtain unique observations. The sky-suppressing fibres would also allow us to develop new instrument concepts for Australia's extremely large telescope.Read moreRead less
Massive black holes in dense star clusters. This project will be investigating the metamorphosis of dense star clusters containing millions of stars into massive black holes at the centres of galaxies. The research will be undertaken using the world's largest optical telescopes and one of the nation's fastest supercomputers.
“Beacons in the Night” unveiling how galaxies light up dark matter. How dark matter influences the formation and evolution of galaxies is to this day an outstanding question in astrophysics. To answer it, world-class facilities and a unique combination of observations and theory are required. This DP team, a world-class team of observers and theorists, will tackle this question by leveraging on two multi-million dollar projects: the MAGPI galaxy survey and the hydrodynamical simulations suite EA ....“Beacons in the Night” unveiling how galaxies light up dark matter. How dark matter influences the formation and evolution of galaxies is to this day an outstanding question in astrophysics. To answer it, world-class facilities and a unique combination of observations and theory are required. This DP team, a world-class team of observers and theorists, will tackle this question by leveraging on two multi-million dollar projects: the MAGPI galaxy survey and the hydrodynamical simulations suite EAGLE-XL. MAGPI will deliver exquisite kinematics for hundreds of galaxies in the middle ages of the Universe, providing a view to the effect of dark matter on galaxies at this critical time, while EAGLE-XL represents the technological frontier in simulations and provides the best interpretative framework for MAGPI.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE150100618
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$354,000.00
Summary
Gas in the Cosmic Web: feeding and feedback of galaxies. This project aims to understand the complete cycle of gas in galaxies: from the process of feeding galaxies, going through star formation, to the process of outflowing gas from galaxies. This requires a full physical description of the inflow of gas from filaments going through the halo until reaching galaxies, the process of star formation in a multi-phase gas medium, and the effect energetic events have on the gas content of galaxies. Th ....Gas in the Cosmic Web: feeding and feedback of galaxies. This project aims to understand the complete cycle of gas in galaxies: from the process of feeding galaxies, going through star formation, to the process of outflowing gas from galaxies. This requires a full physical description of the inflow of gas from filaments going through the halo until reaching galaxies, the process of star formation in a multi-phase gas medium, and the effect energetic events have on the gas content of galaxies. This project in the field of extragalactic astrophysics is designed to complement major observational efforts in Australia, such as the Square Kilometre Array and its Pathfinder, as it will provide simulations with full physical descriptions of the neutral gas in the Universe.Read moreRead less
Beyond appearance: revealing the physics of galaxy transformation. This project aims to reveal the physical origin of the large variety of galaxies in the universe by utilising multi-wavelength observations of nearby galaxies combined with advanced data analysis techniques and cutting-edge numerical simulations. The project expects to generate new knowledge in the area of astrophysics by providing a physically-motivated foundation to the subjective and qualitative taxonomic scheme generally used ....Beyond appearance: revealing the physics of galaxy transformation. This project aims to reveal the physical origin of the large variety of galaxies in the universe by utilising multi-wavelength observations of nearby galaxies combined with advanced data analysis techniques and cutting-edge numerical simulations. The project expects to generate new knowledge in the area of astrophysics by providing a physically-motivated foundation to the subjective and qualitative taxonomic scheme generally used to understand how galaxies, and ultimately stars and planets, formed and evolve. Read moreRead less
Weighing the Giants: Using Galaxy Clusters to understand Dark Energy. This project seeks to reveal the nature of dark energy and thereby explain what is causing expansion of the Universe to accelerate. The project will develop new deep machine learning techniques to weigh galaxy clusters, and apply them to data from the SPT-3G experiment at the South Pole. By comparing theoretical predictions to the observed numbers and masses of galaxy clusters, the project will help determine whether the accel ....Weighing the Giants: Using Galaxy Clusters to understand Dark Energy. This project seeks to reveal the nature of dark energy and thereby explain what is causing expansion of the Universe to accelerate. The project will develop new deep machine learning techniques to weigh galaxy clusters, and apply them to data from the SPT-3G experiment at the South Pole. By comparing theoretical predictions to the observed numbers and masses of galaxy clusters, the project will help determine whether the acceleration is due to dark energy or a breakdown in general relativity. The data science training received by students and researchers on the project will also contribute to a highly skilled STEM workforce for Australia.
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Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE130101252
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$369,024.00
Summary
New high precision, direct measurement of the dark matter distribution. How do you measure what you cannot see? Using a radically new and exquisitely sensitive technique called Direct Shear Mapping, which works by measuring the curvature of space-time around massive objects, this project will make the first ever direct measurements of the dark matter halos surrounding approximately 100 individual galaxies in the local Universe.
The evolution of mass and energy over the past 13 billion years. The universe has slowly transformed atomic material into a range of structures from planets, stars, galaxies, clusters and filaments. In the process the universe has generated energy at almost all wavelengths. This project will build a model to explain the evolution of mass, energy and structure in the universe and will test the model using the latest data.
How typical is our Local Galaxy Group? This project will uncover how unusual the Local Group is by comparing the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy (known as M31) halos to similar mass systems in the local Universe. By using well understood galaxy groups created as part of the Galaxy And Mass Assembly project (GAMA), the study will be able to uncover the mass distribution of galaxies found in different mass groups. It will go further than any previous work by combining these robust groups with faint ....How typical is our Local Galaxy Group? This project will uncover how unusual the Local Group is by comparing the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy (known as M31) halos to similar mass systems in the local Universe. By using well understood galaxy groups created as part of the Galaxy And Mass Assembly project (GAMA), the study will be able to uncover the mass distribution of galaxies found in different mass groups. It will go further than any previous work by combining these robust groups with fainter imaging data. The combination of both datasets will allow the determination of whether the Local Group is typical or unusual. Putting the Local Group into a cosmological context is vital since many future Galactic archaeology surveys assume that it is typical, and can meaningfully inform us about the wider universe.Read moreRead less
The influence of the dark-matter halo on galaxy evolution. This project aims to map the growth of the integrated stellar mass within galaxy structures over all time, and to explore the link between component growth and the mass of the dark matter halo. The project expects to provide a clear empirical record of galaxy growth, and a statement as to whether the changes seen are consistent with the predictions of numerical simulations.