{"id":128357,"date":"2019-10-30T11:27:48","date_gmt":"2019-10-30T15:27:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=128357"},"modified":"2019-11-01T12:14:50","modified_gmt":"2019-11-01T16:14:50","slug":"ifor-the-first-time-astronomers-watch-a-galaxy-eject-gas-into-spac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2019\/10\/30\/ifor-the-first-time-astronomers-watch-a-galaxy-eject-gas-into-spac\/","title":{"rendered":"For the first time, astronomers watch a galaxy eject gas into space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Astronomers know that most gas in the universe exists outside galaxies, largely in a region called the circumgalactic medium. For years, researchers have created models to replicate how this medium formed and evolved, but direct evidence to support the models has been difficult to come by.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_103865\" style=\"width: 224px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2016\/10\/160818_Aleksandar_Diamond-Stanic_005-copy.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-103865\" class=\"wp-image-103865 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2016\/10\/160818_Aleksandar_Diamond-Stanic_005-copy-214x300.jpg\" alt=\"Portrait of Assistant Professor of Physics Aleksandar Diamond-Stanic \" width=\"214\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2016\/10\/160818_Aleksandar_Diamond-Stanic_005-copy-214x300.jpg 214w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2016\/10\/160818_Aleksandar_Diamond-Stanic_005-copy-643x900.jpg 643w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2016\/10\/160818_Aleksandar_Diamond-Stanic_005-copy-143x200.jpg 143w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2016\/10\/160818_Aleksandar_Diamond-Stanic_005-copy.jpg 771w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 214px) 100vw, 214px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-103865\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Assistant Professor of Physics Aleksandar Diamond-Stanic. (Josh Kuckens\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Now such evidence is in hand. A group of astronomers, including Assistant Professor of Physics Aleksandar Diamond-Stanic of Bates, recently discovered massive plumes of gas, hundreds of thousands of light-years across, emanating from the distant galaxy Makani.<\/p>\n<p>And according to a new article in <em>Nature <\/em>co-authored by Diamond-Stanic, this discovery provides crucial new confirmation of galactic winds\u2019 role in creating the circumgalactic medium.<\/p>\n<p>Much to the scientists\u2019 delight, the images of Makani and nearby gas flows match existing models.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><span style=\"color: #009779;\"><em>This animation shows the galaxy Makani enveloped in its gas cloud. It was created using data from the Keck Cosmic Web Imager by David Tree &amp; Peter Richardson, Games and Visual Effects Research Lab, University of Hertfordshire.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/369269470\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re seeing an image that we\u2019ve only seen in cartoon [models] previously,\u201d Diamond-Stanic says. \u201cIt shows that very large-scale galactic winds \u2014 or galactic outflows \u2014 are driving gas and filling up the circumgalactic medium.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The lead authors of the study on Makani are David S.N. Rupke of Rhodes College and Alison Coil of the University of California San Diego, joined by collaborators from around the world.<\/p>\n<p>Diamond-Stanic helped develop the proposal to study a sample of galaxies that includes Makani; ran code to determine the galaxies\u2019 mass; and took part in discussions about how to interpret the data about Makani.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-019-1686-1\"><em>Nature<\/em><\/a> paper suggests that the masses of gases surrounding Makani, which means \u201cwind\u201d in Hawaiian, are in part a byproduct of the formation of the galaxy from the merger of two separate galaxies. The collision finished up about 10 million years before the astronomers observed it \u2014 quite recently, in astronomical terms \u2014 and resulted in the rapid creation of new stars, which drove surrounding gas and dust out of the galaxy.<\/p>\n<p>Another source of the outflow is a different event, which took place about 400 million years before the scientists observed it, and may have happened earlier in the galactic merger process. The gas plumes are mind-bogglingly huge: about 100 kiloparsecs across, or 300,000 light-years.<\/p>\n<p>Like many scientific breakthroughs, that the astronomers were able to discover Makani\u2019s galactic winds at all was due to quick thinking and a stroke of luck. Diamond-Stanic says Coil of UCSD was at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii studying a different set of galaxies and found she had a bit of extra time.<\/p>\n<p>So she directed the telescope toward Makani and quickly made an observation using the new Keck Cosmic Web Imager, which can trace the ionized oxygen that gets blown around the galaxy along with other gases.<\/p>\n<p>Diamond-Stanic and his colleagues received the resulting image the following day and recognized its significance straight away. The picture, which looks like a Rorschach ink blot to the untrained eye, shows enormous arms of ionized oxygen with a tiny dark dot \u2014 the galaxy itself \u2014 in the center.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese photons have been traveling for five billion years, and they just happen to have hit this particular telescope over a 20-minute period,\u201d he says. \u201cYou knew immediately there was something exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the coming months, Diamond-Stanic and the team will observe Makani again, using instruments that can detect other atoms and molecules. They\u2019ll also study similar galaxies to see if galactic winds affect the circumgalactic medium in the same way.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe can ask next-order questions: \u2018Is this actually what we expected in detail?\u2019 and \u2018How often do we see something like this?\u2019\u201d Diamond-Stanic says. &#8220;The goal is to say, \u2018We have these dozens of galaxies, and Makani is the first one we observed.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That Diamond-Stanic and his colleagues work on near-incomprehensible scales \u2014 when 10 million years ago is recent, and an entire galaxy is classified as a single \u201cobject\u201d in space \u2014 is not lost on him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s fun to think about yourself in that context,\u201d he says, \u201chow large the universe is and how incredibly large a galaxy is relative to Earth or relative to the sun \u2014 and now we\u2019re talking about something [the circumgalactic medium] that\u2019s 10 times larger than a galaxy.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_125944\" style=\"width: 910px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2019\/08\/170607_Physics_Object_Diamond_Stanic_0307-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-125944\" class=\"wp-image-125944 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2019\/08\/170607_Physics_Object_Diamond_Stanic_0307-1-900x809.jpg\" alt=\"On the window sill of his third-floor Carnegie Science office, Assistant Professor of Physics Aleks Diamond-Stanic has a large aluminum plate peppered with 1,400 tiny holes..As he\u2019s crossing campus, Diamond-Stanic can spot the disc from the courtyard between Coram and Ladd libraries. He\u2019s also able to see it from a walkway that passes Hedge. Sometimes he pauses, looks past a couple of trees that partially block the view, and thinks, \u201cThere\u2019s my office!\u201d.It\u2019s nice to know about the view, but what about the plate? While it looks like a crazy pizza screen, Diamond-Stanic\u2019s plate was once used by astronomers with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, based at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, to collect spectra from objects throughout the universe.\" width=\"900\" height=\"809\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2019\/08\/170607_Physics_Object_Diamond_Stanic_0307-1-900x809.jpg 900w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2019\/08\/170607_Physics_Object_Diamond_Stanic_0307-1-334x300.jpg 334w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2019\/08\/170607_Physics_Object_Diamond_Stanic_0307-1-200x180.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2019\/08\/170607_Physics_Object_Diamond_Stanic_0307-1.jpg 1919w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-125944\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Assistant Professor of Physics Aleksandar Diamond-Stanic works with Jos\u00e9 Ruiz during the summer of 2017. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>At such large scales, the line between the measurement of time and space blurs. Makani is five billion light-years away from Earth, which means that the light emitted from the galaxy takes five billion years to get here, where astronomers can observe it. The 10- and 400-million-year-old outflow events happened 10 and 400 million, plus five billion, years ago.<\/p>\n<p>It so happens that our solar system formed not long after.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re actually seeing, in a different galaxy, what was happening around the time the sun and Earth formed,\u201d Diamond-Stanic says. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing a process that keeps gas outside of galaxies and, perhaps, prevents the formation of the next generation of stars.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s something I try to keep connected to as I\u2019m staring at blobby pictures on a computer screen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Bates professor is one of a group of scientists who have found a possible explanation for how gases like oxygen get into the empty space around galaxies: galactic wind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1005,"featured_media":128359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,14],"tags":[11368],"class_list":["post-128357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-faculty-staff","tag-aleksandar-diamond-stanic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1005"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128357"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128514,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128357\/revisions\/128514"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}