A New Map Reveals Radio Waves From Tens of Thousands of Galaxies
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A new map reveals radio waves from tens of thousands of galaxies:
Never-before-seen radio waves from tens of thousands of galaxies have a secret to share: The height of star formation in the cosmos may have been more prolific than previously imagined.
Radio telescopes are good probes of star formation. Butuntil now, they haven't been sensitive enough to see radio waves coming fromthe vast majority of galaxiesthat produced stars during the peak of star production, an epoch roughly 10billion years ago known as cosmic noon (SN: 6/20/14).
Now, a new image from the MeerKAT observatory in SouthAfrica has lifted the radio veil on those unsung galaxies. In that image, morethan 17,000 pinpoints of radio energy - nearly every one a star-forming galaxy -fill a patch of sky that, as seen from Earth, could be covered by about fivefull moons.
Using about 10,000 well-studied nearby galaxies as atemplate, James Condon and his colleagues calculated how luminous and how faraway all those points of light must be. To match the observations, the radiowaves must come from star-forming galaxies at cosmic noon churning out stars atabout 10 times the rate of modern galaxies, says Condon, an astrophysicist atthe National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Va.
T. Mauch et al. The 1.28 GHz MeerKAT DEEP2 image. arXiv:1912.06212. Posted December 15, 2019.
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