event
Tuesday 24 Oct 2017: HI galaxy surveys: An overview of current results and future plans
Dr. Michael Jones - Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia
Physics 4th Floor 14:00-15:00
HI galaxy surveys offer a view of the galaxy population that is distinct and complementary to surveys in the optical and IR, which see stars and dust in galaxies, rather than their reservoirs of neutral gas. In this talk I will focus on the recently completed ALFALFA survey, which detected over 30,000 galaxies in HI from its blind search of 1/6th of the sky. This population has allowed the identification of some of the lowest metallicity galaxies known, studies of the smallest star-forming galaxies, the discovery of a sub-population of HI-rich ultra-diffuse galaxies, and a robust census of the neutral gas content of redshift zero galaxies, among many other results. With the advent of the Square Kilometre Array HI galaxy surveys on the scale of optical surveys, such as the SDSS, will become possible for the first time. While the SKA is still several years away, its precursors are coming online now. I will conclude the talk by discussing some of the new HI science that will be made possible by these facilities and some of the unique challenges that they will face.
