Research Highlights of Galactic Astronomy Faculty

See also the High Energy Astrophysics page for related research

A spectral image of the collimated stellar jet HH 30 taken through a wide slit with the STIS spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope. The image shows that the jet is visible very close to the star (position denoted by a horizontal white line) in both emission lines of singly-ionized sulphur. These images make it possible to learn about physical conditions such as the density, ionization fraction, and temperature, and allow us to measure how the jet becomes collimated as it emerges from the accretion disk that drives the outflow from this young star

The Whirlpool galaxy as imaged by the Spitzer Space Telescope.  The background image is the 3 color image taken with the Spitzer Infrared Array Camera (IRAC).  The orange strip across the nucleus and disk of the galaxy is a map of H2 S(2) emission.  The H2 S(2) line was mapped using the Spitzer Infrared Spectrograph (IRS)