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A scientific team from the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (UPCT) and the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) discover one of the most brilliant galaxies to date, when the Universe Was a fifth of his current age |
A thousand times brighter than the Milky Way, so bright is the galaxy far away that has discovered a scientific team of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) led by the researcher of the Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena (UPCT) Anastasio Díaz-Sánchez.
The galaxy found is the most brilliant known of the so-called submillimetric galaxies because of the strong emission they present in the far infrared and has been characterized by the Great Canary Telescope (GTC), located in the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (Garafía, La Palma ), And an amplified image produced by a gravitational lens.
According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, when a ray of light passes near a very massive object, the gravity of that object attracts the photons and diverts them from its initial trajectory.
This phenomenon, called a gravitational lens, is similar to that produced by lenses on light rays, acting as a magnifying glass to increase the view of objects.
"Thanks to the gravitational lens," points out Anastasio Díaz Sánchez, a researcher in the department of Applied Physics at the UPCT and the first author of the study, formed by a cluster of galaxies, which acts as if it were a telescope, the galaxy looks eleven times larger And brighter than it actually is and produces different images of it on an arc centered on the most massive part of the cluster, known as the 'Einstein ring'.
The advantage of this type of amplification is that it does not distort the spectral properties of light and very distant objects can be studied as if they were closer. "
To find this galaxy, whose discovery was recently published in an article in Astrophysical Journal Letters, a sky-wide search was conducted combining the databases of the WISE (NASA) and Planck (ESA) satellites in order to identify the Brighter submillimeter galaxies.
Its light, amplified by a nearby cluster of galaxies that acts as a lens, gives it an even greater apparent brightness than it actually does and, thanks to this effect, could characterize its nature and properties by spectroscopy using the GTC.
Forming stars at high speed
The galaxy stands out for having a high rate of star formation, that is, it is generating stars whose total mass is about 1,000 times the mass of the Sun. By comparison, the Milky Way forms each year stars with a total mass of two times In this sense, Susana Iglesias-Groth, astrophysicist of the IAC and coauthor of the article, adds: "This type of objects are home to the most powerful star formation regions known in the Universe and the next step will be to study their wealth molecular".
"The fact that the galaxy is so bright, amplified and has multiple images will allow us to penetrate into its gut, something impossible to carry out otherwise in such remote galaxies," explains Rafael Rebolo, director and researcher of the IAC, Has also participated in this result.
"In the future, we will be able to do more detailed studies of its star formation using interferometers such as the Northern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA / IRAM) in France and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile," concludes Helmut Dannerbahuer, Of the IAC that has also contributed to this discovery.
Source: UPCT
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