The prime focus of the Cosmology Group is Theme 1 of the SESE Science
Themes: understand how today's Universe of planets, stars and galaxies
came to be. However, there is considerable overlap and common goals
with the other Themes, e.g., isotope abundances within our Solar system;
detector technology and instrumentation; distributed massively parallel
numerical simulations; and current and future space missions. And we are
even involved in a, perhaps surprising, cross-disciplinary application of
astronomical software for medical diagnostics.
Re-loading this page will randomly load a center image in the backdrop
above, formed by thousands of distant galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep
Field, our deepest view of the Universe yet. Each image is accompanied by a
short caption that may give you an idea of ongoing and recent research
within our Cosmology Group.
A more complete list of broad topics of past and on-going research
includes:
First Light — the epoch of reionization — the faint galaxies
that cleared the cosmic fog — galaxy luminosity functions at low and
high redshift — deep fields — the evolution of the galaxy merger
rate — tracking the hierarchical assembly of galaxies and the
emergence of the Hubble sequence — the relation between galaxy mergers
and onset of AGN activity — pan-chromatic galaxy morphology —
milli- through nano-Jansky radio sources — zodiacal light and the
size distribution from dust grains to Kuiper Belt objects in our Solar
system — spatially resolved Hα and mid-UV emission
as tracers of current high-mass star formation — stellar populations
synthesis — ultracompact dwarf galaxies — studies in preparation
of JWST — emission line objects at high redshift — star formation
— emission-line diagnostics — galactic bars — L & T dwarf
stars in our Galaxy — γ-ray bursts (GRBs) — interstellar medium
— theoretical models and numerical cosmological simulations.
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