Novel Instrument, Cosmic Telescope Used to Study the Heart of Galactic Nurseries

A unique novel instrument paired with a powerful telescope and a boost by nature has allowed researchers to peer into the wonders of galactic nurseries at the heart of a young universe. Astronomers were recently able to use a galaxy like a gigantic magnifying glass to look into these galactic nurseries.

The cosmic telescope allowed them the first-ever in-depth view of massive gas clouds that slowly condensed, fueling the formation of galaxies and stars after the Big Bang.

What Happened After the Big Bang?

SPACE, SPACE: This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image released 04 December, 2003 shows a festively colored nebula, called NGC 604, one of the largest known seething cauldrons of star birth in a nearby galaxy. NGC 604 is similar to familiar star-birth regions in our Milky Way galaxy, such as the Orion Nebula, but it is vastly larger in extent and contains many more recently formed stars. This monstrous star-birth region contains more than 200 brilliant blue stars within a cloud of glowing gases some 1,300 light-years across, nearly 100 times the size of the Orion Nebula. The bright stars in NGC 604 are extremely young by astronomical standards, having formed a mere 3 million years ago. NASA/AFP via Getty Images

After the events of the Big Bang roughly 13.8 billion years ago, the young universe was immediately filled with enormous clouds of neutral diffuse gas known to researchers as DLAs or Damped Lyman-a systems. These gas clouds served as a galactic nursery.

As the enormous gasses within began to condense slowly, they fueled the formation of galaxies and stars. These primordial clouds remain observable today, but it is no easy task.

Rongmon Bordoloi, an assistant professor of physics from the North Carolina State University and author of the recent study, explains that these enormous clouds of gas are the key to better understanding how the galaxies in the universe form. However, he adds that it is normally difficult to be able to observe them since they are too diffuse and do not emit light themselves, reports DailyMail.

Currently, the predominant way for astrophysicists to observe these galactic phenomena is by using quasars - extremely massive black holes that can emit light. These serve as backlights for researchers to detect DLA clouds. Although the method allows scientists to pinpoint the location of said clouds, the light emitted by the quasars acts as small skewers through the massive clouds, which hamper any effort to measure the total mass and size of DLAs.

Novel Instrument and Galactic Telescopes

However, in a recent study published in the journal Nature, titled "Resolving the H I in damped Lyman α systems that power star formation," Bordoloi and chief scientist at the W.M Keck Observatory, Hawaii, John O'Meara, have recently found a novel way around the problem. Using gravitationally lensed galaxy coupled with integral field spectroscopy, researchers found a way to observe two DLAs together with the galaxies within them that formed roughly 11 billion years ago, shortly after the big bang.

Bordoloi explains that gravitationally lensed galaxies appear to be stretched and brightened due to the gravitationally massive structure in the foreground of the galaxy, which bends light coming from it as it travels towards Earth.

He adds that the advantage of the discovery is that the background object is seen as an extended object across the sky and bright; hence it is easy for spectrum readings on various parts of the object. Furthermore, since lensing extends the object, it would be possible to prove small scales.

The most amazing discovery for the researchers regarding the DLAs is that they aren't unique; these massive clouds have a similar structure to the host galaxies detected, reports EurekAlert.