Astronomers have made their first statistically reliable survey of one kind of star-forming galaxy in the early Universe.
Knowledge of these distant objects is important for our understanding of these galaxies' formation and evolution, but enshrouding dust usually obscures their details — making them hard to identify with telescopes that collect radio waves or visible light. Jacqueline Hodge at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, and her colleagues used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile to penetrate the dust veil by looking for emissions at submillimetre wavelengths of light — a length between infrared and radio waves.
The scientists' observation of 126 previously unresolved galaxies in the southern constellation Fornax brought blurry objects into sharper focus (pictured). At least one-third, and possibly up to one-half, of them turned out to be multiple galaxies.
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Dusty galaxies come into view. Nature 496, 401 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/496401d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/496401d
