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by Beth Haysom
For UVic space scientist Scott Chapman, the joy of astrophysics has much to do with the possibility of discovery.
“I like being able to find out completely new things about the universe,” says Chapman, recently awarded a three-year space science fellowship by the Canadian Space Agency for research on distant galaxies.
The Canadian Space Agency awards two fellowships a year to promising scientists who are conducting space research in an area which is deemed “to promote the peaceful use and development of space through science.”
Chapman, 35, has already experienced the thrill of discovery. While working for the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena and the California Institute of Technology, he led a team of the first few space scientists to observe and pinpoint a new class of galaxies forming stars 1,000 times more rapidly than our own Milky Way. These galaxies are about 10 billion light years away and usually obscured by the dust cocoons surrounding the young, forming stars.
The galaxies, dubbed the submillimetre (submm) galaxies because they were originally identified by the James Clerk Maxwell submillimetre telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, appear to be gas-rich galaxies that are colliding and merging.
“It was really exciting; all of a sudden we were looking at a new population of galaxies during a time in the universe when these galaxies were forming the vast majority of their stars. Studying them may unlock some of the mysteries surrounding the origins of large galaxies around us today,” says Chapman.
Now using X-ray and infrared space telescopes (the Chandra and the Spitzer space telescopes), along with radio telescopes on the ground, scientists are able to peer through the dust to see what is going on in the deepest recesses of galaxies, understanding their detailed astrophysics for the first time.
Chapman is using his fellowship award of $180,000 to hone techniques for observing these dusty galaxies from space in collaboration with Canadian Space Agency scientists and NASA. There are plans for one of the submm-wave space telescopes to be placed on an upcoming space mission scheduled for 2012.
From far to nearer, Chapman, who teaches graduate students, is also fascinated by Andromeda, our nearest large neighbour galaxy that is easily visible to the naked eye. Although similar to our own galaxy, Andromeda appears to have been broadsided and blown apart by another galaxy about eight to 10 billion years ago.
“UVic is an excellent base for this kind of research,” says Chapman. “It has one of the strongest departments in galactic studies in Canada.”
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