A Programme of Technology, Astrophysics and Cosmology in Cardiff, 2022-2025
Lead Research Organisation:
CARDIFF UNIVERSITY
Department Name: School of Physics and Astronomy
Abstract
Astronomers try to answer a wide range of questions, from fundamental ones, such as how stars and galaxies are formed and questions about the structure and evolution of the universe itself, to more detailed questions about the physical and chemical processes occurring in astronomical objects. A powerful way of trying to answer some of the most important ones is to make observations in the submillimetre waveband, one of the newest branches of astronomy. The births of stars and galaxies, for example, occur in huge clouds of gas and dust, and the dust - tiny solid fragments in interstellar space - hides the births from traditional optical telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope. With submillimetre telescopes, however, it is possible to observe radiation from the dust itself, allowing astronomers to observe the very earliest stages in the lives of stars and galaxies. Submillimetre astronomy is one of our specialities in Cardiff, with our group containing both astronomers that use submillimetre telescopes but also scientists that build novel cameras and other devices that work in this waveband - technology that also has many uses outside astronomy. In this proposal we ask for funds from the UK taxpayer to support our research. Much of this research involves using or building submillimetre instruments, but some of the projects we propose will use telescopes in other wavebands or use powerful computers to simulate the processes involved in the birth of a star or the formation of a galaxy. The questions we will try to answer include many of the most important ones. One of the surprising things about planets like ours is that they exist at all, because centimetre-sized solid chunks around a star are likely to be destroyed before they coalesce to form bigger chunks and eventually planets. We will use radio observations to search for chunks of this size in the disks of dust around newly formed stars, with the aim of understanding how small rocky planets like our own were formed, and in another project we will use a new balloon observatory to study the other end of the planetary spectrum - the giant 'hot Jupiters' that have been discovered around nearby stars. We propose several projects to investigate the formation of stars, both the stars that are forming around us today and a special population of stars with very few heavy elements that astronomers think formed just after the Big Bang, using a mixture of observations and computer simulations. We propose two project that will study supernovae, the titanic explosions that occur when a massive star collapses at the end of its life. One project will investigate the formation of dust grains and molecular gas within a supernova explosion, the other the recently discovered superluminous supernovae, up to 100 times more luminous than the standard kind. Again using a mixture of observations and computer simulations, we propose several projects to study galaxies, including a study of the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest big galaxy, an investigation of the super-massive black holes at the centres of nearby galaxies, a computer simulation of the gas flows around a galaxy, and a project to find more examples of very distant galaxies, which we are seeing only shortly after the Big Bang and that are being highly magnified by the gravity of close galaxies. More examples of these highly magnified galaxies is important because the magnification means that we can study the way galaxies are formed in great detail. We also propose two technical projects, one to develop kinetic inductance detectors, a kind of detector that our group largely discovered and which makes possible revolutionary new instruments, and one to develop further 'meta-materials', a kind of material that makes possible novel components for instruments, such as flat lenses, and which our group has used to make the filters for all submillimetre telescopes, on the ground and in space, over the last 30 years.
Organisations
Publications
Pakmor R
(2024)
Magnetic field amplification in cosmological zoom simulations from dwarf galaxies to galaxy groups
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Hargrave P
(2024)
AtLAST in the context of current facilities
Liu L
(2025)
WISDOM Project - XXIV. Giant molecular clouds of the spiral galaxy NGC 5064: high fraction of retrograde rotation
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Vera-Casanova A
(2025)
Stream automatic detection with convolutional neural networks
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Bhatt C
(2025)
Detection of CH3+ in the O-rich planetary nebula NGC 6302
Bendo G
(2025)
The dust emissivity index ß in infrared-bright galaxies at 1.5 < z < 4.2
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Matsuura Mikako
(2025)
Why are far-infrared observations important for supernovae and supernova remnants?
in PRIMA General Observer Science Book Volume 2
Palud P
(2025)
BEETROOTS: Spatially regularized Bayesian inference of physical parameter maps. Application to Orion
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
The Simons Observatory Collaboration
(2025)
The Simons Observatory: forecasted constraints on primordial gravitational waves with the expanded array of Small Aperture Telescopes
Galic I
(2025)
Surveying the Whirlpool at Arcseconds with NOEMA (SWAN) III. 13 CO/C 18 O ratio variations across the M51 galaxy
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Paliwal A
(2025)
Exploiting high-resolution NIKA2 data to study the intracluster medium and dynamical state of ACT-CL J0240.0+0116
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Berta S
(2025)
A panchromatic view of N2CLS GOODS-N: The evolution of the dust cosmic density since z ~ 7
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Désert F
(2025)
Continuum, CO, and water vapour maps of the Orion Nebula First millimetre spectral imaging with CONCERTO
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Deng Y
(2025)
The HASHTAG project II. Giant molecular cloud properties across the M31 disc
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Lee H
(2025)
From filament to clumps and cores A multiscale study of fragmentation and the role of the magnetic field and gas velocity in the infrared dark cloud SDC18.624-0.070
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Priestley F
(2025)
NEATH IV: an early onset of complex organic chemistry in molecular clouds
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Lestrade J
(2025)
Debris disks around M dwarfs: The Herschel DEBRIS survey
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Gao Y
(2025)
The First Exploration of the Correlations Between WISE 12 µ m and CO Emission in Early-type Galaxies
in The Astrophysical Journal
Sargent B.
(2025)
SN 1987A: variability observed with JWST NIRSpec/IFU and MIRI/MRS
in American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #245
Pakmor R
(2025)
Quantifying the intrinsic variability due to randomness of the Auriga galaxy formation model
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Lundgren A
(2025)
CONCERTO: forward modeling of interferograms for calibration
Rigby A
(2025)
PAMS: The Perseus Arm Molecular Survey-I. Survey description and first results
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Winkel N
(2025)
Gravitational torques from lopsided young stellar component sustain high black hole accretion rates in NGC 4593
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Lestrade Jean-Francois
(2025)
Debris disks around M dwarfs: The Herschel DEBRIS survey
in arXiv e-prints
Chastenet J
(2025)
Radial variation of the silicate-to-carbon ratio in M31 probed by PRIMA
in Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems
Rutherford T
(2025)
The GECKOS survey: Jeans anisotropic models of edge-on discs uncover the impact of dust and kinematic structures
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Clark N
(2025)
JWST observations of the Ring Nebula (NGC 6720) - II. PAH emission
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Nugent A
(2025)
Where Has All the R -process Gone? Timescales for Gamma-Ray Burst Kilonovae to Enrich Their Host Galaxies
in The Astrophysical Journal
Chérouvrier D
(2025)
NIKA2 Cosmological Legacy Survey Blind detection of galaxy clusters in the COSMOS field via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Molinari S.
(2025)
VizieR Online Data Catalog: ALMAGAL. I. Target clumps properties (Molinari+, 2025)
in VizieR Online Data Catalog
Karoly J
(2025)
The JCMT BISTRO Survey: Magnetic Fields Align with Orbital Structure in the Galactic Center
in The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Peeters Els
(2025)
Probing the chemical evolution of the carriers of the Aromatic Infrared Band emission.
in JWST Proposal. Cycle 4
Ciesla L
(2025)
PRIMA: PRIMAger, a far-infrared hyperspectral and polarimetric instrument
in Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems
Amada K
(2025)
The Nearby Evolved Stars Survey. IV. Mapping cold gas in the circumstellar envelopes of evolved stars with 12CO and 13CO ( J = 1 ? 0) emission
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Davis T
(2025)
VERTICO - IX. Signatures of environmental processing of the gas in Virgo cluster spiral galaxies through mapping of CO isotopologues
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Wallstroem S. H. J.
(2025)
VizieR Online Data Catalog: Nearby Evolved Stars Survey. III. (Wallstroem+, 2025)
in VizieR Online Data Catalog
Euclid Collaboration
(2025)
Euclid Quick Data Release (Q1). The average far-infrared properties of Euclid-selected star-forming galaxies
Galliano F
(2025)
PRIMA promise of deciphering interstellar dust evolution with observations of the nearby Universe
in Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems
Fraser-McKelvie A
(2025)
The GECKOS survey: The formation history of a barred galaxy via structural decomposition and spatially resolved spectroscopy
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
Baker M
(2025)
Stellar-gas kinematic misalignments in eagle : enhanced SMBH growth in misaligned galaxies
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Larsson J
(2025)
The Compact Object and Innermost Ejecta of SN 1987A
in The Astrophysical Journal
Ambrose H
(2025)
Orbital statistics of multiple systems formed from small- N subclusters
in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Winiarska Martyna W.
(2025)
Investigating the effects of fresh gas on the Active Galactic Nuclei luminosity of early- and late-type galaxies
in arXiv e-prints
Matsuura M
(2025)
Dust formation in AGB stars and planetary nebulae
in Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union
Zakardjian A
(2025)
Estimating the dense gas mass of molecular clouds using spatially unresolved 3mm line observations
in Astronomy & Astrophysics
| Title | Spectral cubes of the IRAM 30m molecular line observations of HCN, HCO+, and N2H+ presented in the paper "Dense gas tracers in and between spiral arms: from Giant Molecular Filaments to star-forming clumps" by O. Feher,... |
| Description | The folder contains the .fits spectral cubes of the dense gas molecular tracer observations (HCN, HCO+, N2H+) that serve as an observational foundation of the paper "Dense gas tracers in and between spiral arms: from Giant Molecular Filaments to star-forming clumps" by O. Feher, S. E. Ragan, F. D Priestley, P. C. Clark, published by the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staf909The dense gas tracer spectroscopic observations were performed with the IRAM 30m telescope during 2017 and 2022. The details of the observations and basic calibration can be found in the article. The files shared here are the .fits spectral cubes that are:corrected for off-position contaminationbaseline-subtractedconverted from TA antenna temperature to TMB main beam brightness temperatureextracted to the narrow spectral bandwidth around the target spectral linesconverted to a uniform sampling of 5.55" pixelsThe astronomical objects are two Giant Molecular Filaments, one towards the Sagittarius spiral arm, and one towards an interarm region. The interarm filament consists of 4 regions (Regions 1-4), the spiral arm filament 2 regions (Regions 5-6). See the paper for the exact definition and sky coverage of these. This folder contains the HCN, HCO+, and N2H+ spectral cubes observed towards these regions, each file for each region and molecule. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2025 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://research-data.cardiff.ac.uk/articles/dataset/Spectral_cubes_of_the_IRAM_30m_molecular_line_o... |