WATERLOO — This year, a University of Waterloo professor will use NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to learn more about galaxy formation and growth.
Along with a group of about 12 international scientists, the focus of Brian McNamara’s research is on the giant galaxy at the centre of the Phoenix cluster — a galaxy that produces stars at 300 times the rate of the Milky Way.
“We think that the stars are forming out of hydrogen gas that cooled from the surroundings, and this is one of the avenues for building giant galaxies,” said McNamara, the school’s physics and astronomy department chair and astrophysics research chair.
The team will look at neon and hydrogen to understand the heating and cooling of gases that occur in the galaxy, a process that creates stars.
Black holes may regulate how galaxies grow, he said, by blasting away some of the hydrogen gas before it falls in, as seen in the Milky Way.
“Not all of the gas fall in right away and so as it’s falling in, it emits enormous amounts of energy, enough to blow the gas away over volumes many times the size of the galaxy,” said McNamara.
“We’re trying to study that.”
The James Webb Space Telescope was launched on Christmas Day 2021 and is now at the Lagrange point or L2.
This a spot where the gravitational pull from the earth, moon and sun amount to zero, said McNamara, making it the perfect spot to sit while capturing video of space.
“It’s the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope,” said McNamara.
“It’s designed to look at primeval galaxies — galaxies that formed very early in the universe.”
It will also study exoplanets, which could further research on whether human life is possible on planets outside of the solar system.
For McNamara’s team, the telescope will stare at the Phoenix galaxy for eight hours before infrared information is sent down to Earth.
They will then be able to analyze the data.
“Turns out that galaxy formation is a tug of war between supermassive black hole at the centre and stars trying to form around it,” he said.
“It’s a remarkable process that’s not understood in detail and that’s what we want to find out.”
