The new, improved Dragonfly is a galactic gas detector

Date:
March 10, 2022
Source:
Yale University
Summary:
The Dragonfly telescope is undergoing a metamorphosis. For the past
decade, the Dragonfly Telephoto Array has conducted groundbreaking
science by detecting faint starlight within dimly lit parts of
the night sky. The telescope uses clusters of telephoto lenses to
create images, much the way a dragonfly's eyes gather visual data.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
The Dragonfly telescope is undergoing a metamorphosis.


==========================================================================
For the past decade, the Dragonfly Telephoto Array -- designed by Yale's
Pieter van Dokkum and the University of Toronto's Roberto Abraham
and located in New Mexico -- has conducted groundbreaking science by
detecting faint starlight within dimly lit parts of the night sky. The telescope uses clusters of telephoto lenses to create images, much the
way a dragonfly's eyes gather visual data.

The telescope has spotted previously unseen "fluffy" galaxies, diffuse
dwarf galaxies, and galaxies with little or no dark matter.

Now Dragonfly is setting its sights on extragalactic gas.

With the help of a special filter mounted in front of each lens, the
Dragonfly telescope is able to block most of the light emitted by stars
-- leaving just the faint glow of light-emitting, ionized gas. The
Dragonfly team built a "pathfinder" version of the new telescope,
with three lenses instead of the original Dragonfly's 48 lenses, as a proof-of-concept device.

The results are even better than expected, the researchers say.



========================================================================== "There are going to be some incredible images from Dragonfly in the next
few years," said van Dokkum, the Sol Goldman Family Professor of Astronomy
in Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. "This new method of detecting
gas clouds is opening up a whole new regime of science to explore."
In a pair of new studies, the Dragonfly team describes previously hidden features within the gas surrounding a group of galaxies located about
12 million light-years from Earth. The researchers chose this area,
in part, because it has been studied by other telescopes and provides a
number of established, celestial signposts to gauge Dragonfly's accuracy.

"The Messier 81 galaxy group is one of the nearest to our own, making
it one of the best to study," said Yale graduate student Imad Pasha,
first author of one of the new studies. "We're returning to many such well-known, nearby galaxies with this new instrument to add pieces to
the puzzle of how gas gets in and out of galaxies." Although it has
long been known that gas is the fuel for creating stars and planets in galaxies, the dynamics for how this gas actually gets into and out of
galaxies are not well understood. Being able to isolate images of gas structures around galaxies has become a priority for researchers.

For example, Pasha's study, published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, describes a nascent dwarf galaxy forming in a tidal arm of the galaxy
Messier 82. Essentially, a new galaxy is being formed by the gas ripped
away from M82 when M82 flew past its neighbor, M81.



========================================================================== "This type of galaxy is difficult to detect by traditional observations,"
Pasha said. "We may well find more of these 'baby' galaxies around
well-studied groups in the future." The second new study, which has been accepted by the Astrophysical Journal, describes a giant cloud of ionized
gas -- 180,000 light years long and 30,000 light years wide. Although
the cloud's origin remains a mystery, the researchers theorize that it
may have been pulled away from M82 during a close encounter with its
larger, companion galaxy, Messier 81, or blown away from M82 by strong "superwinds." "This cloud had never been seen before," said first
author Deborah Lokhorst, a former graduate student at the University of Toronto. "Our image was the first with the sensitivity required and a
wide enough field of view to detect it. We almost didn't believe it was
real!" Now that the Dragonfly "pathfinder" has proven to be successful,
the researchers are building a bigger Dragonfly Spectral Line Mapper
instrument with 120 lenses. The telescope is being assembled over the
next year in New Mexico.

Co-author Seery Chen, a University of Toronto graduate student who worked
on instrumentation development for the new Dragonfly, said part of the project's ethos is to conduct groundbreaking science using readily
available materials - - including commercially available telephoto
lenses. Eventually, the team plans to make all of its instrument designs
and data open-sourced and available to other researchers.

"It makes science more accessible to more people," Chen said.

Co-authors of the new studies include Yale graduate students Tim Miller,
Erin Lippitt, Ava Polzin, Zili Shen, and Michael Keim, and former Yale researchers Shany Danieli, now at Princeton, and Allison Merritt, now
at the Max-Planck- Institut fu"r Astronomie in Germany.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Yale_University. Original written
by Jim Shelton. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Related Multimedia:
* Dragonfly_telescope ========================================================================== Journal References:
1. Imad Pasha, Deborah Lokhorst, Pieter G. van Dokkum, Seery Chen,
Roberto
Abraham, Johnny Greco, Shany Danieli, Tim Miller, Erin Lippitt,
Ava Polzin, Zili Shen, Michael A. Keim, Qing Liu, Allison Merritt,
Jielai Zhang. A Nascent Tidal Dwarf Galaxy Forming within the
Northern H i Streamer of M82. The Astrophysical Journal Letters,
2021; 923 (2): L21 DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ac3ca6
2. Qing Liu, Roberto Abraham, Colleen Gilhuly, Pieter van Dokkum,
Peter G.

Martin, Jiaxuan Li, Johnny P. Greco, Deborah Lokhorst, Seery
Chen, Shany Danieli, Michael A. Keim, Allison Merritt, Tim
B. Miller, Imad Pasha, Ava Polzin, Zili Shen, Jielai Zhang. A
Method to Characterize the Wide-angle Point-Spread Function of
Astronomical Images. The Astrophysical Journal, 2022; 925 (2):
219 DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac32c6 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220310115047.htm

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