This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Dr Zabludoff will study Lyman-alpha blobs, large clouds of glowing gas in the distant Universe that may represent the adolescence of today's brightest galaxies. She and her team will complete two complementary, blind surveys to search for Lyman-alpha blobs so distant that we see them as they were only 3 billion years after the Big Bang. These surveys will use a narrow-band filter with the wide-field imagers on the Steward 2.3-meter telescope and the two 4-meter telescopes of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. The shallow but ultra-wide survey with the smaller telescope targets the rarest, most luminous blobs, while the survey with the 4-meter telescopes will be deeper to detect the more numerous fainter blobs. Dr Zabludoff will then take spectra of the brightest blobs at optical and infrared wavelengths, to measure the gas motions and to constrain the temperature, density and chemical composition. Comparing profiles of the different spectral lines will show whether the glowing gas is falling in, or blowing out as a galactic wind. Comparing these observations with models will show whether the Lyman-alpha blobs are likely to be gas-accreting nascent galaxies.
A graduate student and an undergraduate will be trained by participating in the research. Dr Zabludoff will incorporate results from the research into classroom exercises for undergraduate students.
