Telescope gives cosmic insights to gas clouds

RESEARCHERS from Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology have captured the first in-depth images of enormous gas clouds with help from a naturally occurring galactic phenomenon.

The study, published in Nature journal and released to the public yesterday, detailed the observations of the inner workings of a Damped Lyman-alpha system (DLA), a giant gas cloud that gave rise to galaxies not long after the Big Bang.

“DLAs are crucial in understanding how galaxies were formed, but have traditionally been extremely difficult to observe,” said Swinburne University of Technology professor and contributing author Jeff Cooke.

The researchers were able to take advantage of gravitationally lensed galaxies, a phenomenon by which galaxies are stretched and brightened, which illuminated the normally dark DLA.

DLA’s hold particular significance as they contain most of the neutral hydrogen in the universe, a “building block” element and also the universe’s most abundant – containing just one proton and one electron.

In observing the DLA in question, Cooke and his fellow researchers were able to analyse the early universe directly. The Keck Observatory is a Nasa-funded telescope in the island state of Hawaii, to which Swinburne astrologists have gained exclusive access.

“By utilising the latest technology at Keck and a little luck with the alignment of gravitationally lensed galaxies, we have greater insight into the workings of our universe than ever before,” said Cooke.

Their observations showed that the gas field, stretching more than 50 000 light-years across, about two-thirds the size of the Milky Way galaxy, had the potential energy to form the next generation of stars.