Resolving Galaxies in Transformation
Wu Po-Feng (National Taiwan University)
Description:
Decades of observations demonstrated that their are broadly two types of galaxies; those have in-situ star formation and morphologically disky and those have little star formation and featureless, elliptical shapes. We know that galaxies in general evolve from disky star-forming to elliptical quiescent but there are still hot debates about the driving mechanisms.
In this project, we will use the abundant public data freely available to the community to first identify galaxies that just transformed from star-forming quiescent recently. Whatever mechanisms shut down the star formation should leave imprints on these galaxies. Then, we will model their images and spectra in the optical and near IR to infer their physical properties in a spatially-resolved manner, including the stellar populations and their structures. The results will be used to compare to prediction from theoretical works, in order to verify the mechanisms that shut down the star formation in galaxies.
Required background:
Good knowledge of general physics. Experience on Unix/Linux and python are desirable.