The Arecibo telescope is still the champion of astronomy!

the historian Arecibo . Radio TelescopeIt opened in 1963 in Puerto Rico and has been the largest in the world for more than fifty years. Although destroyed Still a surprise.

A group of Australian astronomers from the University of Western Australia and the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research (Icrar) in Perth, in a study published in the journal. Monthly notice from the Royal Astronomical Society Data collected before the collapse of Arecibo at the end of last year was used to test “fall reportAbout the composition of nearby galaxies.

In 1983 astrophysicist Michael Fall presented research that linked the rotation of a galaxy to the mass of the stars to which it belongs. The evolution of individual galaxies depends on this relationship.

the new studioFunded by the Australian Research Council, and is based on monitoring 564 galaxies Of various shapes and ages, the largest database has been created to date showing that the relationship between the mass of stars and the rotation of the galaxy was not originally assumed.

“The fall report that paved the way for us nearly 40 years ago was based on small samples limited to the types of galaxies used,” he said. Jennifer Hardwicke, lead author of the study. “As galaxies evolve over billions of years, we have to work with images of their evolution, taken from different stages of their lives, and integrate them into our simulations to work backwards and try to reconstruct their trajectory.”

This work opened new questions about the life cycle of the galaxy, but at the same time it provides researchers with a new reference point for developing these theories.

Luca Cortez, supervisor and co-author of the study, stresses the importance of reviewing the research as technology advances and ascertaining the validity of the basis. “Since the dawn of extragalactic astronomy, it has been clear that angular momentum The cycle generator in space, defined by the product of an object’s mass by its velocity, was the key to understanding how galaxies form and evolve. Whereas in the past, due to the difficulty of measuring angular momentum, direct observational references to our theory were missing, this work presents one of the best measurements of the relationship between angular momentum and other properties of galaxies.”

The Italian astrophysicist also mentioned how, although the Arecibo radio telescope is no longer in operation, his data on the content of atomic hydrogen in galaxies is still the most relevant. “We will have to wait until the second half of this decade before this type of observation is replaced by data obtained by Square Kilometer Array precursors, such as the Australian Ska Pathfinder Telescope (Askap), the South African Karoo Array Telescope (Meerkat) and the radio telescope. Chinese It has a spherical aperture of five hundred meters (fast).

Above image: some of the 564 galaxies observed by Arecibo. Credits: Jennifer Hardwicke, ICRAR-UWA Survey / GALEX Arecibo SDSS (GASS) / DESI Legacy Imaging Survey