Faculty Award for Women - An Atomic Hydrogen (HI) Image of the Universe

This Faculty Award for Women Scientists and Engineers is made to Dr. Jacqueline H. Van Gorkom in the Department of Astronomy at Columbia University. The NSF Faculty Award for Women Scientists and Engineers recognizes the high quality of the awardee's record in teaching and scholarship as well as the potential for continued significant contributions to scientific research, the academic profession, and the education of future scientists. The emphasis of the research will be on the formation and evolution of galaxies and the large scale structure of the universe. These issues will be explored by making images of the atomic hydrogen in and between galaxies, in isolated galaxies, interacting galaxies, small groups of galaxies, clusters of galaxies and in regions where there might be no galaxies at all, the voids. The large-scale structure of the universe as we know it today, with large filaments and sheets is based almost entirely on high luminosity galaxies, seen at optical wavelengths. Biased galaxy formation predicts a separation between luminosity (bright galaxies) and mass (dark matter). Dwarf galaxies are expected to be more uniformly distributed and should be a better tracer of the dark mass. These dwarfs could be too faint to be included in optical catalogs. They will be observed in the radio region of the spectrum. Other similar surveys which will address slightly different questions are a volume limited survey of the Hydra Cluster of galaxies and HI observations of all the optically known galaxies in the Bootes void. The Hydra survey will extend the determination of the spatial distribution of gas rich galaxies to a very high density region. Even more interesting will be a comparison of the HI morphology of the galaxies in Hydra and in Virgo (already completed) with those in the Bootes void. This will provide us with unique material on the effects of the environment on galaxies. There will be several collaborators and graduate students involved in the projects.