An international research team led by Bunyo Hatsukade of the Nobeyama Radio Observatory and Kotaro Kohno of the University of Tokyo discovered about 200 star-forming ‘monster’ galaxies in the early universe using the ASTE telescope located in Chile. From a comparison with the far-infrared image obtained by the AKARI satellite, the team found that most of the galaxies reside in the universe more than 8 billion years ago. These ‘monster’ galaxies are forming stars at a rate unseen in the present day universe – more than 1000 suns in a year. Their discovery provides the largest catalogue of ‘monster’ galaxies in the early universe. The research team also found that these ‘monster’ galaxies contribute to about 10% to 20% of the star formation activity in the early universe, giving us important clues to galaxy evolution and the star formation history of the universe. The data and the source catalog will be released to researchers around the world.

Paper information

Hatsukade et al. "AzTEC/ASTE 1.1 mm Survey of the AKARI Deep Field South: Source Catalogue and Number Counts". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2010).