TOPIC 04
Exploring the World of Galaxies with the Subaru Telescope
The Subaru telescape also played a big role in observations of nearby galaxies. An image of the starburst galaxy M82, captured during the first-light observations with the Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph (FOCAS), shows the ionized gas ejected from the galaxy, known as superwind, with unprecedented sharpness and reveals its detailed structure.
- [Press Release] Red Light flowing from Galaxy (M 82, NGC 3034)
- [Reference] Ohyama et al. 2002, PASJ, 54, 891, “Decomposition of the Superwind in M82”
Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC), which started operation in 2014, has allowed us to examine populations and distribution of stars in nearby galaxies through its wide field-of-view and sharp resolution, and advanced the field of galactic archaeology. Wide-field observations of a galaxy group consisting of three members, M81, M82, and NGC 3077, with HSC revealed the ages and distribution of stars drifting in this nearby galaxy group. These observations provided important clues to how past galactic interactions affected the evolution of the galaxies and intergalactic space.
- [Press Release] The Ghostly Remnants of Galaxy Interactions Uncovered in a Nearby Galaxy Group
- [Reference] Okamoto et al. 2015, ApJ Letters, 809, L1, “A Hyper Suprime-Cam view of the interacting galaxies of the M81 group”