Observing Time for Galaxy Zoo

It’s Christmas come early at Galaxy Zoo, with a healthy dose of everything that an astronomer would want under the tree – observing time.

The Gemini South dome in suitably picturesque setting.

We didn’t get everything we asked the telescope allocation committees for, but we did get plenty to keep us busy well into the New Year. 2013 will see the following telescopes turned to Galaxy Zoo targets :

Gemini South: This 8m telescope in Chile (pictured above) will be observing bulgeless galaxies thanks to Brooke Simmons and her friends at Yale (especially Ezequiel Treister, now at Concepción in Chile). This is a program to look at the galaxies that were included in our first bulgeless paper, using deep, high-resolution spectroscopy to examine their stellar populations. For some objects where the AGN signal comes to us unobscured by dust and gas (but buried in a bright galaxy that made it hard to see in the SDSS spectra), we hope to also determine black hole masses with these deeper, finer spectra.

WIYN at Kitt Peak: This 3.5m telescope has recently been outfitted with a brand new imaging camera. As long as it keeps working the way it has been in tests, we can use it for 6 nights to examine whether our sample of bulgeless galaxies ever had minor mergers. Bulgeless galaxies are important because they’re supposed to be guaranteed merger-free so deep imaging of this kind helps us to confirm that that’s true by looking for any remnants of ripped-apart galaxies.

Bolshoi Teleskop Alt-azimutalnyi: This 6m telescope is important in astronomical history – it was once the largest in the world. It will be observing the Voorwerpjes as part of our increasing desire to understand these enigmatic objects – more on which is coming over the Christmas period, with any luck.

Shane Telescope at Lick: We’ve been awarded a second run on this telescope to look for ionized gas in the companion galaxies to those with active galactic nuclei – a sort of large scale Voorwerpje hunt.

There will be much more about all of these as the data starts to arrive, but we wanted to make sure that you know there were presents under the tree. We’re looking forward to unwrapping them immensely!

*Note: this post has been updated to more accurately reflect reality.