Galaxy Zoo relatives at AAS meeting – Hubble does overlapping galaxies

Among the results being presented at this week’s meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Texas (near Dallas) is this poster presentation on the status of the STARSMOG project. This program, a “snapshot” survey using the Hubble Space Telescope, selected targets from a list of overlapping galaxy pairs with spiral members and very different redshifts, so they are not interacting with each there and likely to be more symmetric. The source list includes pairs from Galaxy Zoo (about 60%) and the GAMA (Galaxy And Mass Assembly) survey. These data will allow very extensive analysis; this presentation reads more like a movie trailer in comparison, highlighting only a few results (primarily from the master’s thesis work by Sarah Bradford).

Among the highlights are:

Sharp outer edges to the location of dust lanes in spiral disks.

Distinct dust lanes disappearing for galaxies “late” in the Hubble sequence (Scd-Sd-Sdm-Sm, for those keeping track), maybe happening earlier in the sequence when there is a bar.

The dust web – in the outer disks of some spirals, we see not only dust lanes following the spiral pattern, but additional lanes cutting almost perpendicular to them. This is not completely new, but we can measure the dust more accurately with backlighting where the galaxy’s own light does not dilute its effects.

A first look at the fraction of area in the backlit regions with various levels of transmitted light. This goes beyond  our earlier arm/interam distinction to provide a more rigorous description of the dust distributions.

Bars and rings sweeping adjacent disk regions nearly free of dust (didn’t have room for a separate image on that, although the whole sample is shown in tiny versions across the bottom)

Here is a PNG of the poster. It doesn’t do the images justice, but the text is (just) legible.