The frontier of the next generation of all-sky surveys is to explore the structures in the Universe down to the faintest surface brightness levels, where the highly-diagnostic relics of the galaxy mass assembly across all environments reside.The proposed PhD project aims at studying the galaxies’ and clusters’ properties in the LSB regime, using available data from deep imaging survey and complementary data from radio surveys.
The next three years will be crucial to capitalize on the large investment that the proposers of this PhD project have so far placed into this topic, gaining world-recognized expertise in designing, performing and analyzing the data needed for this kind of analysis. In fact, there are already available data acquired from the most competitive, wide-field facilities available in the optical wavelength range (e.g. the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), HST and MUSE@ESO-VLT). In particular, the wide-field deep images from VST cover many of the targets observed with ongoing HI surveys, such as WALLABY and MeerKAT. So, the PhD student can immediately start using these data and combining them, in order to i) search for LSB features in the galaxy outskirts and eventually relate them with the HI emission in the galaxy outskirts and/or intra-cluster space; ii) improve the detection of the LSB galaxies in the optical and look for their HI counterpart of the LSB galaxies.
Taking advantage of the large statistics in different environments due to the unprecedented large sky area observed, the main outcome of this approach is to draw a more comprehensive picture of the mass assembly at all scales in the LCDM framework. This project also involves tight collaboration with a group of Italian and international scientists. Therefore, the PhD student will also take great advantage of the collaboration with this international team.
Riferimenti: Marilena Spavone, Enrichetta Iodice.