Elizabeth Jeffery
California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo, CA·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Galaxies are not spread evenly across the universe. They gather in dense clusters and along long filaments that connect the clusters, forming a pattern called the cosmic web.
- Fields
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Physics
Education Research
- Topics
galaxy evolution
large-scale structure
cosmic web
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Obtain follow-up spectra of star-forming galaxies in known supercluster filaments, and compare their stellar ages, colors and redshifts with estimates from Rubin images alone; use the spectra to compute how long galaxies take to fall into clusters.
- Measure whether filament galaxies align with the filament and with the brightest cluster galaxy, to test how important galaxy in-fall along filaments is for building cluster cores.
- Measure the stellar populations of galaxies in cluster cores, outskirts and filaments, and estimate how much galaxy in-fall contributes to the brightest cluster galaxy and intra-cluster light.
- Add simulated intra-cluster light, the faint glow of stars between galaxies, to cluster images in order to test recovery methods before deep Rubin images become available.
- Train teams of CSU faculty and undergraduates as expert users of the Rubin Science Platform through a summer data summit and shared analysis pipelines, preparing for Rubin Data Release 1.
More about the research
Large, red, massive galaxies usually sit in dense clusters, which shows that a galaxy's properties are linked to its surroundings. This research asks how and when the cosmic web formed, and whether a galaxy's environment shapes how it evolves. The work uses the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a telescope that will repeatedly image the whole southern sky in its Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). A second project builds a network of Rubin data users across the California State University (CSU) system.
Why it matters
This work adds to our understanding of how galaxies and the cosmic web formed. In particular, it asks whether galaxies falling along filaments help build the giant galaxies and diffuse starlight at the centers of clusters. It also prepares tested methods for measuring faint intra-cluster light in deep Rubin images. Beyond the science, it trains undergraduates, including students from groups underrepresented in astronomy, to use LSST data at CSU campuses.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Brant Robertson
University of California-Santa Cruz, CA·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Incorporate the Morpheus deep learning framework, which classifies images pixel by pixel, into the Rubin Science Platform for analyzing Rubin Observatory data.
Gary Bernstein
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Measure precise astrometric positions of stars in hundreds of thousands of Dark Energy Camera images from the Blanco Telescope, collected over 12 years.
Dennis Zaritsky
University of Arizona, AZ·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Measure the reddening of thousands of faint background sources projected near 25 nearby galaxies, using extremely deep images, to estimate how much dust surrounds each galaxy.
The school
California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo: 7 labs on PI Pages, $38M a year on research.
More about California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo
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