Karen Masters
Haverford College, PA·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Galaxies form stars from gas, mostly cold atomic hydrogen. Before stars can form, this gas must pass through several chemical and physical steps that are poorly understood.
- Fields
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Physics
- Topics
galaxy evolution
star formation
atomic hydrogen
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2028
What they work on
- Test whether atomic hydrogen (HI) depletion times in MaNGA galaxies vary with ionization and heating sources, using HI-MaNGA 21 cm data combined with MaNGA galaxy maps.
- Examine whether the fraction of diffuse versus dense HI, and internal motions such as velocity dispersion and non-rotational flows, change how efficiently galaxies process their gas.
- Determine whether long HI depletion times arise from inefficient molecular hydrogen (H2) formation or inefficient star formation from H2, using new Green Bank Telescope and ALMA observations of a galaxy subset.
- Complete the HI-MaNGA survey with the Green Bank Telescope to build a full public HI dataset for MaNGA galaxies.
More about the research
Some galaxies use up their hydrogen quickly while others hold onto it for very long times. This range of "depletion times" is one key to how galaxies grow.
Why it matters
This is basic research on how galaxies turn gas into stars. It may clarify which step in that process limits star formation and so constrain models of galaxy growth. A completed HI-MaNGA survey would also give astronomers a lasting public dataset of hydrogen gas measurements for nearby galaxies.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Kate Rowlands
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Map recent star-formation histories in nearby galaxies using full spectral fitting of KILOGAS data, and compare them with current interstellar gas to see how star formation depends on available gas.
Marc Rafelski
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Directly image galaxies identified by Damped Lyman-alpha absorption, dense neutral hydrogen seen in background spectra, using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array to locate counterparts selected independently of brightness.
John Bally
University of Colorado Boulder, CO·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Map molecular gas across the entire Milky Way Central Molecular Zone at high resolution with the ALMA telescope as part of the ACES survey, tracing gas motions with more than a dozen molecular tracers.
The school
Haverford College: 1 labs on PI Pages, $4M a year on research.
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