A volume rendering of the KCWI data cube revealing the structure of Makani. Credit: David Tree & Peter Richardson, Games and Visual Effects Research Lab, University of Hertfordshire
Researchers Directly Observe for the First Time a Huge Outflow of Gas Extending Far Beyond a Galaxy
Maunakea, Hawaii – Exploring the influence of
galactic winds from a distant galaxy called Makani, University of
California, San Diego’s Alison Coil, Rhodes College’s David Rupke and a
group of collaborators from around the world made a novel discovery
using W. M. Keck Observatory on Hawaii Island.
Published online today in the journal Nature, their study’s findings provide direct evidence for the first time of the role of galactic winds—ejections
of gas from galaxies—in creating the circumgalactic medium (CGM). It
exists in the regions around galaxies, and it plays an active role in
their cosmic evolution. The unique composition of Makani—meaning ‘wind’
in Hawaiian—uniquely lent itself to the breakthrough findings.
“Makani is not a typical galaxy,” noted
Coil, a physics professor at UC
San Diego. “It’s what’s known as a late-stage major merger—two
recently combined similarly massive galaxies, which came together because of
the gravitational pull each felt from the other as they drew nearer. Galaxy
mergers often lead to starburst events, when a substantial amount of gas
present in the merging galaxies is compressed, resulting in a burst of new star
births. Those new stars, in the case of Makani, likely caused the huge
outflows—either in stellar winds or at the end of their lives when they
exploded as supernovae.”
Coil explained that most of the gas in the universe inexplicably appears in the regions surrounding galaxies—not in the galaxies. Typically, when astronomers observe a galaxy, they are not witnessing it undergoing dramatic events—big mergers, the rearrangement of stars, the creation of multiple stars or driving huge, fast winds.
“While these events may occur at some point in a galaxy’s life, they’d be relatively brief,” noted Coil. “Here, we’re actually catching it all right as it’s happening through these huge outflows of gas and dust.”
Coil and Rupke, the paper’s first author, used data collected from one of Keck Observatory’s newest instruments – the Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) – combined with images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), to draw their conclusions.
The KCWI data provided what the researchers call the “stunning detection” of the ionized oxygen gas to extremely large scales, well beyond the stars in the galaxy. It allowed them to distinguish a fast gaseous outflow launched from the galaxy a few million years ago, from a gas outflow launched hundreds of millions of years earlier that has since slowed significantly.
“The earlier outflow has flowed to large distances from the galaxy, while the fast, recent outflow has not had time to do so,” summarized Rupke, associate professor of physics at Rhodes College.
Figure 1: The giant galactic wind surrounding the massive, compact galaxy Makani. The colors and white contour lines show the amount of light emitted by the ionized gas from different parts of the oxygen nebula, from brightest (white) to faintest (purple). The middle part of the image (black) shows the full extent of the galaxy, though most of the galaxy is concentrated at the center (the tiny green circle). The axes show distance from the center of the galaxy in kiloparsecs. Figure by: Gene Leung (UC San Diego)
From Hubble, the researchers procured images of Makani’s stars,
showing it to be a massive, compact galaxy that resulted from a merger
of two once separate galaxies. From ALMA, they could see that the
outflow contains molecules as well as atoms. The data sets indicated
that with a mixed population of old, middle-age and young stars, the
galaxy might also contain a dust-obscured accreting supermassive black
hole. This suggests to the scientists that Makani’s properties and
timescales are consistent with theoretical models of galactic winds.
“In terms of both their size and speed of travel, the two outflows
are consistent with their creation by these past starburst events;
they’re also consistent with theoretical models of how large and fast
winds should be if created by starbursts. So observations and theory are
agreeing well here,” noted Coil.
Rupke noticed that the hourglass shape of Makani’s nebula is strongly
reminiscent of similar galactic winds in other galaxies, but that
Makani’s wind is much larger than in other observed galaxies.
“This means that we can confirm it’s actually moving gas from the
galaxy into the circumgalactic regions around it, as well as sweeping up
more gas from its surroundings as it moves out,” Rupke explained. “And
it’s moving a lot of it—at least one to 10 percent of the visible mass
of the entire galaxy—at very high speeds, thousands of kilometers per
second.”
Rupke also noted that while astronomers are converging on the idea
that galactic winds are important for feeding the CGM, most of the
evidence has come from theoretical models or observations that don’t
encompass the entire galaxy.
“Here we have the whole spatial picture for one galaxy, which is a
remarkable illustration of what people expected,” he said. “Makani’s
existence provides one of the first direct windows into how a galaxy
contributes to the ongoing formation and chemical enrichment of its
CGM.”
This study was supported by the National Science Foundation (collaborative grant AST-1814233, 1813365, 1814159 and 1813702), NASA (award SOF-06-0191, issued by USRA), Rhodes College and the Royal Society.
About KCWI
Source: W.M. Keck Observatory/News
About KCWI
The Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) is designed to provide visible band, integral field spectroscopy with moderate to high spectral resolution formats and excellent sky-subtraction. The astronomical seeing and large aperture of the telescope enables studies of the connection between galaxies and the gas in their dark matter halos, stellar relics, star clusters, and lensed galaxies. Support for this project was provided by the Heising-Simons Foundation. Learn more at www.heisingsimons.org.
About W.M. Keck Observatory
About W.M. Keck Observatory
The W. M. Keck Observatory telescopes are among the most scientifically productive on Earth. The two, 10-meter optical/infrared telescopes on the summit of Maunakea on the Island of Hawaii feature a suite of advanced instruments including imagers, multi-object spectrographs, high-resolution spectrographs, integral-field spectrometers, and world-leading laser guide star adaptive optics systems.
Some of the data presented herein were obtained at Keck Observatory, which is a private 501(c) 3 non-profit organization operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation.
The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the Native Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain.
