CAREER: Constraining the Chemical Evolution of Galaxies with MaNGA

该团队将调查一种元素氧气的丰度，这种元素通常在附近星光闪耀的气体盘中发现。随着时间的推移，星系中的气体会因一代又一代的恒星而在化学上变得更加丰富。氧气被用来追踪这种“污染”在银河系内以及从一个星系到另一个星系的变化。这些信息将有助于解决星系如何演化的重要问题。高级团队成员将培训初级成员。该团队还将为一家科学博物馆开发一个动手展览。创新的展品将模仿研究设备，并使用定制软件来演示研究技术。在巡回演出中，该团队将使用一种尖端的观测技术-多纤维光谱分析-来测量阿帕奇点天文台(MANGA)刚刚开始的绘制附近星系图的调查中约3600个星系内的氧变化。该团队的具体目标是(1)量化氧气梯度，(2)研究它们与星系物理性质的关系，(3)研究来自星系的风如何重新分配氧气，以及(4)寻找氧的突然衰减，这是相对原始气体积累的信号。这项研究将为推动化学浓缩的物理过程提供洞察力。这些洞察力反过来将导致理论家们对星系演化过程的模拟得到重大改进。

The team will investigate the abundance of an element, oxygen, commonly found in nearby galaxies with star-studded disks of gas. Over time, the gas in a galaxy is chemically enriched by successive generations of stars. Oxygen is used to trace how this "pollution" varies within a galaxy and from one galaxy to another. This information will help solve the important problem of how galaxies evolve. Senior team members will train junior members. The team will also develop a hands-on exhibit for a science museum. The innovative exhibit will mimic the research equipment and use custom software to demonstrate the research technique. In a tour de force, the team will use a cutting-edge observing technique - multi-fiber spectroscopy - to measure oxygen variations within about 3600 galaxies from the just-started survey for Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA). The team's specific goals are to (1) quantify the oxygen gradients, (2) study their relationships to the galaxies' physical properties, (3) study how winds from a galaxy redistribute its oxygen, and (4) search for the abrupt falloffs in oxygen that signal accretion of relatively pristine gas. This research will provide insights into the physical processes that drive chemical enrichment. Those insights will, in turn, lead to important improvements in theorists' simulations of how galaxies evolve.