Galactic HII Regions & Milky Way Structure

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Trey Wenger is awarded an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Fellowship to carry out a program of research and education at the University of Wisconsin. Wenger will use large high-quality observational surveys of H II regions – the bubbles of ionized gas around young hot stars – to create the most comprehensive map of the chemical and morphological structure of the Milky Way galaxy. Results from the study will advance our understanding of how the Galaxy formed and evolved. For the educational component of this project, Wenger will develop materials to broaden the use of small radio telescopes as an instructional tool for non-major astronomy courses and public outreach.Using existing and new observations of H I absorption, radio recombination lines, and radio continuum, this research project will yield the most comprehensive picture of the Milky Way’s present day morphological and chemical structure. To achieve that goal, the investigator will: (1) determine the origin of apparent ionized gas velocity gradients serendipitously discovered in hundreds of Galactic H II regions; (2) resolve the kinematic distance ambiguity for approximately 100 newly discovered H II regions; (3) create the first Galaxy-wide map of H II region metallicities; and (4) apply a novel machine learning technique to infer the morphological structure of the Milky Way’s high-mass star-forming region population.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.