Star Formation and the Interstellar Medium

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Our Galaxy, the Milky Way, is a large spiral galaxy. Most public images of galaxies are of spiral galaxies because they are bright, filled with interesting structure such as their spiral arms, and they are common. Spiral galaxies have a key role in the evolution of galaxies in the Universe with significantly more of them formed early in the lifetime of the Universe and then they merge and evolve to create the Universe we see around us today. We are limited in our ability to understand the structure of other spiral galaxies by their distance from us. In order to gain such understanding I will study the structure of our Milky Way galaxy, with a special focus on the brightest objects that would be visible in other spiral galaxies. These brightest objects are the most massive stars, just forming now, and the hot glowing HII regions around them. These objects provide a key probe of the structure of the Milky Way's interstellar medium, with dominates the visible appearance of spiral galaxies. Another important aspect of this research program is the creation of new instrumentation for this research. Two instruments developed in the past decade under Dr. Fich's leadership have recently begun operations: HIFI on the Herschel Space Observatory and the SCUBA-2 camera at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. Research described in this current proposal will make use of these new facilities. An exciting next generation project is also described in this proposal: CCAT, a 25 meter far infrared telescope to be built in Chile, has recently begun its final engineering design. Dr. Fich is the Canadian leader of this international project. This project will be a major focus of this research program.